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Research This new department expands BizEd's coverage of research in management education. Our focus will be on current, ongoing, and upcoming studies in business schools around the world. The school also recently held a Mansour Javidan Charting the 'Global Mindset' Faculty at Thunderbird University's Garvin School of International Management in Glendale, Arizona, are working to help organizations define and lever- age the "global mindset." Their re- search, the Global Mindset Project, will focus on pinpointing what it takes to be successful in today's global business environment. "Some executives and managers are very successful working with other groups, countries, and cultures, and some are not," says Mansour Javidan, director of the Garvin Cen- ter for Cultures and Languages of In- ternational Management and a princi- pal researcher on the project. "We want to answer the question, 'What distinguishes those executives who can work well with people from other cultures from those who cannot?'" Researchers began exploring this question by interviewing nearly 50 of their colleagues on campus, as well as Thunderbird alumni in 20 cities throughout Asia, Europe, and the U.S. Each person was asked how he or she defined the term "global mindset." 50 BizEd JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2006 conference that brought together aca- demics with an interest in global is- sues. After discussion and debate, the conference reached a consensus re- garding what the term "global mind- set" means. These academics defined the term as "a confluence of attributes that enable an individual to influence individuals, groups, and organizations in different social cultural systems." In coming months, researchers will conduct a large-scale survey of managers and executives working in international settings. Their objective is to develop a profile and assessment tool that measures an individual's global mindset. The school plans to use this tool to test its own students upon matriculation and graduation. The assessment will also be made available to any organizations that want to be able to measure their stu- dents' or employees' global knowl- edge and sensitivities, says Javidan. As companies develop global al- liances, the importance of such a tool is significant, Javidan adds. "Last August, I was in Seoul to teach a group of Korean executives with LGE, a large Korean electronics company. Their No. 1 priority was to be one of the top three companies globally in their industry," he says. "To accomplish that goal, they agreed that they needed executives who understand how to succeed in different global systems. That's the essence of the global mindset—exec- utives who understand global issues and can make decisions based on that understanding." Preliminary research from the Global Mindset Project will be avail- able early this year. Culture Clashes: Good for M&As Although culture clashes between people from different countries may be uncom- fortable, they may actually be posi- tive in the long term when it comes to cross-border mergers and acqui- sitions. A new study from Georgia Tech's College of Management in Atlanta, Georgia, finds that, con- trary to conventional wisdom, cross-border M&As actually tend to be most successful in the long term. The study, "Mars-Venus Mar- riages: Culture and Cross-Border M&A," was conducted by Georgia Tech finance professors Rajesh Chakrabarti and Narayanan Jayara- man and doctoral student Swastika Mukherjee. "Mergers and acquisi- tions involving firms from countries with dissimilar cultures, on average, do better than those between firms from countries with similar cul- tures," they write. The study examined 405 cross- border M&As from 1991 to 2000, which involved companies from 34 countries targeting firms in 37 countries. Researchers focused on corporate performance 30 to 36 months after the union took place. The study measured national cul- tural differences such as language, religion, and legal and corporate governance systems. It also used measures developed by Geert Hof- stede in his book on international management, Culture's Conse- quences: International Differences in Work-Related Values. Researchers found that greater cultural disparity can increase the chances of success for M&As be- cause it affects the interaction in the following ways: s It lowers the likelihood of acqui-