Católica Porto Business School

The topics of internationalization and cognitive styles have been investigated extensively in an unrelated manner over decades. From the latter psycho-sociological approach, it can be stated that the decision maker cognitive characteristics have an impact on the organization's strategic decisions. Meanwhile, the former perspective has emphasized the issue of internationalization as a process that strongly relies on gaining experiential knowledge. This conceptual paper aims to enlighten the influence and interaction of the manager's cognitive style on international business (IB) decisions of small-and-medium enterprises (SMEs). Two main theoretical approaches explaining the internationalization process of SMEs are compared: the Uppsala gradual model and the International New Ventures-INVs approach. The main research question is whether there is a cognitive style that always outperforms the others when it comes to the internationalization pattern the SME follows, or whether the optimal style is dependent on the task and the context (i.e. the pattern of the internationalization the SME choses). Some propositions and research avenues are suggested as new findings are continuously emerging relative to how the human brain works in this promising intersection labeled as organizational neuroscience in the quest of the micro-foundations of the theory of internationalization.

The influence of several environmental and organizational factors on the decision making process of international business-IB have been extensively investigated over the last decades. However, the micro-foundations of the cognitive features of the decision maker and their impact on the organization's strategic decisions are still an unexplored area when discussing the process of internationalization. In this paper, this internationalization process decision making is examined under the umbrella of the intertwined relations between environment, organization and manager's cognitive style. The aim of this paper is to reflect of the role of the manager's cognitive style on the process of filtering information from the international business environment in order to create better internationalization strategic decisions. Under the socio-cognitive approach of the dual-process theory, this study explores the role of System-X (emotional, intuitive, automatic reasoning) and System-C (analytical, conscious, deliberate reasoning) on the IB decision making process. Finally, we open future research avenues for digging deeper in the multileveled association between IB environmental features, organization, manager's cognitive style and internationalization mode.

Deep changes in the labour market have influenced the way people and organizations maintain
labour bonds, and brought out new types of working relationships that don´t fit in the classical
polarity employment-unemployment, to which (Eurofound, 2012) has labeled as “shades of grey”.
We examine the concepts of work, employment and unemployment, explore the “shades of grey”
and we present a new dimension, the “anemployment”, as the situation of those who experience the
labour reality, alternatinig atypical work relations with moments of unemployment. Araújo e Jordão
(2011) have been exploring this complex phenomenon, with increasing relevance, which might have
implications on the concept of career and that justifies a triangulation of labour reality in three
vertices: employee, anemployed and unemployed.

Unemployment and precarious work relations are becoming a reality in higher education graduates and so the aim of this article is to achieve exact statistical data about these experiences. An electronic questionnaire was used to obtain a sample of 170 graduates, most female (72.9 %), single (30.2%) and with a mean age of 34 years (± 8.08). Statistically significant
differences were found between the number of work relations concerning the number of children: participants without children experience a higher number of work relations. Also,
significant differences based on sex were found and it is women who most experience overqualified work and unemployment. Implications of results are discussed and we suggest some clues to future research and intervention.