PurposeCultural differences have been frequently cited as a major source of risks for international joint ventures (IJVs). Cultural differences may cause extensive conflicts in technology, norms and emotion among the international joint venture (IJV) partners. The purpose of this study is to explore the interactive effects of national culture differences (NCDs) and conflict management approaches on the performance of international construction joint ventures (ICJV).Design/methodology/approachData were collected using a questionnaire survey method with 143 valid responses. Partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) was used to test the research hypotheses.FindingsIt was found that ICJV performance declined with a high degree of NCDs. The negative effect of NCDs on ICJV performance was mitigated by adopting the cooperative conflict management approach; while it was aggravated by adopting the competitive conflict management approach. The findings may provide an alternative way (i.e. adopting the cooperative conflict management approach rather than avoiding or competitive approaches) to address the cultural conflicts in the multicultural project management teams.Practical implicationsFirstly, as NCD negatively impacts performance of ICJVs, project managers should pay attention to cultural issues and learn how to manage them; Secondly, as cooperative and competitive conflict management approaches have different moderating effects on the relationship between NCD and ICJV performance, project managers must choose appropriate conflict management styles in multination teams. Thirdly, as the avoiding approach has no significant moderating effect on the negative relationship between NCD and ICJV performance, it is important for Chinese partners not to employ avoiding approach to deal with conflicts in ICJV.Originality/valueThis study uniquely adds to the literature on cultural issues in managing ICJVs by integrating the moderating effects of conflict management approaches. The interactive effects of conflict management approaches and national cultural differences on ICJV project performance may contribute to the theories regarding conflict management theory in the context of cross-cultural management.

This study investigates the effect of culture and salespersons’ retail service quality on impulse buying and provides evidence that service quality moderates the effect of culture on impulse buying. The experiment uses a 2 (culture of participants: Singaporean versus American) by 2 (retail service quality: poor versus good) between-subjects factorial design with 102 Singaporean and 88 American working adults recruited from companies in Singapore. It finds that for both cultures, good service leads to higher impulse buying than does poor service. The significant interaction between culture and service quality on impulse buying indicates that when service is good, Singaporeans show higher impulse buying than do Americans. In contrast, when service is poor, Singaporeans reveal lower impulse buying than do Americans. The implication is that multinational companies should invest in creating and assuring good service quality when they do business in collectivist cultures but might give relatively higher weight to other kinds of competitive advantages when they do business in individualist cultures.

This study uses an experiment with 102 Singaporean working adults to examine the effects of salespersons’ retail service quality (SRSQ) and consumers’ mood on impulse buying (IB) and store-revisit intentions. The results show that consumers receiving good SRSQ exhibit greater IB and store-revisit intentions than do those receiving poor SRSQ, and consumers in a positive mood show greater IB than do those in a negative mood. Mood fully mediates the effect of SRSQ on IB in terms of purchase quantity and partially/complementarily mediates the effect of SRSQ on IB in terms of purchase intentions and store-revisit intentions. This research offers insights into the affective and cognitive mechanisms of IB and store-revisit intentions in a specific retail context. The findings help retailers facilitate purchase behavior and improve customer satisfaction in services. Ethical consumption policies and practices could also incorporate the IB mechanism reported in this study. Future research opportunities are discussed.

Since the late 19 th century, enormous endeavors have been made in extending the scope and capability of optical interferometers. Recently, plasmonic vortices that strongly confine the orbital angular momentum to surface have attracted considerable attention. However, current research interests in this area have focused on the mechanisms and dynamics of polarization-dependent single plasmonic vortex generation and evolution, while the interference between different plasmonic vortices for practical applications has been unexplored. Here, a method for flexible on-chip spin-to-orbital angular momentum conversion is introduced, resulting in exotic interferograms. Based on this method, a new form of interferometers that is realized by the interference between customized plasmonic vortices is demonstrated. Within wavelength-scale dimension, the proposed plasmonic vortex interferometers exhibit superior performance to directly measure the polarization state, spin and orbital angular momentum of incident beams. The proposed interferometry is straightforward and robust, and can be expected to be applied to different scenarios, fueling fundamental advances and applications alike.

Coupling free‐space light into surface plasmons (SPs) has traditionally faced challenges in arbitrarily controlling the directionality of the SPs with respect to the incident polarization. Recently reported polarization‐dependent directional coupling of SPs using metasurfaces has attracted enormous attention for its promise in developing innovative and on‐demand plasmonic devices. However, further progress has been hampered by the limitation in designating the directional coupling with tailorable polarization‐dependent feature and compatible ability to incidence of complex polarization distribution. Here, a directional coupling strategy is introduced to overcome these limits. It is demonstrated that, by utilizing the interference between two pairs of slit resonators with different resonance responses, the directional SP coupling can be expanded to arbitrary group of polarized incidence by simply varying their relative distance, and the SP coupling direction will reverse under the corresponding orthogonally polarized incidence without affecting the efficiency. To exhibit the versatile design capability of the strategy, it is further utilized to construct several polarization‐dependent plasmonic devices for controlling SP propagations, including two SP metalenses and a plasmonic Airy beam launcher, in which it is shown that the device can even be designed to work for non‐uniformly polarized incidence. The strategy paves a reliable route towards many practical on‐chip applications.