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We live in a time with increasing focus on the body and its perfection. The marketing environment is replete with products and services catering to the health, well-being, and beauty of bodies and, it is implied, of our souls. One of the more drastic and consequently also much debated and, at times, tabooed type of service and consumption within this field is cosmetic surgery. This article is based on interviews with 15 women who have had cosmetic operations. It examines what motivated their decision to have surgery; some of their thoughts and feelings before, during and after the process; and the ways in which the operation has influenced their life and self-identity subsequently. The material is analysed within a theoretical framework resting mainly on Anthony Giddens' work on self-identity in late modernity. This implies that cosmetic surgery is understood to be part of the individual's reflexive construction of self-identity, and leads to a focus on issues such as self-determination, self-esteem, and the relationship between body and identity. Finally, some relations between self-identity and the marketing institution are discussed. ᭧

The objective of this article is to show how narrative methods provide useful tools for international business research. We do this by presenting a study of stories told about the collaboration between a Danish expatriate manager and his Chinese CEO in the Shanghai subsidiary of an MNE. First, we explain and exemplify how narrative interviews are designed and conducted. In this connection, we consider the interviewers' interaction with the interviewees, and clarify our reasons for focusing on the two selected interviews. Second, we demonstrate how narrative concepts and models are able to elucidate intercultural collaboration processes by analyzing how each member of a dyad of interacting managers narrates the same chain of events. We show how the narratological concepts of peripeteia and anagnorisis are well suited to identifying focal points in their stories: situations where change follows their recognizing new dimensions of their conflicts, eventually furthering their collaboration. We explain how Greimas's actantial model is valuable when mapping differences between and changes in the narrators' projects, alliances and oppositions in the course of their interaction. Thus, we make it clear how they overcome most of their differences and establish common ground through mutual learning.

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The authors analyze the recontextualization of the corporate values of a multinational company (MNC) in one of its subsidiaries. The authors draw upon qualitative material from a case study of a company of Danish origin and its endeavors to implement its corporate values in an Indian subsidiary in Bangalore. The authors show how these values take on new meanings when interpreted by local employees. On the one hand, their understandings are shaped by the prevailing meaning system, including leadership ideals, and on the other hand, by their resources and strategies. To further their understanding of the recontextualization, the authors point to a need to go beyond the system of signification shared within a national culture and include social agency, of which they conceive in Bourdieusian terms.