PurposeFor several years, the domestic markets of manufacturing organizations have started to reach maturity and companies have sought to expand their international operations in order to grow. This has meant that there has been an increasing emphasis on the debate on whether companies should remain global or localize their marketing mix, and to what extent each element should be adapted or standardized. The paper aims to explore the degree to which manufacturing organizations need to standardize or adapt elements of their marketing mix. It demonstrates how a balance can be created between global and local approaches.Design/methodology/approachThe paper defines the key concepts of adaptation and standardization and outlines contrasting viewpoints in the literature. It uses existing frameworks as a basis for analysis. The use of case study examples that demonstrate both international brand failures and brand successes shed light on balancing local and global markets.FindingsThe paper provides insight into the different approaches that manufacturing organizations can follow when expanding into international markets. The paper argues against the statement “manufacturing organizations are either mindlessly global or hopelessly local” and demonstrate that manufacturing organizations can successfully combine a global and local approach if they carefully choose the elements that they adapt or standardize.Originality/valueThis paper is based on previous research between manufacturing companies operating in Europe and the Middle East. It is therefore vocationally original. It is of value to manufacturing companies, which need to understand how they can balance global and local markets.

The representation and progression of women in leadership roles is a global issue, but research insights on the enactment of leadership by women stem from a predominantly Western perspective. As leadership is inherently context-dependent, we focus on a specific ‘place’ of leadership enactment and provide a more situated and contextual understanding of the challenges women in Iran face in entering and enacting leadership roles. This study contributes to the understanding of leadership and place by considering the dynamics of place as occurring at multiple levels – societal norms (including religion), organisational and physical (including geographical). For this in-depth inductive study 24 semi-structured interviews were conducted and analysed through Reflexive Thematic Analysis. Through the intersection of different spheres of place particular challenges for women arise. The women within our study had to negotiate the complex dynamics of doing gender well and being seen to act in line with the normative conceptions of femininity with dominant masculine expectations of what leadership and how it should be done. While also women Western contexts are constrained and / or supported by cultural (national, societal and organisation) factors as well as place in a physical and geographical sense, the specific nuances in national and societal cultural norms and the ‘harsh’ physical environment in our study provide additional challenges for women to negotiate. This study affords female leaders in Iran a voice and extends previous work on the lived experiences of women in the Middle East and North Africa Region in the under-researched context of Iran.