The purpose of this web-site:
The original, and more general purpose of this web-site was to help publicize my research efforts, and thereby encourage and facilitate collaboration with other international business (IB) researchers. However, as I retired in Dec 2021, I am no longer pursuing new research agendas (but yes I am still finishing off a few projects that were already underway).
However, the second, and more specific purpose of this web-site is still valid. That is to make available to other international business researchers, the various indicators of psychic distance which were first cited in a paper I presented at the July 2004 Academy of International Business annual conference in Stockholm. This paper was subsequently published in the Journal of International Business Studies (v37-5, 2006, pp 578-602).
In 2020, I have revised the distance scales in four ways.
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- Most critically I have updated the scales to include scores for 1995, 2005 and 2015. As part of this process, I have mildly revised the items for measuring industrial development. In most instances the metrics here are very slow to change; thus, 10 years intervals are sufficient. Although researchers can interpolate between these intervals.
- Second, I have expanded the set to cover 150 countries , and mildly revised the selection of countries to more accurately reflect the major economies. However, with the latest iteration, I have structured it so that additional countries can be added. Thus, if you desperately need coverage of an additional country, please contact me directly.
- Third, I have finally given in to requests to create a formative factor that represents the combination of all five of my dimensions. I have used the Mahalanobis distance approach as recommended by Berry, Guillen & Zhou (JIBS, 2010).
- Fourth, I have re-scaled the distance factors so that they range from 0 to 10, with 0 representing ‘no difference’ and 10 representing the maximum difference. In previous versions, I had left the factors as z-scores, and that resulted in some confusion. Hopefully this re-scaling will resolve that problem.
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In terms of usage, I myself have used these scales in 10 different empirical studies articles to date. In addition to that, other researchers have used these scales (or portions of them) in over 125 published articles across 60 different journals, including:
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- Entrepreneurship Practice and Theory
- Global Strategy Journal
- International Business Review
- International Marketing Review
- International Journal of Financial Studies
- International Journal of Cross Cultural Management
- Journal of Banking and Finance
- Journal of Business Research
- Journal of International Business Studies
- Journal of International Marketing
- Journal of Management
- Journal of Management Studies
- Journal of World Business
- Management International Review
- Research Policy
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While all of these indicators are variations (to greater and lesser degrees) of already publicly available data, some of the manipulations to achieve composite difference scores amongst nations are quite substantial; and I believe there is value in making them available from one source. Researchers are encouraged to download these data sets and use them in their research, provided it is appropriately acknowledged and referenced.