After the establishment of the Common Market in Europe, many companies from abroad opted for a single European headquarters and searched for European managers. That leads to the question whether one can really speak of a common European management style. The article at hand examines this issue. To do this, the legal framework and Corporate Governance background of individual European countries are assessed. Furthermore, cultural differences in Europe are considered. Referring to studies of cultural dimensions in European countries, the authors propose five different cultural areas in Europe. This leads to a concluding discussion of management styles in these regions.
For years, Hong Kong has been the world’s largest toy exporter. However, as the costs of rent and labor have increased drastically over the past years, Hong Kong toy manufacturers have moved their labor-intensive operations to other lower-wage areas. The Pearl River Delta (PRD) region of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has been one of their favorite choices for outsourcing because of cheap and available labor. This paper explores, using data culled from interviews with the senior management of five leading Hong Kong toy companies, how some Hong Kong toy manufacturers overcame various strategic management issues after having made the move to the PRD. The results are presented within five major areas of concern: rules and regulations, the less-developed infrastructure, R&D, relationship with suppliers, and new technology, and they are used to show how the manufacturers were able to overcome various strategic constraints in order to accomplish outstanding performance. Supporting data were gathered through factory visits in order to better understand the actual operations within the PRD. This collected experience should be beneficial to other manufacturers interested in operating plants within the PRD.
This study was conducted to test the antecedent factors of market orientation and the relationship between market orientation and business performance of overseas subsidiaries. The author also investigates whether competitive strategy might affect the strength or weakness of the market orientation—performance relationship. The results of research show that the magnitude of the firm and market turbulence have significance as antecedent factors of market orientation, and competitive strategy can also moderate the relationship between market orientation and performance. Lastly, the results show that the relationship between market orientation and performance has a positive significance.
The role of government policies in the economic growth of Singapore has been well documented. The government’s actions, such as the provision of appropriate infrastructure, have resulted in massive inflow of foreign capital to Singapore. Government sponsorship of selected industries and foreign investment helped domestic firms to gain access to advanced technologies. During the 1990s there was a significant increase in government spending on research and development (R&D) that can be attributed to the development of advanced technologies by Singaporean firms. This paper examines the impact of government-funded R&D in fostering the development of Singapore’s industrial production in the 1990s. The study explicitly considers the performance of three industries within the manufacturing sector: the machinery and equipment industry, the electrical machinery industry, and the transport equipment industry. It is shown that the fluctuations in real government spending on R&D had a significant positive impact on the performance of the selected manufacturing industries.
This article explains the general nature of the business style of Toyota management strategy, its specific performance, and its development in China. It is quite difficult to find specific revolutionary policies and unusual strategies for the success of the Toyota Motor Corporation.
In last several years, Vietnam’s economy has reached significant achievements. Those are clearly seen by analyzing economic growth, economic structure transformation, trade and investment and Vietnam’s economy competitiveness. However, in the process of development, Vietnam’s economy is still facing many difficulties and challenges. Vietnam is accelerating speed of innovation process, is active and quicker in international economic integration in order to complete the economic – social objectives in the period of 2001–2005 with annual average economic growth rate of 7.5%.
Accompanying rapid economic growth in China, there have been provincial disparities. This article presents and analyzes the evolution of China’s provincial GDP per capita disparity between 1952 and 1998. First, an examination of some basic indicators of disparity is carried out, and a test for unconditional convergence is performed to explore the dispersion features. Then, a more comprehensive regression analysis, allowing insights into the evidence of conditional convergence and highlighting the main determinants of growth in two main periods of the recent history of China (i.e., prereform and postreform) is presented. Finally, a discussion and conclusion are provided.
This study investigated whether two artificial neural networks (ANNs), multilayer perceptron (MLP) and hybrid networks using statistical and ANN approaches, can outperform traditional statistical models for predicting corporate failures in Australia one year prior to the financial distress. The results suggest that hybrid neural networks outperform all other models. Therefore, hybrid neural network model is a very promising tool for failure prediction. This supports the conclusion that for shareholders, policymakers and others interested in early warning systems, hybrid networks would be useful.
Economic globalization is the inevitable result of the economic developing process, which has experienced three developmental phases: commercial capitalism, vertical rank division of labor of industrial capitalism, and global rank division of labor. This paper holds that evolution of economic production activity brought about by the third science and technology revolution provides a strong material and technological basis for economic globalization. The development of productivity brought forth by the new technological revolution exacerbates the supply–demand contradiction in capitalism and becomes the important propelling factor that promotes monopolistic capital to push outward to the rest of the world. The multinational corporations that master high technology and huge capital become the main powers that propel global production rank division of labor. Because of the aspiration for industrialization and modernization, East Asian countries have become the propelling power for economic globalization.
There is no doubt that small firms have shown a great tenacity to survive despite many adverse influences. This is especially surprising in view of the apparently low profits and frequent failures. This paper aims to provide an empirical insight into the diverse problems and means of survival of small/micro firms. The research focused on the konnyaku industry, which predominantly is neither fast-growing nor prone to failure but, instead, has average performance and survival. The purpose of this article is to shed some light on the business alliances and competition in this industry in which members of a sanchi do not cooperate but compete against each other.
An incident that occurred in a product development project is analyzed to see how participants cope differently with surprising situations. Variety in coping generates cognitive dissonance in the project team, which means that the situation not only is complex for the individual team member but that it is difficult to trace, here and now, causal chains on a collective level. The situation is aggravated if the problem occurs in an alliance setting, as more consultation is required to trace deviations from the expected and reach agreements on solutions. Furthermore, if the alliance is between companies in the car industry, with its articulated brand values, coping with surprises can be extremely stressful, with time schedules and budgets under pressure. This analysis was made possible by the authors being permitted to video-film project management meetings and project members responding, individually, to the playback of a video sequence from a meeting they attended with the attached question “What is going on here?”
The purpose of this study was to suggest a conceptual framework for the dynamic skill formation process based on relevant environments. First, after categorizing the types of task at the work-flow level, such as regular maintenance tasks, nonregular maintenance tasks, regular improvement tasks, and nonregular improvement tasks, this study identified conceptually how these tasks are related to the ways by which individuals learn (single-loop learning/double-loop learning versus OJT and Off-JT). This study also tried to apply the above conceptual model to the Korea context (e.g., Company W) for external validity. Company W is well known among Korean small firms for its innovative human resources management. The study shows that, generally, Company W gained a competitive advantage using the dynamic conceptual model of the skill formation process suggested in this study.
The purpose of this study was to examine the perspective of international comparative research on corporate governance. The problems of stock ownership and corporate control in large corporations are the basis of any discussion on corporate governance. In large corporations of major capitalist countries, the subject of corporate control is changing from a single individual or family to the system of impersonal possession, depending on various factors of stock ownership between corporations and the interlocking directorship. These are the common bases that started the corporate governance problem. After these aspects are recognized, it is important to identify the difference in patterns of corporate governance in each country. First, I clarify the common direction of the development of “stock ownership and corporate control” seen in large corporations of major capitalist countries. Second, I look at the Anglo-American, Japanese, and South Korea patterns, and consider the differences or the distinctiveness of the classification by country in a concrete system of stock ownership and corporate control.
Electronic (e) commerce has been expanding ever since the Internet came into existence, although trading data had been digitalized before use of the Internet. The development of B2B is analyzed on the aspect of the digital infrastructure in this paper. I applied the three-layer model in the interface between the enterprises, which has been proposed before, and I verify the validity of the model. After that I discuss recent B2B trends.
No abstract available DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5564/mjia.v0i8-9.129 The Mongolian Journal of International Affairs; Number 8-9, 2002, Pages 63-69
A population perspective of the formation, long-term survival, and prevalence of U.S./Japanese alliances in seven technology-intensive areas suggests the presence of two subpopulations. We have called these two subpopulations dominated and hybridized. They were predicted and empirically identified as being comprised of unique combinations of the technical area of operations, the administrative form of the alliance, and the product/knolwedge flow through the entity.
The contents of information technique are not sufficiently understood and therefore, must be clarified. How does the e-business model differ from the traditional and classic business models? What do they have in common with the e-business model? How are the various types of e-business model integrated, and how are they placed in the virtual open architecture? The specialness and generalness of the e-business models in Japan and the United States are analyzed here after looking at their current status.
The objective of this article is to show how slow and imperfect the international accounting harmonization and standardization process is, based on the example of France but also some other European countries. One of the explanations is that accounting is a mirror of a society. Therefore, international harmonization and standardization is a response to social needs, a compromise among different interests, not only a technical process.
In the age of the new economy a management has evolved, including management ideology, learning organization, team work, incentive of all the staff, cooperative competition, and strategic alliances. The concept of this new management did not appear all of a sudden. It evolved from the traditional, profound thought of management culture and the traditional Chinese management culture in particular. The principles of the new economy are in accord with ancient Eastern philosophy. Management culture in the East and that in the West have been gradually integrated with one another. The Eastern management culture has undergone a period of spreading to the West and returning to the East. Management scholars throughout the world have noted and paid attention to the traditional Chinese management culture, whose quintessence is human orientation, moral priority, and behavioral cultivation by self-discipline (or ren wei wei ren). It is not only a new way of thinking about modern management behavior but also a manifestation of the successful adoption of the philosophical thoughts of ancient China into the age of networks.
