While literature on the internationalization of small firms has proliferated, most research on how to do business in China tends to be biased towards larger multinationals. Most of the firms and/or investments entering the Chinese market are, in fact, small. On the other hand, many proposed strategies for doing business in China are derived from studying multinationals. Although many of these strategies may be workable for companies whatever their size, smaller firms are different in terms of availability of resources, capabilities and core competencies, as well as how they are perceived by the Chinese market and authorities.

In this paper, we focus on those smaller firms planning to expand their operations to China, either for trade or for investment purposes.

The recent turmoil of the global financial system urges both academics and professionals to rethink the fundamental question of the appropriate banking business model. For the emerging economies the paradigm of the Western style of banking and finance has clearly failed. This is particularly true for China where the banking reform turns to a cornerstone in the transformation from the separated to the universal banking system after a track record of almost thirty years reform policy.

This paper analyses the sufficient and necessary conditions to transform Shanghai from a merely domestic to an international financial centre. Background of the work is the increasing global importance of China as the powerhouse of the world economy particularly after the crisis and the decision of the State Council of China to turn Shanghai into an international financial centre by 2020.

Based on five years of data from 114 politically connected companies in 17 different jurisdictions, the newly published research paper “High-Level Politically Connected Firms, Corruption, and Analyst Forecast Accuracy around the World” breaks new ground by offering valuable information on the political issues multinational enterprises must consider when deciding where to invest.

By CEIBS Professor of Management Nandani Lynton and Kirsten Høgh Thøgersen

Western ideals are dwindling in significance as 240 million of the best educated and hardest working young people in the world are holding tight to good old Chinese values.  Responsibility for the extended family, adherence to the middle way or harmony, and care of relationships play a large role in the lives and thought of Gen Y in the Middle Kingdom. Against widespread expectations, the next Chinese generation is not Westernizing, but they are modernizing. The area in which these young Chinese are most modernizing the traditional attitude is in their views of hierarchy.

Co-authored by CEIBS Professor in Management and Organization Dr. André Wierdsma, "Partnership for Organizational Transformation -- Collectively co-creating a new VVAA 2.0 culture” will be published in the November 2009 issue of Strategic Direction. The paper was a finalist in the EFMD’s Excellence in Practice Award in Brussels earlier this year; one of the top three selected from among 24 submissions worldwide. During the EFMD conference, the presentation by the Nyenrode-VvAA partnership was awarded with the 'bronze' medal.

In “The Effects of Corporate Governance and Institutional Environments on Export Behaviour in Emerging Economies - Evidence from China,” CEIBS Professor of Economics and Finance Xu Bin and his co-authors examine the impact of corporate governance and institutions on export decisions.

The paper, which has been accepted for publication in the prestigious journal Applied Stochastic Models in Business and Industry, discusses Roger Hoerl and Ron Snee’s paper entitled "Post-financial meltdown: What do the services industries need from us now?” Professor Parr’s paper begins with an examination of the actions that statisticians must take to help service industries in the current and future environment.

How have perceptions of managers’ ethical responsibilities changed over time? What role does moral luck play in shaping expectations of ethical behaviour? These are the issues explored by CEIBS Associate Professor of Entrepreneurship S. Ramakrishna Velamuri in “Evolutionary Processes, Moral Luck, and the Ethical Responsibilities of the Manager.”

The paper, co-authored by Nicholas Dew, has been accepted for publication in the acclaimed Journal of Business Ethics.

In “Parental entrepreneurial role model influence on male offspring: is it always positive and when does it occur?” CEIBS Associate Professor of Entrepreneurship S. Ramakrishna Velamuri and his co-author Edward Mungai of the Strathmore Business School use social learning and career development theories to explore how parental influence varies with parental performance in self-employment and when the parental influence actually occurs. This is in contrast to how it manifests itself, which has been the main focus of prior studies.

The paper was accepted by the highly regarded journal Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice.

Although there is growing interest in themed brandstores, we still know very little about the source of these retail environments’ power to affect consumers profoundly. Utilizing an ethnographic study of American Girl Place, a culturally rich and highly successful retail environment, we find that effective retailing in these contexts is an intensely ideological affair.

In our participant-observation of, and on-site interviews with, consumers at American Girl Place we find that the ideology of the brand manifests powerfully through a variety of different and distinct areas within the store: the Museum, the Library, the Café, the Salon, the Theater, and the Photo Studio. Ideological expression is central to each of these places.

Tracking the influence of brand ideology through consumers’ retail experiences, we theorize about the centrality of retail place in ideological branding.

Although the confluence of ideology and retailing has been referenced in prior research, this paper focuses on and systematically develops the theoretical interconnection between the two. The physical immediacy of themed brandstore experience acts as a quilting point that links together related cultural concepts into a strong retail brand ideology. The implications of this theory draw our attention to ideological and morally-bound retail brand expressions, emphasize the importance of a variety of retail formats within a single store, and provide practical guidelines for retailers eager to build successful brands of their own.
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The year 2007 may well be remembered as a milestone in the development of accounting and financial reporting standards in China, as it was the year that the country’s new, substantially IFRS-convergent, accounting standards became compulsory for selected companies. Having evolved from a closed regulatory culture inherited from the former Soviet Union, China’s move toward IFRS provides an interesting example of how globalization is gaining support from regimes once regarded as the least likely to be interested. China’s move also provides direct evidence on the question of whether IFRS can work properly in markets that are disciplined mainly by regulators rather than market mechanisms. This paper attempts to provide a descriptive analysis of Chinese accounting’s "bumpy road leading to internationalization" [Tang, Y.W., 2000. Bumpy road leading to internationalization: a review of accounting development in China. Accounting Horizons 14-1, 93-102].

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Supply chains that produce and distribute computer servers are globally dispersed and have a high degree of uncertainty. To excel at servicing customers, a supplier must be highly skilled in matching the assets in the system with customer demand. Discrete event simulation has been proven valuable for system state estimation of supply chains. However, irregularities and disruptions occurring at any site along the system and the resulting bullwhip effects can lead to significant departures of simulation-based estimation from the performance of the real system. These departures reduce the ability of the model to assist in making correct decisions. In this paper, we propose an adaptive distributed simulation framework for a server fulfillment supply chain, and a Kalman filter to improve our estimates of job completion times.

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In today's highly dynamic, globalized and competitive environment, companies are under pressure to improve their supply chain strategies in order to be more responsive to customer demands. Indeed the geographically distributed nature as well as the differing objectives across these dispersed entities of a supply chain can often lead to difficulties in making a supply chain responsive. Additionally, irregularities and disruptions occurring at any point in the system make responsive supply chain management even more challenging. These disruptions, often occurring without warning due to the dynamic nature of a supply chain, can lead to poor performance of the supply chain. A key component in responsive supply chain management is the ability to effectively "sense and response" in order to maximize responsiveness and flexibility and avoid system disruptions. Recent advances in communication can facilitate the sensing and data collection. However, the huge amount of data generated can impede effective response, particularly, when some data may be incomplete or have errors. Inaccurate estimate or sensing of the system state can lead to incorrect decisions, with consequent adverse effects on supply chain performance. To address this issue, this research proposes a Kalman filter based approach for exception detection. Some preliminary work, specifically, with a focus on the manufacturing portion of the IBM supply chain for server fulfillment is presented in this paper. The results show system estimation can be improved by using a Kalman filter.

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The industrial establishment is beginning to realize the value of a sustainable enterprise. As resource consumption is most noticeable in the manufacturing sector, this activity is the usual target for reform. Research in the area of sustainability includes industrial ecology and green manufacturing, but arguably all fall under the umbrella of Environmentally Benign Manufacturing (EBM). Generally, EBM is enacted with three areas: Manufacturing, Research and Design (R&D), and Reclaim. The computer industry has done much in the area of recycling, seeking to reuse the valuable copper found in many components, and reclaiming the harmful lead. Yet no system is in place to assess the efficiency of a company's EBM efforts. This research proposes use of multistage Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to assess corporate enactment of EBM as work parts move from place to place in a company. The algorithm measures loss as products move from R&D to manufacturing to any recycle/reuse systems in place. When completed, a numerical value representing a company's environmentally benign efficiency should emerge. This experimentation is directed toward establishing DEA as an internal efficiency measurement of closed-loop manufacturing systems so that EBM may be pursued in a more streamlined and educated fashion.

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International HRM has focused on the MNC and its control and compliance mechanisms, particularly the tension between 'internationalizing' practices and normative host-country practices. This contingency approach does not capture the complexity ofMNC interactions in the local environment, however, particularly with regard to international joint ventures (IJVs). Partners to the IJV may wish to impose their own practices, and use contractual and non-contractual resource power, internationalization expertise and operational consistency requirements to gain relative decisional advantage. Case studies of four Sino-Western IJVs illustrate the dynamics of IHRM development under conditions of weak socio-legal constraint and high cultural distance between partners.

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The concept of a Value Chain has existed for twenty years but we find it still is an unclear concept. It has been suggested that the third generation supply chain is based on customer intimacy and is fully synchronized. In this paper, the authors discuss the need to relate the concepts of the value chain and the supply chain in a more comprehensive and integrative manner. We begin with a discussion of value and the development of the concept of value chain. We then discuss similarities and differences of the value chain and the supply chain, and conclude with suggestions regarding the need for synchronizing value and supply chains to optimize business performance.

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International equity fund investors flee from funds with poor raw returns. In addition, they chase risk-adjusted performance leaders instead of raw return leaders. While international growth fund investors flock into larger funds, regionally focused fund investors invest more in smaller funds presumably due to price impact concerns. Regionally diversified funds tend to receive higher flows if their fund families offer more choices of investment objectives. A stronger U.S. dollar leads investors to increase their investments in European equity funds but to stay away from the riskier developing markets equity funds. International equity fund investors do not appear to be sensitive to expenses or load structures.

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This paper finds that load funds with higher loads tend to receive higher flows, showing evidence that there exists conflict of interests between load fund investors and brokers and financial advisors: brokers and financial advisors apparently serve their own interests by guiding investors into funds with higher loads, which generate higher income to the brokers and financial advisors but increase the expenses of investors. As a result, fund families have been steadily increasing fund loads since the mid 1990s. However, when their interests are not compromised, brokers and financial advisors might exhibit similar behaviors as no-load fund investors in chasing past performance and investing in fund families with more options. Furthermore, they are more likely to direct load fund investors into smaller funds, which might experience better performance, while no-load fund investors flock into larger funds with more visibility.

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