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The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of natural resources, market size and five major institutional factors (voice and accountability; political stability and absence of violence; regulatory quality; rule of law and control of corruption) on Chinese foreign direct investment (FDI) in Africa.

This study uses regression analysis on panel data across 22 countries for the period 2008-2014.

Natural resources did not play a significant role in attracting Chinese investments, but market size did. Among the institutional factors, only voice and accountability had a significant and positive effect on attracting Chinese FDI; the effects of rule of law and control of corruption were not significant and political stability and regulatory quality had a significant and negative effect.

Chinese investment in Africa is only a recent phenomenon, and is growing rapidly; further studies should examine factors that are unique to the context such as bilateral political link.

African countries that are struggling with improving their poor institutional quality in the short term could effectively attract Chinese investment by reducing investor psychic distance, e.g. establishing a closer political link with China. Nevertheless, in the long term, measures of improving institutional quality are important.

This study reveals for the first time that what attracts Chinese investment is market size rather than natural resources, and different institutional factors of an African country show varying effects on attracting Chinese FDI.

This paper aims to present ball bearings with a composite structure based on the bionics principle and shows the comparison between five types of different structures.

By means of the finite element method, the stress and other parameters between different structures are compared and verified. Finally, the comprehensive parameters of different structures are evaluated by the analytic hierarchy process method.

The evaluation of the comprehensive parameters of five types of structures is shown here.

The value of this paper is calculated and compared to the parameters of five types of different structures, and the parameter score evaluation of each structure is given. Different structures can be selected according to different parameter requirements, which to provide a theoretical basis for the design of ball bearings.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon10.1108/ILT-10-2019-0413

The effective prediction of crude oil futures prices can provide a reference for relevant enterprises to make production plans and investment decisions. To the nonlinearity, high volatility and uncertainty of the crude oil futures price, a matrixed nonlinear exponential grey Bernoulli model combined with an exponential accumulation generating operator (MNEGBM(1,1)) is proposed in this paper.

First, the original sequence is processed by the exponential accumulation generating operator to weaken its volatility. The nonlinear grey Bernoulli and exponential function models are combined to fit the preprocessed sequence. Then, the parameters in MNEGBM(1,1) are matrixed, so the ternary interval number sequence can be modeled directly. Marine Predators Algorithm (MPA) is chosen to optimize the nonlinear parameters. Finally, the Cramer rule is used to derive the time recursive formula.

The predictive effectiveness of the proposed model is verified by comparing it with five comparison models. Crude oil futures prices in Cushing, OK are predicted and analyzed from 2023/07 to 2023/12. The prediction results show it will gradually decrease over the next six months.

Crude oil futures prices are highly volatile in the short term. The use of grey model for short-term prediction is valuable for research. For the data characteristics of crude oil futures price, this study first proposes an improved model for interval number prediction of crude oil futures prices.

The purpose of this study is to examine the existing literature and evaluate the theories, characteristics, context and methods of alliance termination research published from 1992 to 2019. This study also aims to identify the gaps in the literature and recognize directions for future research focusing on alliance termination research.

The main research methods followed in this study are bibliometric review, citation analysis, co-citation analysis and cluster analysis.

The main findings of this study are the most cited articles, most productive journals and most productive countries. The results show that a total of 100 research articles were published between 1992 and 2019. The maximum number of publications were observed during 2011–2019. The article “Knowledge, bargaining power, and the instability of international joint ventures” (Inkpen and Beamish, 1997) was the most cited article and the “Academy of Management Review” was the most prominent journal, with 847 citations. The USA, France, the UK, Singapore and Canada are the most productive countries. The study also includes the analysis of the network of co-citation of references and co-occurrence of keywords in the context of alliance termination research.

To the best of authors’ knowledge, this study seems to be the first to perform bibliometric review and analysis in the area of alliance termination research. Therefore, it can help academicians and practitioners to identify the research trends and gaps in the alliance termination literature on which future research can be performed. Overall, this research paper leads to a better understanding of the alliance termination research and offers new insights into strategic management studies.

The purpose of this research is to conduct a theoretical prediction study exploring the effectiveness of different content marketing strategies in expanding the second-hand market for fashion brands, comparing the costs and risks involved in these strategies in practice.

First, the expert interview method is employed to extract the content marketing strategies of the fashion second-hand market. Then, a descriptive space that is able to identify various fashion brand images is established. Then, experts' perceptions of the relationships between content marketing strategies and fashion brand image dimensions are obtained through a subjective evaluation procedure. Data of semantic evaluation were quantified and analyzed using the fuzzy logic method.

When fashion brands expand to the second-hand market, they not only need to focus on improving the individual differentiation of products but also give priority to the quality of products and services and the overall customer experience. Exploring the “social impact strategy” will become an important direction for the development of fashion brands in the future.

The research methodology employed herein exhibits a noteworthy degree of novelty. This study introduces a pioneering theoretical prediction approach utilizing fuzzy logic, marking the inaugural exploration of this emerging and captivating dimension within the context of the study. Simultaneously, the study provides comparative results among content marketing strategies for expanding the fashion second-hand market, offering guidance for market expansion.

The purpose of this study is to demonstrate the effect of initial international joint ventures (IJV) structural conditions on two main equity-based instability facets: change of IJV ownership structure and acquisition of the IJV by one of the IJV partners. Drawing on the transaction cost theory, the authors examine three key initial structural conditions: IJV formation mode, number of partners and IJV’s ownership structure.

The authors apply the “Event history analysis” technique to test the hypotheses using a data set of 140 French-foreign JVs.

The findings show that the mode of an acquisitive IJV and unequal equity positions held by partners increase the likelihood of a change of IJV’s ownership structure and its eventual acquisition by one of the partners. In addition, the findings show that while an increase in the number of IJV partners is directly related to the change of IJV ownership structure, it has a statistically insignificant effect on IJV acquisition.

Drawing on “transaction costs” arguments, this study advances the literature by offering fine-grained results related to the effects of initial structural conditions on aspects of unintended instability in French-foreign JVs.

Social media analytics uses data mining platforms, tools and analytics techniques to collect, monitor and analyze massive amounts of social media data to extract useful patterns, gain insight into market requirements and enhance business intelligence. The purpose of this paper is to propose a framework for social media competitive intelligence to enhance business value and market intelligence.

The authors conducted a case study to collect and analyze a data set with nearly half million tweets related to two largest retail chains in the world: Walmart and Costco in the past three months during December 1, 2014-February 28, 2015.

The results of the case study revealed the value of analyzing social media mentions and conducting sentiment analysis and comparison on individual product level. In addition to analyzing the social media data-at-rest, the proposed framework and the case study results also indicate that there is a strong need for creating a social media data application that can conduct real-time social media competitive intelligence for social media data-in-motion.

So far there is little research to guide businesses for social media competitive intelligence. This paper proposes a novel framework for social media competitive intelligence to illustrate how organizations can leverage social media analytics to enhance business value through a case study.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the determinants of IJV performance expectations for a sample of international joint ventures with parent firms from Europe, North America and Australia. A conceptual framework is proposed which identifies the determinants of IJV performance as the dominant control of the IJV by one parent firm, the level of autonomy granted to the IJV management, the level of trust between the partner firms, the effect of differences in the national cultures of IJV partners and the differences in the organizational cultures of IJV partners.

The study adopts a self‐administered questionnaire approach to examine the determinants of performance in the sample firms. The starting point for obtaining a sample of parent firms was the OSIRIS database. Paper copies of the questionnaires were posted to potential respondents. This was followed by an e‐mail to the same potential respondents with the questionnaires attached. In total, 109 usable questionnaires were obtained from respondent companies – 22 questionnaires were returned from the postal survey and 87 questionnaires were returned from the follow‐up e‐mail.

Predicted positive relationships between performance expectations and dominant control of the IJV, autonomy granted to the IJV management, and trust between the partner firms are supported by the data. The predicted negative relationship between performance expectations and national culture differences was not supported, however, the expected negative relationship between performance expectations and corporate culture differences was partially supported.

This study adds to the international business literature on IJVs and provides new empirical evidence in the context of Europe, North America and Australia.

We introduce agency and team production theories to explain the international joint venture (IJV) phenomenon. We regard IJV partners as participants in a team production and identified agency conflicts among partners as well as between parents and IJV affi liates. We empirically test the stability of IJVs with such determinants as the existence of monitoring principal, the history of repeated exchanges between partners, the efficiency of mutual monitoring by partners, the effi ciency of affiliate monitoring by parent firms, and the degree of international experience of the partners. The test results show that the existence of monitoring principal and the degree of international experience prove to be significant factors for IJV stability.

The purpose of this paper is to explore post‐international strategic alliance (ISA) establishment processes by exploring the interrelationships surrounding utilization as a resource coordinating activity, two communication dimensions (four communication factors) as the antecedents of utilization, and the implications of utilization for ISA performance.

Based on the mail and e‐mail surveys, the structural model is analyzed by using LISREL. The moderating effects of cultural sensitivity and host government interference on the relationship between utilization and international alliance performance are measured by a moderated multiple regression. The mediating effect of utilization is also examined.

Three of the four communication factors (all except for informal communication) affect the effective utilization of the resources contributed by each ISA partner. Utilization contributes to the achievement of each ISA partner's objectives. Utilization is also found to fully mediate the relationships between the three significant communication factors (formal, two‐way, and participative) and ISA performance.

The study suggests the practical and academic importance of implementing and researching the resource coordinating activities after an ISA has established to successfully manage ISA operation.

The concept of utilization is introduced and empirically tested to investigate the post‐formation alliance process and how the process affects ISA performance.