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The objective of this paper is to understand changes and progress of the Korean childcare regime by examining the evolutional process of childcare initiatives that were developed since the Japanese colonial rule.

This study employed a qualitative-based research design with a particular emphasis on explanatory research. Meanwhile, the data were gathered through the peer-reviewed literature and reports.

The findings indicate that Korea has had three types of childcare regimes: effective-informal, productivist and inclusive-liberal orientation. It also pinpoints that while the care regime development followed the European regime, the egalitarian society, which is a social prerequisite for modern welfare state-building, has not yet been fully established. This paradoxical situation eventually impedes the development of universal childcare aimed at promoting gender equality and a work-life balance.

This article offers a model and characteristics of the Korean childcare regime dating back to the Japanese colonial period up until the Moon Jae-In administration, where it still receives less attention in most of the social policy literature (see Table 1).

This chapter reviews the status of Education For All (EFA) in China and identifies four gaps: between rural and urban residents, between residents of geographic regions, between ethnicity groups, and between the genders. It turns to examine the educational situation and interests of girls weighed down by the crushing burden of multiple disadvantages in “left-behind” Western China. Based on analysis of macro-level socio-economic and educational conditions, along with rich micro-level data on girls’ vigorous pursuit of education, the authors argue that the changing conditions of rural girls’ lives and their education can best be understood from a critical empowerment perspective. Summarizing the global discourse and cross national evidence on the benefits of girls’ education, the chapter and looks beyond a utilitarian perspective and argues for the cogency of a critical empowerment framework. Filled with telling stories and case studies of Han Chinese, Tibetan, and Muslim girls, this chapter proposes that prioritizing girls’ education in Western China is crucial and required for achieving the MDG of gender parity. Even though girls are often stranded by family financial conditions, their actions and ideas seeing education as their future reflect a changing gender identity and role in the family and society. The fieldwork suggests that educating girls promotes localized development, reduces dangerous levels of economic gaps and social instability, but also advances hard to measure effects: personal and civil empowerment, and sustainable, harmonious cultural change – as well as MDG.

Several studies, especially in Asian economies, have investigated the antecedents, implications and consequences of related-party transactions (RPTs). This paper aims to review this literature to collate, gauge and critically discuss understandings of the relationship between RPTs and risk, with a particular focus on audit risk.

The paper discusses RPTs and how they have been associated with corporate scandals and the expropriation of shareholders’ wealth. RPTs are defined as per accounting standards and the main types of RPTs are described based on the extant literature. Two key research design issues are discussed: measures used to operationalize RPTs and observable variations in sample size across RPT studies. Evidence is presented on the negative effects of RPTs and the role of regulation, corporate governance and auditing in reducing risks.

Prior studies have associated RPTs with the expropriation of shareholders’ wealth, declining firm valuations, lower-quality financial reporting, increased risk of material misstatements and decreases in long-term firm performance. Further, the evidence suggests that regulation, corporate governance and auditing can mitigate the negative effects of RPTs.

This paper provides insights for regulators on the effects of enforcement, corporate governance and external audits on reducing the negative effects of RPTs, and highlights the increased risk of material misstatements in financial statements when RPTs are conducted. Moreover, it reveals how RPTs affect risk assessments for auditors.

This paper represents the first comprehensive review of the empirical RPT literature. It provides a starting point for future investigations of RPTs, not least because it reveals important limitations with the extant body of research in this domain. It also offers salient insights and implications for practitioners and policy makers.

Robot chefs and robot waiters have emerged in the restaurant industry. Based on the curiosity theory and the stimulus–organism–response paradigm, this study aims to understand the influence of robot restaurant attributes on customer behavioral intention before purchase.

Based on research data from 289 respondents comprising undergraduates, postgraduates and non-students in China, the theoretical model is tested via the partial least squares technique.

Food quality perception directly affects regular patronage intention, but it has no significant influence on experience intention. Service quality perception and high-tech atmosphere perception positively affect experience intention and regular patronage intention through the mediator of interest in robot restaurants.

Different from previous studies focusing on human employee restaurants, this study, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, is the first to systematically investigate the influence of robot restaurant attributes on customer behavioral intention, and it finds that these attributes have their own uniqueness vis-à-vis influencing customer behavioral intention.

机器人厨师和机器人服务员已经出现在餐饮业。基于好奇心理论和刺激-有机体-反应模型, 本研究旨在了解机器人餐厅属性对顾客购买前行为意向的影响。

基于来自中国289名本科生、研究生和非学生的研究数据, 通过偏最小二乘法对理论模型进行了检验。

食品质量感知直接影响常客意愿, 但对体验意愿没有显着影响。服务质量感知和高科技氛围感知通过对机器人餐厅的兴趣作为中介变量正向影响体验意愿和常客意愿。

与以往专注于人类员工餐厅的研究不同, 本研究首次系统地研究了机器人餐厅属性对顾客行为意图的影响, 并发现这些属性在影响顾客行为意图方面具有其独特性。

机器人餐厅, 体验意向, 惠顾意向, 食物品质, 服务质量, 氛围

研究型论文

This paper aims to elaborate on the crucial effects that a seemingly detrimental policy change in Spain has had on the international entrepreneurial activities of domestic renewable energy (RE) firms.

Primary data were collected from nine RE companies in Spain and then triangulated with secondary data and interviews from informants in other local institutions.

Domestic RE firms, due to an institutional scape driver action, reacted to an increasingly uncertain and generally more adverse renewable energy policy framework in this country by preferring to internationalise towards foreign markets that had lower political uncertainty than the domestic one.

This paper complements previous research primarily on firm-specific factors that enhance internationalising firms’ survival and growth through a focus on the impact of a changing institutional-political environment at the home country-level.

Practitioners in the RE sector should analyse the risk of focusing only on the home market, as it can be too dependent on uncontrolled variations in domestic energy policy.

The findings indicate that a more stable and supportive, long-term perspective in the domestic RE policy is essential for the sustained growth and development of this emerging industry.

To analyse the strategy by which a number of purposefully selected companies were able to use international expansion as a survival-seeking strategy against a drastic policy-level change in the domestic RE market.

Complementing the importance of adequate relief supplies and transportation capacity in the first two weeks of post-disaster logistics, efficient communication, information sharing, and informed decision making play a crucial yet often underestimated role in reducing wasted material resources and loss of human life. The purpose of this paper is to provide a method of quantifying these effects.

A mathematical discrete dynamical system is used to model transportation of different commodities from multiple relief suppliers to disaster sites across a network of limited capacity. The physical network is overlaid with the communication network to model information delays and communication breakdowns between agents. The cost in human lives and the monetary cost are measured separately.

Simulations results highlight quantitatively how communication deficiencies and indiscriminate shipping of resources result in material convergence and shortage of urgent supplies observed in actual emergencies.

The model provides an example of a simple, objective, quantitative tool for decision making and training volunteer managers in the importance of a smart response protocol.

This study looks beyond firm boundaries to depict supply chain (SC) adaptability and classifies it into internal, customer and supplier dimensions to investigate their performance implications, respectively. This study also examines the enablers of SC adaptability based on information processing theory.

This study applies the structural equation modeling method to investigate relationships among SC information sharing, SC adaptability and operational performance using data collected from 216 manufacturers in China.

Internal information sharing has a positive impact on three dimensions of SC adaptability, whereas supplier and customer information sharing only have a positive impact on supplier adaptability. Customer and supplier information sharing interact to positively influence the three dimensions of SC adaptability, while internal and customer information sharing interact to negatively affect customer adaptability. We also find that all the three dimensions of SC adaptability can enhance operational performance.

This study contributes to providing a holistic definition of SC adaptability and classifies it into three dimensions. It also investigates antecedents and performance outcomes of SC adaptability.

The paper reviews existing empirical research where long-term performance (LTP) of firms is the dependent variable. The purpose of this paper is to structure and classify the existing research, outline the shortcomings, and chart the avenues for future research in the area of LTP.

The paper is a review of the existing empirical literature. It surveys the existing studies and proposes new directions of empirical research.

The paper argues that there is a disconnection between the principal theories in strategy and the existing empirical findings. In particular, while the resource-based view (RBV) and dynamic capabilities view aim to predict sustainable competitive advantage and sustainable firm performance, few empirical papers examine the LTP consequences of resources and dynamic capabilities.

The paper shows where future research efforts should be concentrated by outlining shortcomings in existing research.

The paper compares ways to measure LTP that will be useful to corporate executives. The paper also outlines factors that have been shown to affect LTP. These findings can be used by executives planning their strategy.

The paper is a first review of LTP. It also contributes to the debate in strategy on the RBV and dynamic capabilities.

This research seeks to uncover some empirical evidence on how prevalent the problem of information overload has become, how it has affected the performance of organisations.

Set in the context of the information‐intensive tourism industry, this exploratory study examined the top two state‐owned tour operators in China. Using semi‐structured group interviews supplemented by a questionnaire survey, the empirical evidence gathered was examined to identify key themes concerning information overload.

The problem was felt more by the front line operatives than those who managed them. Increasing tiredness, high stress levels and more mistakes made at work were amongst the symptoms. Factors specific to the tourism industry included poor clarity in job division and task procedures, low standardisation of job contents, inter‐team work, and loose team structures. Experience, training and staff motivation were identified as possible ways to address the problem.

To fully appreciate the strategic impact of the problem of information overload on corporate performance, considerable further research needs to be carried out involving organisations in different sizes and forms operating in difference industries across different countries.

This paper adds practical value by providing some empirical evidence to complement the growing body of anecdotal evidence demonstrating how information explosion especially through the internet is having an adverse impact on corporate performance.

This paper fulfils an identified need to study how the growing phenomenon of information overload is affecting corporate performance, especially in the information‐intensive industry of travel and tourism.

Port throughput analysis is a challenging task, as it consists of intertwined interactions between a variety of cargos and numerous influencing factors. This study aims to propose a quantitative method to facilitate port throughput analysis by identification of important cargos and key macroeconomic variables.

Mutual information is applied to measure the linear and nonlinear correlation among variables. The method gives a unique measure of dependence between two variables by quantifying the amount of information held in one variable through another variable.

This study uses the mutual information to the Port of Isafjordur in Iceland to underpin the port throughput analysis. The results show that marine products are the main export cargo, whereas most imports are fuel oil, industrial materials and marine product. The aggregation of these cargos, handled in the port, meaningfully determines the non-containerized port throughput. The relation between non-containerized export and the national gross domestic product (GDP) is relatively high. However, non-containerized import is mostly related to the world GDP. The non-containerized throughput shows a strong relation to the national GDP. Furthermore, the results reveal that the volume of national export trade is the key influencing macroeconomic variable to the containerized throughput.

Application of the mutual information in port throughput analysis effectively reduces epistemic uncertainty in the identification of important cargos and key influencing macroeconomic variables. Thus, it increases the reliability of the port throughput forecast.