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The purpose of this paper is to provide a critical historical analysis of the business (mis)behaviors and influencing factors that discourage enduring cooperation between principals and agents, to introduce strategies that embrace the social values, economic motivation and institutional designs historically adopted to curtail dishonest acts in international business and to inform an improved principal–agent theory that reflects principal–agent reciprocity as shaped by social, political, cultural, economic, strategic and ideological forces

The critical historical research method is used to analyze Chinese compradors and the foreign companies they served in pre-1949 China.

Business practitioners can extend orthodox principal–agent theory by scrutinizing the complex interactions between local agents and foreign companies. Instead of agents pursuing their economic interests exclusively, as posited by principal–agent theory, they also may pursue principal-shared interests (as suggested by stewardship theory) because of social norms and cultural values that can affect business-related choices and the social bonds built between principals and agents.

The behaviors of compradors and foreign companies in pre-1949 China suggest international business practices for shaping social bonds between principals and agents and foreign principals’ creative efforts to enhance shared interests with local agents.

Understanding principal–agent theory’s limitations can help international management scholars and practitioners mitigate transaction partners’ dishonest acts.

A critical historical analysis of intermediary businesspeople’s (mis)behavior in pre-1949 (1840–1949) China can inform the generalizability of principal–agent theory and contemporary business strategies for minimizing agents’ dishonest acts.

The purpose here is to show how the “shadow” economy has grown in scale and impetus in recent years, though even before modern times it has been present (e.g. the City of London, Shaxson, 2011) since at least the middle ages. The reasons for this have become complicated, but we can identify some “deep structures” that are common. Firstly, “globalisation” made it easier for multinationals to escape national regulatory regimes. Secondly, one of the ways neoliberal trading regulations allowed such actors to augment their assets was by means of what they initially called “transfer-pricing” but which now is officially known as “profit shifting” through tax havens. Thirdly, the growth in international trade in legal and illegal ways caused money laundering – even by otherwise respectable banks – to grow across borders. Conversely, from the supply-side, tax haven status was increasingly accessed by jurisdictions that sought to achieve economic growth by supplying tax haven services, both Delaware and Ireland as exemplars of a “developmental” fiscal policy.

This paper adopts a “pattern recognition” design, an approach that is abductive, meaning interpretive, as shown in the observation that explanation can be valid or reliable without direct observation. This is shown in the indirect observation that “rain fell because the terrace has puddles” or “ancient glaciers once carved this valley”.

Reviewing the European Union’s (EU) list of non-co-operating jurisdictions in support of the OECD’s review of base erosion and profit-shifting activity, Collin concluded the EU’s listing “moved the needle” somewhat but was only a modest success. This is because of its reluctance to sanction its own members or large economies like the USA. Data on foreign direct investment and offshore banking assets suggest listed jurisdictions did not suffer notably from being named and shamed. In all cases studied, this contribution found legally damaging, fraudulent, conflict of interest and corrupt practice activities everywhere.

The originality is found in three spheres. Firstly, the pattern recognition method was vindicated in yielding hard to research results. Secondly, the “assemblage-thirdspace” theory was found advantageous in demonstrating the uneven geography of tax haven clusters and their common history in turbocharging economic development. Finally, the empirics showed the ruses executed by cluster members in tax havens to circumvent the law from global management consultancies to micro-firms consisting of tax lawyers and other experts interacting in knowledge supply chains of dubious morality.

The inclusion of esports as an official event in the Hangzhou Asian Games is an important step towards the institutionalisation of esports. The significance of this event marks that Asia once again takes a lead in the global esportisation. This chapter investigates a series of history events in the inclusion process of esports into the comprehensive Games in Asia using process sociology and actor network theory (ANT). This study will analyse the type characteristics of esports events in Hangzhou Asian Games, whilst examining how key stakeholders' interact and balance in the network composed of international sports organisations, host of the event, emerging esports organisations and esports game companies. The chapter also examines the functions of global game industrial economic geography, local cultural politics, esports geopolitics and Olympic values in esports sportization, aiming to reveal the implications of esports inclusion in the Asian Games on the debate of whether esports meets the criteria to be classified as a ‘sport’ and its enlightenment of digital strategy to the inclusion esports in the Olympics.

In 2002, the organization, Jamat Al Asunnah Lid-Da’wa’l-Jihad popularly known as Boko Haram was created in North Eastern Nigeria. This organization which was founded by Mohammed Yusuf was to later adopt the ideology that Western Education was Forbidden. The decolonial stance of Boko Haram later degenerated into its campaign of violence, leading to the killing of its founder by the Nigerian state. Interestingly, the role of children in the advancement of the Boko Haram insurgency and how this impacts their psychological lives seems to have been overlooked in scholarship on terrorism. There remains a dearth of critical underpinning on how all of the above is represented in Nigerian film. To this end, this study examines child participation in terrorism in Nigeria and its effect on the psychological well-being of the child. Using the Boko Haram terrorist group as a paradigm, the authors argue that children, especially the girl child play a major role in the advancement of terrorism in Nigeria. The study engages in a content analysis of Uche Aguh’s film, Sambisa (2016) to interrogate the challenges the child encounters in the face of terrorism in Nigeria and examines children as major actors in the enterprise of terrorism in Nigeria.

Waste classification plays an important role in reducing pollution, promoting waste recycling and resource utilization. This paper aims to explore the multiple reasons that affect the performance of waste classification governance.

Content analysis of the existing waste classification policies is conducted using the Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) model. Based on this analysis, influencing factors are identified through the technology-organization-environment (TOE) research framework. The condition configurations and action paths that cause differences in governance performance are derived using the fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis method (fsQCA).

The results show that there are spatial and temporal disparities in waste classification policies among different provinces/cities. In most situations, the implementation effect of policy combinations is better than that of a single type of policy, with mandatory policies playing a key role. Additionally, a single influencing factor cannot constitute the bottleneck of high governance performance. Policy topics coordinate with environmental and technical factors to influence governance performance. Finally, in light of China's actual governance situation, several targeted implications are proposed for the practical optimization of local government waste classification governance.

This paper presents a novel approach by integrating multiple heterogeneous data sources from both online and offline channels, adopting a public-government perspective and applying the fsQCA method to investigate the combined effects of technical, organizational and environmental factors on waste classification governance performance across 31 provinces and cities in China.

The purpose of this research paper is to explore the determinants of patients' service choices between telephone consultation and text consultation in online health communities (OHCs).

This study utilized an empirical model based on the elaboration likelihood model and examined the effect of information, regarding service quality (the central route) and service price (the peripheral route), using online health consultation data from one of the largest OHCs in China.

The logistic regression results indicated that both physician- and patient-generated information can influence the patients' service choices; service price signals will lead patients to cheaper options. However, individual motivations, disease risk and consulting experience change a patients' information processing regarding central and peripheral cues.

Previous researchers have investigated the mechanism of patient behavior in OHCs; however, the researchers have not focused on the patients' choices regarding the multiple health services provided in OHCs. The findings of this study have theoretical and practical implications for future researchers, OHC designers and physicians.