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Three types of industrial buyer-seller relational process models are available: joining theory, stage theory, and state theory. However, historically, these models have developed based on the knowledge and cultural context of the Western world. Several researchers note that national culture may have an impact on international industrial buyer-seller relationships. Including culture in the models is highly important, especially as the business environment is increasingly more global and different countries have different business cultures. The goal of this paper is to define the most suitable industrial buyer-seller relational process models for describing relationships in various contexts. The paper includes a through literature review and a single case study in order to reach this objective. A new state theory model evolved during the research. It consists of two beginning states: searching and starting; four purely middles states: constant/static, decline, growth, and troubled; and a purely end state: termination. The state of dormant/inert is both a middle state and an end state, that is, when the relational actors are not in contact does not mean that the relationship has ended, but instead, for example, new legislation may have been implemented, which requires the actors to evaluate their relationship and its future. A relationship goes through the two beginning states in the order mentioned above, but after that, any state may occur.

This article analyzes the implementation of anti-corruption reforms in Taiwan by two former presidents, Chen Shui-bian (2000-2008) and Ma Ying-jeou (2008-2016).

A three-tier research approach, including in-depth interviews, questionnaire survey, and descriptive and inferential analysis, is adopted. In addition to Chen and Ma, 11 senior anti-corruption officials who served under both presidents were interviewed by the author. The survey questions cover 12 factors which are later grouped into the five dimensions of ethical leadership, considerate leadership, delegating leadership, participatory leadership, and performance to illustrate the causal relationship between these dimensions and performance.

Ma’s personal ethics are distinct from Chen’s in kind but Ma’s overall leadership and performance outshine Chen’s in degree rather than in kind. While the gap of ethical leadership between two Taiwan presidents is significantly wider than other dimensions of leadership, the outcome of the national integrity is not proportionate to the ethical leadership gap. In other words, personal ethics are not automatically transformed into political will for enhancing anti-corruption effectiveness. Three popular forms of corruption, red envelopes (bribing), influence-peddling, and vote-buying are analyzed in the context of changing political culture through national leadership. Unfortunately, both Chen and Ma produce insignificant contributions based on public surveys.

Policy-makers and scholars can use these research findings to further explore how ethical leadership can enhance a country’s anti-corruption performance.

This rejoinder aims to critique some of the perspectives in Chen’s (2018) study on hospitality and host–guest paradigm in China.

In this preliminary probe into Chen’s study, critical analysis is performed on Chen’s approaches, whereas document analysis is applied to the relevant ancient Chinese writings. Translations are the author’s own unless indicated otherwise.

Chen’s views are problematic and supported by patchy evidence. “Hierarchy principle” and “host-centric foundation” do not hold up. In a series of asymmetrical comparisons, Chen goes a bit too far in arguing for uniqueness.

This rejoinder presents valid critiques of Chen’s study, thus directing future research in the right direction. It is of some significance to clarify Chen’s misrepresentations and offer a truer and fuller account of Chinese hospitality, given the difficulty for international scholars to validate Chen’s views because of language barrier and cultural unfamiliarity.

The purpose of this paper is to document an interview with Dr Xiao‐Ping Chen to share her professional and career experience as a management scholar. It shows the path of her scholarly journey fueled by her love and passion for the profession.

This paper is based on a recent interview with Dr Xiao‐Ping Chen.

Dr Xiao‐Ping Chen's experience demonstrated the importance of love and passion in one's career pursuit. It shows the importance of the interplays of internal passion and commitment and the external factors in paving and determining a scholar's career success, and how to balance personal life and a demanding role in research, teaching, and professional service.

Dr Chen's career provides an exemplar case for junior scholars to deal with the Chinese transitioning symptom associated with pursuing an academic research career. In particular, Dr Chen's optimistic and persistent way of dealing with difficulties in career and life may inspire junior scholars or those who wish to pursue a career in management research.

The interview profiles a picture of a passionate scholar in management research and offers an inspirational exemplar for the new generation of Chinese HRM researchers.

I propose a model of behavior in social interactions where individuals maximize a three-term utility function: a conventional consumption utility term and two “social” terms that capture social preference. One social term is a taste for desert, which is maximized when the individual believes the other person is getting what they deserve. The second social term measures the target individuals’ anger or gratitude from the interaction which is determined by a value function derived from prospect theory. After introducing the model and generating a series of comparative statics results and derived predictions, I report the results of a series of quasi-field experiments on social preferences. I discuss how the model explains several paradoxes of empirical moral philosophy that are less explicable by current economic models of social preference focusing on outcomes and intentions.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the nature of a competitive action and its impact on the response of rivals in the digital market. Specifically, this paper introduces the concept of action complexity and action variation to delineate the configuration characteristics of each digital competitive action and empirically investigates how these action characteristics further affect rivals’ response speed.

This paper uses structural content analysis methods to code competitive actions based on the news of Chinese online travel agencies (OTAs) from 2010 to 2015. The cox proportional hazards regression models are employed to test the hypotheses.

The results indicate that action complexity of the focal firm is negatively associated with rivals’ response speed as it constrains their interpretation (awareness), motivation and capability to respond, while action variation of the focal firm is positively associated with rivals’ response speed as it enhances their attention (awareness) and motivation to respond. Furthermore, the negative relationship between action complexity and response speed is weaker when action variation is high.

Further to advancing competitive dynamics theory, this paper proposes an action-configuration perspective to explore the particular content and quality of each digital competitive action. The discussion of competitive rivalry between OTAs also enriches the application of competitive dynamics in the digital market. Meanwhile, this paper further clarifies the decision-making process of rivalry drawing on the awareness–motivation–capability (AMC) framework.

This article aims to present the second part of an interview with Dr Xiao-Ping Chen. The focus is on her experience in, and insight on, Chinese management research.

This paper is based on a recent interview with Dr Xiao-Ping Chen.

Dr Xiao-Ping Chen shared her research experience and insight in the following aspects: identifying topics in Chinese management research, collaborating with Chinese domestic scholars, and approaching a research question or idea to make research fruitful with evolving research agenda on Chinese guanxi. She also shared her insights on exploring new research topics vs following or extending others' ideas, and how the gap between research and practice might be bridged.

Dr Chen's research experience and insights provide an exemplary case for junior scholars to deal with the challenges in conducting and publishing Chinese management research, particularly in how to take an “insider's view” in identifying and engaging in interesting and valuable research.

The interview profiles a picture of a scholar in Chinese management research.

This purpose of this article is to report the second part of a recent interview with Dr Ming-Jer Chen. He shares his values, beliefs and philosophies on life, business and scholarship; relates how these philosophies have shaped his approach to teaching, research and service; and outlines his strategies for making important career and professional decisions.

Interview with Dr Ming-Jer Chen.

Dr Ming-Jer Chen’s firm belief in the Oneness (精一) is reflected in his constant pursuit of “making the world smaller” by closing divides of various kinds. During his career journey, Dr Chen has applied the philosophy of “keeping a balanced and integrated view” to tackle professional and career challenges and reinforced that with the wisdom of his ambicultural perspective. His East–West background and beliefs shape his engagements with the research and business communities and his expertise includes management education and decision-making, as well as teaching, research and professional services.

Dr Chen’s unique life and career experiences make him a role model for those who intend to pursue a career in management research. His ambicultural insight and balanced and integrated perspective may help junior scholars to deal with challenges in their professional lives.

The interview profiles a thought leader and strategist in management research and education, whose experience and wisdom may enlighten junior scholars along their career paths.

In the big data era, image compression is of significant importance in today’s world. Importantly, compression of large sized images is required for everyday tasks; including electronic data communications and internet transactions. However, two important measures should be considered for any compression algorithm: the compression factor and the quality of the decompressed image. In this paper, we use Frei-Chen bases technique and the Modified Run Length Encoding (RLE) to compress images. The Frei-Chen bases technique is applied at the first stage in which the average subspace is applied to each 3 × 3 block. Those blocks with the highest energy are replaced by a single value that represents the average value of the pixels in the corresponding block. Even though Frei-Chen bases technique provides lossy compression, it maintains the main characteristics of the image. Additionally, the Frei-Chen bases technique enhances the compression factor, making it advantageous to use. In the second stage, RLE is applied to further increase the compression factor. The goal of using RLE is to enhance the compression factor without adding any distortion to the resultant decompressed image. Integrating RLE with Frei-Chen bases technique, as described in the proposed algorithm, ensures high quality decompressed images and high compression rate. The results of the proposed algorithms are shown to be comparable in quality and performance with other existing methods.