Search results

The continuation of China’s belt and road initiative (BRI) is assumed in most analyses. Yet, recent events have created significant reputational damage for China and Chinese businesses. With a trade war evolving into a hegemonic struggle, there are a number of potential developments that could derail the BRI. This paper aims to provide a contemporary review of the factors that could negatively impact its continuation, and what China has done to mitigate the risks.

A descriptive paper that groups possible disruptive factors into three groups: internal weaknesses of the BRI and its design; those related to China’s implementation of the BRI and external concerns and pressures.

China has actively reviewed and refined the BRI to reduce its perceived weaknesses and increase its attractiveness to potential participants, focussing on debt dependency, transparency and governance. However, this has occurred at the same time as growing concerns regarding China’s international assertiveness, the hegemonic challenge and recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.

These changes are occurring within an extremely dynamic environment and any analysis at one point in time is subject to considerable limitations. However, the paper brings together a range of disparate perspectives in a structured manner.

The classification of possible threats to the BRI is original and provides insights into the relative significance of the diverse challenges that China faces. The paper concludes that while China’s operational focus on the mechanics of the BRI process is necessary, it may not be sufficient to ensure its continuing development. The paper identifies the next step which is conceptualisation of these ideas and of the BRI. Some guidance as to how this might be done is provided.

Based on a considerable degree of commonality between multinational enterprises (MNEs) and cross-border criminal organisations, the purpose of this paper is to identify ways and areas in which international business (IB) research could be of value in improving understanding of the operations of cross-border criminal organisations and in the development of effective countermeasures to global crime.

A review of the characteristics of legitimate MNEs and cross-border criminal organisations is undertaken to assess the applicability of IB research approaches in understanding the strategies and structures of organised criminal groups.

Despite some obvious differences there appears to be sufficient commonality between legitimate and illegitimate international commerce so that the firm-centric focus of IB research could provide valuable insights complementing the policy-oriented approach of criminology. Some adaptation of IB research tools may be required. The exchange is not one-way: studies of cross-border crime also offer lessons for IB scholars.

IB scholarly work on cross-border crime could enrich both the fields of IB and transnational criminology. Better understanding of criminal enterprises could also facilitate the design of more effective interdiction policies.

Despite their commonalities and interactions, the two sectors of international enterprise have developed separately, and this paper identifies and explores possible synergies between the two.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the concepts of escape FDI and institutional voids using an industry study within a large emerging market (China). The author shows how regulatory and structural weaknesses in the Chinese dairy sector may prompt “escape” investment and how outsider firms might use such a strategy to regain competitiveness.

The paper develops and refines an important international business concept which has received very little research attention, within the setting of an industry study.

The concept of escape FDI is critiqued and extended to consider cases where discrimination occurs and industry restructuring triggers escape FDI.

The discussion is based on a single industry and home country. Further work to develop and test these ideas in a broader context is needed.

The author identifies the conditions most likely to trigger escape FDI as well as firm and home country characteristics favouring such a strategy.

The author extends the concept of escape FDI in the context of government-driven structural reform and political discrimination creating favoured “insider” firms and disadvantaged “outsiders”.

Although it is widely held that multinational collective bargaining (MCB) may represent the most effective labour response to the multinational enterprise (MNE), its appearance is sporadic and ephemeral. Examples appear to be confined to situations where factors and conditions highly conducive to international union co‐operation exist. The constraints and incentives for the development of MCB are examined in the context of the 1970s and 1980s and their changing economic environments. The analysis uses a framework based on the economic theory of bargaining cartels. It is explained why MCB has occurred in unrepresentative cases and prospects for labour responses to the MNE are examined.

A sample of “successful” (defined as those winning a major export in the previous three years) and less successful New Zealand companies were compared in terms of their use of foreign language specialists. Presents the results, which provided support for the expectation of a positive relationship between export success and the deployment of such skills. “Successful” companies were found to employ more foreign language specialists, to employ specialists with a broader range of foreign language skills and to expect higher levels of language proficiency. Foreign language specialists were also more likely to be employed within the marketing function and to assist the use of direct selling modes. These findings have important implications for the training of foreign language specialists. Language training needs to be coupled with sound knowledge of at least one major functional area of management. For New Zealand language specialists employability is considerably enhanced with marketing expertise and some overseas experience.

China's increasing importance as a major global supplier has coincided in recent years with a number of disturbing cases of quality fade (sudden unexpected deteriorations in agreed quality levels) adversely impacting consumer safety, welfare and brand equity. The most effective responses to the problem of quality fade when sourcing from China are firm‐based. However, the efficacy of such responses assumes the existence of efficient markets and market‐supporting institutions. In the face of widespread market failure overseas, buyers need to carefully structure the global sourcing relationship to minimise the risk of quality fade. This paper seeks to address this issue.

The paper adopts a comparative discussion approach to explore the three key global sourcing governance structures: contracts, internal organisation, and trust, and assesses their effectiveness in attenuating quality issues under both the general contracting problems of uncertainty and opportunism and the challenges unique to the Chinese business environment.

The comparative discussion suggests no clear superiority of any one structure and a need to carefully monitor quality performance on an ongoing basis. This suggests that the appropriate structure is contextual and depends on specific needs for information and compliance.

Highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of the three major governance structures emphasises trade‐offs that firms sourcing from China may need to make. Increased costs but assured quality may be an acceptable trade‐off when firms are sourcing high‐risk products (foodstuffs, pharmaceutical and vehicle tyres) or serving vulnerable market segments such as children.

This exploratory study aims to examine the influence of immigrant employee effects within a sample of small New Zealand‐based international service providers.

Seven immigrant employees from six firms were interviewed. The interviews examined immigrant effects on four areas: knowledge transfer and application; customer relationships; marketing strategy and market entry mode. Propositions derived from the literature were tentatively tested.

The findings, consistent with other literature on immigrant effects, indicated that immigrant employees play an important role in shaping these areas within small international service firms. Of particular importance was knowledge of local culture and market conditions. Immigrant employees enjoyed considerable discretion in the creation and management of customer relationships.

There appeared to be strong interactions between the value of immigrant knowledge, relationships and the characteristics of service offerings. The results established have provided guidance for researchers when formulating their research frameworks concerning market entry mode, international marketing strategy, knowledge transfer, immigrant employees and so on. Managers should also consider employing the outcomes of this research when designing their international human resource management and marketing strategies. However, these exploratory findings should be confirmed by future research which is formulated with a larger sample size. Only then can the contributions of this study be considered more definite.

It is the author's view that industrial conflict arises in the specification and interpretation of the labour contract, whether this be at shop floor or national level.

This conceptual paper starts from the recognition that internationalisation of business is an information‐intensive process and aims to investigate two key modes for the acquisition of knowledge: expatriates and immigrant employees.

The paper sets out a conceptual framework which examines nine popular modes of knowledge acquisition essential to the internationalisation process and their comparative strengths and weaknesses. This is coupled with a more intensive evaluation of the relative merits of the two strategies of expatriates and immigrant employees.

The analysis suggests that the modes of expatriates and immigrant employees can both be cost effective and yield high levels of relevant knowledge underpinning internationalisation. However, there are key differences between the two and it may be more useful to consider them as complements rather than simply substitutes. The strength of expatriates is their considerable knowledge of the home market, industry and firm. Their weakness is the need to gradually acquire overseas market knowledge. The strength of immigrant employees is their knowledge of overseas target markets. Their weaknesses are limited understanding of the home country business system, the firm and even the industry.

The paper has several limitations. It is conceptual in nature and tentative in assessment. It does not consider all available knowledge gathering modes. To fully understand this process more research is required, particularly work that extends the narrow case approach typically used.

The analysis suggests that different information gathering modes offer different advantages with none clearly superior in all situations. A similar situation appears to also hold for the modes of expatriates and immigrant employees and the two modes may be more usefully considered as complements.

The key contribution of the paper is in evaluating these two modes from the perspective of market knowledge and diffusion.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an analysis of the problem of “quality failure” in China using as an illustration the recent case of melamine contaminated dairy products.

This conceptual paper examines whether it is possible to anticipate the incidence of quality fade and, if so, what can be done to minimise the likelihood of such problems occurring. Drawing on theoretical frameworks of alternative transactions governance modes, the discussion highlights the interaction between environmental operating conditions and effective governance modes.

The discussion suggests that it is possible to anticipate quality and safety problems and identifies the key environmental conditions in China that contribute to the problem of quality deterioration. Analysis of three primary transaction governance modes – contracts, hierarchy and trust – and local operating conditions reveals a dairy industry which, in contrast to many of the developed economies, is highly fragmented, politicised, ineffectively regulated and characterised by corrupt and opportunistic behaviour.

The dairy industry case provides a concrete application of recent conceptual analysis of quality and safety concerns in emerging markets. This case allows the derivation of recommendations on appropriate management practices for maintaining quality in the challenging business environment of China.