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Consumer travel and multinational service corporations have increased the opportunity for service failures where consumers from one culture experience service problems in another cultural setting. This study extended the Stauss and Mang model, which proposed the possibility that intercultural service failures exhibit lower seriousness ratings due to the customer's attributing errors to cultural distance. Such a possible outcome has important implications for service providers whose customers are from different cultures, such as tourist or visiting businesspeople. A pretest, employing the critical incident technique, established descriptions of common service failures and recovery strategies for the sample frame. Domestic (in Taiwan) and foreign (outside Taiwan) service encounters were then compared in both failure and recovery stages, reported in an online survey employing a modified critical incident technique. Results showed that the apparent reduction in intercultural failure seriousness can be attributed not to the error itself, but to increased acceptance of the recovery strategy. These findings broaden the Stauss and Mang model by including the importance of recovery strategies, and the benefit gained by any recovery attempt within an intercultural service setting.

The purpose of this paper is to re-examine the statement of Peloza (2006) that enterprise corporate social responsibility (CSR) investment provides a protection efficacy similar to insurance.

This study uses the event study method and data from the 2008-2010 China listed company social responsibility report and the Taiwan Economic Journal.

The authors find that the insurance-like effect of CSR investment also exists in China. Both short- and long-term CSR investments of Chinese companies provide this efficacy to corporate stock prices. The authors also find diminishing marginal insurance-like effects in China market.

The CSR investment of firms in China can reduce company stock-price loss when negative events occur. The authors therefore obtain a better understanding of the value of enterprise CSR investment.

The purpose of this paper is to theoretically and empirically demonstrate the channel relationship between franchisors and franchisees. It examines four essential constructs that may lead to successful long-term franchising relationships: the competitive advantage of franchisors, operational assistance, trust, and intention to continue. Moreover, this study attempts to investigate the multi-unit initiation of franchisees and their subsequent propensity to franchise moderated by entrepreneurial opportunity recognition and cooperation flexibility of franchisors.

The survey results of 234 franchisees’ responses were analyzed to test the proposed hypotheses and research model using partial least squares modeling. Data were collected in Taiwan.

It was found that operational assistance of franchisors significantly develops the trust of franchisees and their intention to continue; and cooperation flexibility of franchisors has the positive influence of trust on the entrepreneurial propensity decision of multi-unit franchisees.

Franchisors have the responsibility to develop a consistently aligned set of cues, guidelines, and processes that can define the flexibility-oriented supply culture, and then systematically monitor the achievement of the support mission. Franchisees collaborate with capable franchisors with trust, where both parties are willing to maintain flexibility in their relationship. They will require frequent changes of products and services to meet the unexpected local environment.

This study combines entrepreneurial perspective into traditional franchising relationship research for better understanding the multi-unit initiation and subsequent propensity of franchisees toward the franchise system.

The main purpose of this study is to reveal how the China factor influences Taiwan voters' evaluations of the two major parties across elections and generations. We contend that 1) elderly Taiwan voters may take the China factor more seriously than younger cohorts, and 2) China factor may be weighted differently depending on the levels of elections. More importantly, we argue that the China factor is tangled with voters' partisanship.

Data gathered from 2008 to 2014 Taiwan's Election and Democratization Study (TEDS) enable in investigating the influence of the China factor on Taiwan people's vote choices in the two local and two presidential elections. To answer the research question, this study applies issue voting theory and the seemingly unrelated regression (SUR) employed for empirical investigations.

The findings of this study provide empirical evidence on how political generations have changed their reactions to China in Taiwan's elections. The fundamental variables, party identification and the China issue are still very important and cannot be disregarded. Specifically, the China factor played a quite influential role in the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) supporters' voting decisions regardless of their generations, whereas its effect on the Kuomintang (KMT) supporters' voting decisions varies depending on electoral contexts and generations.

While some scholars might suspect that the single item is not sufficient to be an effective predictor of vote choice, we contend that the China factor is definitely the most significant component in Taiwan's elections, especially when it is tangled with partisanship. The SUR approach in this study confirms that partisanship and the China factor cannot be viewed separately.

Knowledge management presents a problem for the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industry, largely because of the industry’s fragmented structure and project-driven nature. Construction companies may be involved in a variety of projects in different locations, each having its own knowledge requirements. Companies are also expected to be competitive, flexible and innovative, but introducing new knowledge management systems (KMSs) may represent a change that is beyond the organisation’s capacity to undergo successfully, and thus becomes a “nightmare”. The purpose of this paper is to propose and test a KMS solution that can help to facilitate the capture and application of important knowledge without introducing unnecessary changes in internal procedures for the organisation.

Following a review of existing systems, and an interview survey of 22 managers in the Portuguese AEC industry (contractors, design consultants and project management consultants) a new IT-based construction KMS called ConstruKnowledge was developed. The KMS was tested, verified and validated in two Portuguese construction projects and assessed by 12 managers in the construction company undertaking those projects.

The results of two pilot tests using ConstruKnowledge in two Portuguese construction projects demonstrate that its use can raise the levels of confidence in decision-making, and retaining knowledge; and that it serves to add value to the company.

The Construknowledge KMS is an innovative contribution to the greater acceptance of KMSs in the construction industry. The system facilitates the effective and efficient development of an organisational KMS using basic Information and Communications Technology (ICT)-based collaboration tools. While undertaken in the context of the Portuguese industry, the KMS has a wider global potential for implementation and further development.

The originality and value of this research are that it demonstrates how a KMS can be developed and then used in a construction company to capture and share knowledge without introducing additional constraints.