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The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationships among choice of industry diversification, capabilities and business group performance, as well as to point out the potential concern about endogenous role of industry diversification.

Using data from the top 100 business groups in Taiwan from TEJ database. This study uses Heckman’s two-step estimation procedure and contingency model to achieve unbiased results and examine our hypotheses.

The results of this study find that if business groups’ marketing or operational capabilities are strong they should adopt a high level of diversification strategy and if business groups’ R&D capability is strong they should adopt a low level one. The results of this study also show that the endogenous problem of industry diversification exists, and needs to be considered. Moreover, our finding confirms the importance of capability–strategy fit, which, in turn, can achieve better performance.

On average, high industry diversification groups perform better than low industry diversification groups after controlling for endogeneity issues. Business groups can achieve better performance if their strategy choices match the capabilities they encounter. Managers should pay attention to strategy-capability fit issues. Specifically, they should review their organizational capabilities as well as check their strategies within firms.

This study is one of the first that attempts to explore the endogenous role of diversification strategy choices, and empirical examine strategy-capability fit on business group performance.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impacts of strategic control and operational control on new venture performance in the China context.

This study tests the hypotheses in a sample of 83 new ventures that have equity investment by established firms and are founded between 1993 and 2007 that issued initial public offerings while not more than eight years old.

The results of this study show that: strategic control has a significantly negative relationship with new venture performance; operational control has a significantly positive relationship with new venture performance; industry relatedness between the corporate investor and the new venture and the new venture’s political ties moderate the relationships between the two types of control and new venture performance. The results are robust to alternative measurements of new venture performance.

The management control that the corporate investor exercises over the new venture is a significant determinant of the new venture success. Managers have to distinguish between strategic control and operational control and understand their impacts on new ventures.

This study highlights the issue of management of corporate venturing capital relationships from the new venture’s perspective. In addition, this study separates strategic and operational control within management control and examines how they influence new venture performance.

The purpose of this paper is to enable a better understanding of the influences of alliance coordination (i.e. inter-organisational coordination) and interfunctional coordination (i.e. intra-organisational coordination) on product development performance.

The current study tests a posited research model and its hypotheses using the data from Taiwan's electronics industry. A survey of 159 senior executives is analyzed using a partial least squares approach. The analytic result shows that slack resources may link alliance coordination and interfunctional coordination to two product development performance metrics (i.e. product innovativeness and product development speed).

This investigation reveals that both alliance coordination and interfunctional coordination positively affect product development performance, not only directly but also indirectly, through the existence of slack resources they help engender. In addition, it also finds that interfunctional coordination positively relates to alliance coordination.

The current research provides additional knowledge regarding the associations among alliance coordination, interfunctional coordination and product development performance. This knowledge would be useful for practitioners to achieve a superior product development performance. Moreover, this research articulates the managerial implications of the link between interfunctional coordination and alliance coordination for product development executives.

This empirical study tests an integrative model (which is one of only a few to incorporate slack resources) to explain how different types of coordination (i.e. inter- and intra-organisational coordination) may influence product development performance. Moreover, this empirical research provides initial evidence on the association between interfunctional coordination and alliance coordination.

Anti-money laundering has attracted much global attention, driving banks to invest in the establishment of suspicious transaction report mechanisms for the declaration of suspicious transactions. However, very few studies discuss how to influence bank employees to proactively declare suspicious transactions. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to, based on an organizational commitment perspective, establish a causal model that can assist banks to identify key factors affecting the intention to declare suspicious transactions.

This study first summarized five factors – regulatory focus, organization climate, situational constraints, personality traits and role stress – and their composition constructs as the basis for measurements. An interview-based survey of nine Taiwanese banks was conducted. Then, this study adopted the decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory method to analyse the interplay between the five factors to identify the causal model and to explore the differences in the effects of the key factors, arising from the different organizational and job patterns, on the intention to declare suspicious transactions.

The results show that regulatory focus and organizational climate are the most important causal factors affecting employees’ intention to declare suspicious transactions, whereas role stress and personality traits are the most influenced effect factors. In addition, this study also confirmed that under different organizational and job patterns, the understanding of employees will change.

This paper provides insight into the interplay between the five factors based on an organizational commitment perspective. The findings can assist banks in managing and monitoring the implementation of the suspicious transaction report mechanism.

This research paper aims to illustrate that the new product communication effects of mental simulation (process-vs. outcome-focused) might depend on product attributes (typicality and benefits). Communication effects include ad attitudes and product attitudes in this study.

One 2 (mental simulation: process-focused vs. outcome-focused) x 2 (attribute typicality: high vs. low) x 2 (attribute benefits: hedonic vs. utilitarian) between-subjects experiment design was conducted. SPSS was used to do data analysis.

This article reveals that high (low) typicality of new attributes causes a process-focused (outcome-focused) simulation to lead to better consumer attitudes (i.e. ad attitude and product attitude). In addition, for a new hedonic attribute, a low typical attribute induces better consumer attitudes. Furthermore, there are interaction among mental simulation, product attribute typicality and benefits. These findings have important implications for academic developments and marketing management.

Compared with previous studies, this study is unique in several ways. First, enterprises often develop new products by introducing new product attributes (i.e. new features). Product attribute typicality is an interesting issue for new product design and communication. This research illustrates that the marketing communication effects of attribute typicality depends on attribute benefits and mental simulation. Second, the current research finds the new product attribute benefit (i.e. hedonic/utilitarian) play an important role and moderates the effects of mental simulation on consumer attitudes.

The purpose of this research is to survey whether consumer ethnocentrism and animosity will affect consumers' perceived betrayal and cause negative word-of-mouth (NWOM).

This study conducted a 2 (consumer ethnocentrism) × 3 (consumer animosity) between-subject experiment design to test the hypotheses. Comprised of 380 respondents, this study used ANOVA to examine the data.

The results showed that if a brand violates the perception of fairness, ethnocentrism and animosity will have a positive effect on perceived betrayal. In addition, low consumer animosity revealed a significant consumer ethnocentrism effect and low ethnocentrism revealed a significant animosity effect, while the relationship between perceived betrayal and word of mouth is negative.

The current research adds to the understanding about how the reaction to a domestic brand's marketing strategies that are viewed as unfair and hurt the domestic consumers' expectations.

Playing exergames may resemble doing conventional exercise and thus has the potential to enhance users’ health. However, no study has yet examined whether and how a need for exercise impacts users’ intention to continuously play exergames, i.e. continuance intention and its antecedents. We developed a model grounded in the uses and gratifications theory (UGT) to address this issue.

We recruited 583 participants to play exergames and collected their psychological responses and physical information. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to test the hypotheses.

We found that health consciousness and perceived exercise benefits are positively related to a need for exercise, which is, in turn, positively related to continuance intention. Moreover, perceived exergame similarity with exercise strengthens the positive link between the need for exercise and continuance intention.

This is the first study using the UGT to explain the underlying mechanism linking health consciousness to continuance intention in the playing of exergames. In addition, we introduced the need for exercise as a novel construct in this study. Our findings provide insights to managers on incorporating health-related features into their exergame products to motivate users' engagement in playing exergames.

The purpose of this study is to understand the effect of different brand positions (underdog vs top dog) and comparative advertising on consumers’ brand attitudes. Additionally, this study also aims to demonstrate the effects of inspiration, self-relevance and empathy on the relationship between brand positioning and comparative advertising.

A two-by-three factorial design was employed with brand positions (underdog vs top dog) and three types of comparative advertising (noncomparative, indirect comparative and direct comparative) as the independent variables. Inspiration serves as the mediator, while self-relevance and empathy act as moderators and brand attitude is the dependent variable.

The results show that different brand positions significantly affect brand attitudes, with respondents having a better brand attitude toward the underdog brand. Brand attitude is partially mediated by inspiration. Self-relevance moderates the relationship between brand positioning and brand attitude. However, brand positioning, comparative advertising and empathy do not have interaction effects.

This study contributes to a better understanding of the effect of psychological variables on brand positioning and comparative advertising.

The results suggest that the underdog setting requires a real and honest story because consumers will spot a fake underdog story, which will damage consumer trust in the brand and harm the brand image.

There is a lack of research using psychological variables to demonstrate the effect of being the underdog brand. This study contributes to the literature by employing psychological variables to illustrate the effect of underdog positioning. These findings can help brands develop branding positioning strategies.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of managerial cultural values and the contextual environment (country of origin and country of operation) on corporate social responsibility (CSR) investments in three Asian countries.

A total of 150 questionnaires were collected from 150 companies located in Taiwan, Malaysia and Singapore. The potential influence of ethnicity on cultural values was controlled by collecting data from ethnic Chinese managers.

The results show that senior managers, especially their cultural values, play a crucial role in directing Asian companies’ CSR investments. In addition, the context (a firm’s country of origin and country of operation) also differentiates the cultural values and CSR investments in these three countries.

The study adds to the understanding of the influence of managerial cultural values and context on various aspects of CSR. Especially, the study offers valuable managerial implications for CSR implementation from the Chinese management perspective. Considering the fast global expansion of Chinese companies, the results concerning how Chinese managers’ cultural values influence their CSR investments priority offer valuable managerial implications. The comparisons of cultural values and CSR investments priority among ethnic Chinese managers in different contextual environments also serve as good starting points for future studies.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a robot vision system for surface defect detection of 3D objects. It aims at the ill‐defined qualitative items such as stains and scratches.

A robot vision system for surface defect detection may counter: high surface reflection at some viewing angles; and no reference markers in any sensed images for matching. A filtering process is used to separate the illumination and reflection components of an image. An automatic marker‐selection process and a template‐matching method are then proposed for image registration and anomaly detection in reflection‐free images.

Tests were performed on a variety of hand‐held electronic devices such as cellular phones. Experimental results show that the proposed system can reliably avoid reflection surfaces and effectively identify small local defects on the surfaces in different viewing angles.

The results have practical implications for industrial objects with arbitrary surfaces.

Traditional visual inspection systems mainly work for two‐dimensional planar surfaces such as printed circuit boards and wafers. The proposed system can find the viewing angles with minimum surface reflection and detect small local defects under image misalignment for three‐dimensional objects.