Search results

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of natural resources, market size and five major institutional factors (voice and accountability; political stability and absence of violence; regulatory quality; rule of law and control of corruption) on Chinese foreign direct investment (FDI) in Africa.

This study uses regression analysis on panel data across 22 countries for the period 2008-2014.

Natural resources did not play a significant role in attracting Chinese investments, but market size did. Among the institutional factors, only voice and accountability had a significant and positive effect on attracting Chinese FDI; the effects of rule of law and control of corruption were not significant and political stability and regulatory quality had a significant and negative effect.

Chinese investment in Africa is only a recent phenomenon, and is growing rapidly; further studies should examine factors that are unique to the context such as bilateral political link.

African countries that are struggling with improving their poor institutional quality in the short term could effectively attract Chinese investment by reducing investor psychic distance, e.g. establishing a closer political link with China. Nevertheless, in the long term, measures of improving institutional quality are important.

This study reveals for the first time that what attracts Chinese investment is market size rather than natural resources, and different institutional factors of an African country show varying effects on attracting Chinese FDI.

This paper aims to present ball bearings with a composite structure based on the bionics principle and shows the comparison between five types of different structures.

By means of the finite element method, the stress and other parameters between different structures are compared and verified. Finally, the comprehensive parameters of different structures are evaluated by the analytic hierarchy process method.

The evaluation of the comprehensive parameters of five types of structures is shown here.

The value of this paper is calculated and compared to the parameters of five types of different structures, and the parameter score evaluation of each structure is given. Different structures can be selected according to different parameter requirements, which to provide a theoretical basis for the design of ball bearings.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon10.1108/ILT-10-2019-0413

Our children may learn about the heroes of the past.

Our task is to make ourselves architects of the future.

The twenty-first century confronts society with challenges that will determine the future of humanity and the planet. Such challenges defy traditional analysis. Paralyzed by the inadequacy of our standard logic, on which much of traditional scholarship relies, we search for meaningful and effective understandings that can guide us – understandings that seem inherently wise and just, and not simply empirically confirmable. Few of us question the need for wisdom, yet to date, academic scholarship has failed to address the role that it plays, and could play, in supporting international organizational processes capable of addressing the world’s most demanding societal challenges.² This chapter explores the nature of pragmatic wisdom – wisdom that incorporates both profound understanding and action. It uses the founding of an international development initiative, Uniterra, to highlight the need for and influence of wisdom in international organizational processes and outcomes. Uniterra’s core structure and central process involve partnering – forming networks of non-hierarchical relationships. The chapter therefore investigates the wisdom needed to create and maintain global partnerships. Given the chapter’s focus on pragmatic wisdom, it also explores the concepts of hope and courage, for without hope and courage, wisdom could never move beyond conceptualization to action. The writing style purposely differs from that of most scholarly articles. Beyond presenting a specific case, the writing offers readers the opportunity to experience wisdom via indigenous proverbs from a wide range of the world’s more pragmatic wisdom traditions. So as not to interrupt readers’ appreciation of the proverbs or reduce their impact or meaning merely to the underlying logical constructs, the chapter uses endnotes rather than more traditional text references.

The 21st century confronts society with challenges that will determine the future of humanity and the planet. Such challenges defy traditional analysis. Paralyzed by the inadequacy of our standard logic, on which much of traditional scholarship relies, we search for meaningful and effective understandings that can guide us—understandings that seem inherently wise and just, and not simply empirically confirmable. Few of us question the need for wisdom, yet to date, academic scholarship has failed to address the role that it plays, and could play, in supporting international organizational processes capable of addressing the world’s most demanding societal challenges. ² This chapter explores the nature of pragmatic wisdom—wisdom that incorporates both profound understanding and action. It uses the founding of an international development initiative, Uniterra, to highlight the need for and influence of wisdom in international organizational processes and outcomes. Uniterra’s core structure and central process involve partnering—forming networks of nonhierarchical relationships. The chapter therefore investigates the wisdom needed to create and maintain global partnerships. Given the chapter’s focus on pragmatic wisdom, it also explores the concepts of hope and courage, for without hope and courage, wisdom could never move beyond conceptualization to action. The writing style purposely differs from that of most scholarly articles. Beyond presenting a specific case, the writing offers readers the opportunity to experience wisdom via indigenous proverbs from a wide range of the world’s more pragmatic wisdom traditions. So as not to interrupt readers’ appreciation of the proverbs or reduce their impact or meaning merely to the underlying logical constructs, the chapter uses endnotes rather than more traditional text references.

Whereas most societal commentators continue to review the historical patterns of men’s leadership in search of models for 21st-century success, few have begun to recognize, let alone appreciate, the equivalent patterns of women’s leadership and the future contributions that women could potentially make as leaders. What could and are women bringing to society as global leaders? Why at this moment in history is there such a marked increase in the number of women leaders? Are we entering an era in which both male and female leaders will shape history, both symbolically and in reality? And if so, will we discover that women, on average, lead in different ways than men, or will we learn that role (global leader) explains more than gender? This chapter reveals the accelerating trends of women joining men in senior leadership positions, establishes the relationship of women leaders to our overall understanding of global leadership, and sets forth an agenda to accomplish much needed research and understanding.

The effective prediction of crude oil futures prices can provide a reference for relevant enterprises to make production plans and investment decisions. To the nonlinearity, high volatility and uncertainty of the crude oil futures price, a matrixed nonlinear exponential grey Bernoulli model combined with an exponential accumulation generating operator (MNEGBM(1,1)) is proposed in this paper.

First, the original sequence is processed by the exponential accumulation generating operator to weaken its volatility. The nonlinear grey Bernoulli and exponential function models are combined to fit the preprocessed sequence. Then, the parameters in MNEGBM(1,1) are matrixed, so the ternary interval number sequence can be modeled directly. Marine Predators Algorithm (MPA) is chosen to optimize the nonlinear parameters. Finally, the Cramer rule is used to derive the time recursive formula.

The predictive effectiveness of the proposed model is verified by comparing it with five comparison models. Crude oil futures prices in Cushing, OK are predicted and analyzed from 2023/07 to 2023/12. The prediction results show it will gradually decrease over the next six months.

Crude oil futures prices are highly volatile in the short term. The use of grey model for short-term prediction is valuable for research. For the data characteristics of crude oil futures price, this study first proposes an improved model for interval number prediction of crude oil futures prices.

The purpose of this study is to examine the existing literature and evaluate the theories, characteristics, context and methods of alliance termination research published from 1992 to 2019. This study also aims to identify the gaps in the literature and recognize directions for future research focusing on alliance termination research.

The main research methods followed in this study are bibliometric review, citation analysis, co-citation analysis and cluster analysis.

The main findings of this study are the most cited articles, most productive journals and most productive countries. The results show that a total of 100 research articles were published between 1992 and 2019. The maximum number of publications were observed during 2011–2019. The article “Knowledge, bargaining power, and the instability of international joint ventures” (Inkpen and Beamish, 1997) was the most cited article and the “Academy of Management Review” was the most prominent journal, with 847 citations. The USA, France, the UK, Singapore and Canada are the most productive countries. The study also includes the analysis of the network of co-citation of references and co-occurrence of keywords in the context of alliance termination research.

To the best of authors’ knowledge, this study seems to be the first to perform bibliometric review and analysis in the area of alliance termination research. Therefore, it can help academicians and practitioners to identify the research trends and gaps in the alliance termination literature on which future research can be performed. Overall, this research paper leads to a better understanding of the alliance termination research and offers new insights into strategic management studies.

Rather than add another review of the numerous scholarly publications of success factors and performance of International Joint Ventures (IJVs) this study offers an overview of the extant research based on the findings, criticisms and recommendations of previous reviews. Scholars and practitioners interested in the research field may profit from our contribution in several ways. First, we provide a comprehensive overview of the state-of-the-art of the field in a table listing the characteristics of the most relevant review studies published in leading management journals. These special reviews offer more detailed analyses of the studies under investigation, different frameworks and proposals for future research directions. Finally, we summarize the criticisms and recommendations of previous researchers that have been ignored and discuss why many of those recommendations have gone unheeded and how future research may benefit from more systematic development of this field.

The purpose of this research is to conduct a theoretical prediction study exploring the effectiveness of different content marketing strategies in expanding the second-hand market for fashion brands, comparing the costs and risks involved in these strategies in practice.

First, the expert interview method is employed to extract the content marketing strategies of the fashion second-hand market. Then, a descriptive space that is able to identify various fashion brand images is established. Then, experts' perceptions of the relationships between content marketing strategies and fashion brand image dimensions are obtained through a subjective evaluation procedure. Data of semantic evaluation were quantified and analyzed using the fuzzy logic method.

When fashion brands expand to the second-hand market, they not only need to focus on improving the individual differentiation of products but also give priority to the quality of products and services and the overall customer experience. Exploring the “social impact strategy” will become an important direction for the development of fashion brands in the future.

The research methodology employed herein exhibits a noteworthy degree of novelty. This study introduces a pioneering theoretical prediction approach utilizing fuzzy logic, marking the inaugural exploration of this emerging and captivating dimension within the context of the study. Simultaneously, the study provides comparative results among content marketing strategies for expanding the fashion second-hand market, offering guidance for market expansion.

The purpose of this study is to demonstrate the effect of initial international joint ventures (IJV) structural conditions on two main equity-based instability facets: change of IJV ownership structure and acquisition of the IJV by one of the IJV partners. Drawing on the transaction cost theory, the authors examine three key initial structural conditions: IJV formation mode, number of partners and IJV’s ownership structure.

The authors apply the “Event history analysis” technique to test the hypotheses using a data set of 140 French-foreign JVs.

The findings show that the mode of an acquisitive IJV and unequal equity positions held by partners increase the likelihood of a change of IJV’s ownership structure and its eventual acquisition by one of the partners. In addition, the findings show that while an increase in the number of IJV partners is directly related to the change of IJV ownership structure, it has a statistically insignificant effect on IJV acquisition.

Drawing on “transaction costs” arguments, this study advances the literature by offering fine-grained results related to the effects of initial structural conditions on aspects of unintended instability in French-foreign JVs.