C.K.M. Lee, Yu Ching Yeung and Zhen Hong
The purpose of this paper is to present a generic framework to assess and simulate outsourcing risks in the supply chain.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to present a generic framework to assess and simulate outsourcing risks in the supply chain.
Design/methodology/approach
This combination approach involves a qualitative risk analysis methodology termed as the supply chain risk‐failure mode and effect analysis (SCR‐FMEA) which integrates risk identification, analysis and mitigation actions together to evaluate supply chain outsourcing risk. The qualitative risk assessment will allow risk manager to provide a visual presentation of imminent risks using the risk map. Monte Carlo simulation (MCS) on the imminent risks of delivery outsourcing using the Milk‐Run system is adopted.
Findings
With basic statistical concepts, key performance variables and the risk of delivery outsourcing are analyzed. It is found that a newly implemented delivery outsourcing arrangement on the Milk‐Run system reduces the average customer lead‐time and total cost. However, a certain extent of risk or uncertainty can still be detected due to the presence of variation.
Research limitations/implications
This paper reveals that company can manage the risk by adopting a systematic method for identifying the potential risks before outsourcing and MCS can be applied for examining the quantifiable risks such as lead time and cost.
Practical implications
The paper provides a generic guideline for practitioners to assess logistics outsourcing, especially for logistics management consultants and professionals for evaluating the risk and impact of outsourcing. It is believed that the proposed risk assessment framework can help to analyze the operational cost uncertainty and ensure the stability of the supply chain. However, the limitation of this research is that the full spectrum of outsourcing risk, especially the non‐quantifiable risk may not be analyzed by MCS.
Originality/value
This paper proposed an integrated framework which combines qualitative and quantitative method together for managing outsourcing risk. This research provides a standardized metric to quantify risk in the supply chain so as to determine the effectiveness of outsourcing.
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With its worldwide fame for making action films, Hong Kong cinema has been defined as masculine. Action films, including the costumed martial arts films and the modern gangster…
Abstract
With its worldwide fame for making action films, Hong Kong cinema has been defined as masculine. Action films, including the costumed martial arts films and the modern gangster films, have been a major genre in Hong Kong cinema from the 1960s on. Despite the dominant masculinity, women still play significant roles in some of these films. In fact, fighting women leave footprints in the history of Hong Kong cinema, which precede their counterparts in the West and even provide models for Hollywood after 2000.
This chapter focuses on the female characters portrayed by the acclaimed Hong Kong director Wong Kar-wai, whose works have an ambiguous connection to mainstream genres. He modifies Hong Kong action films and creates unconventional female characters such as the drug dealer in Chungking Express (1994), the killer dispatcher in Fallen Angels (1995), the swordswoman in Ashes of Time (1994), and the kung fu master in The Grandmaster (2013). Wong's films have been mush discussed in academia, but the gender images therein are quite ignored. With high intertextuality, these characters are used to question mainstream action films and redefine women's roles in male's cinematic space. In addition, via the writing of these women, Wong constructs an open and ambivalent post-colonial Hong Kong identity. This paper contextualises the figures of sword-wielding and gun-shooting women and examines how Wong Kar-wai deploys these images to articulate the cultural identity of a post-colonial city.
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Shih-Liang Chao, Chin-Shan Lu, Kuo-Chung Shang and Ching-Chiao Yang
Smart card-based E-payment systems are receiving increasing attention as the number of implementations is witnessed on the rise globally. Understanding of user adoption behavior…
Abstract
Smart card-based E-payment systems are receiving increasing attention as the number of implementations is witnessed on the rise globally. Understanding of user adoption behavior of E-payment systems that employ smart card technology becomes a research area that is of particular value and interest to both IS researchers and professionals. However, research interest focuses mostly on why a smart card-based E-payment system results in a failure or how the system could have grown into a success. This signals the fact that researchers have not had much opportunity to critically review a smart card-based E-payment system that has gained wide support and overcome the hurdle of critical mass adoption. The Octopus in Hong Kong has provided a rare opportunity for investigating smart card-based E-payment system because of its unprecedented success. This research seeks to thoroughly analyze the Octopus from technology adoption behavior perspectives.
Cultural impacts on adoption behavior are one of the key areas that this research posits to investigate. Since the present research is conducted in Hong Kong where a majority of population is Chinese ethnicity and yet is westernized in a number of aspects, assuming that users in Hong Kong are characterized by eastern or western culture is less useful. Explicit cultural characteristics at individual level are tapped into here instead of applying generalization of cultural beliefs to users to more accurately reflect cultural bias. In this vein, the technology acceptance model (TAM) is adapted, extended, and tested for its applicability cross-culturally in Hong Kong on the Octopus. Four cultural dimensions developed by Hofstede are included in this study, namely uncertainty avoidance, masculinity, individualism, and Confucian Dynamism (long-term orientation), to explore their influence on usage behavior through the mediation of perceived usefulness.
TAM is also integrated with the innovation diffusion theory (IDT) to borrow two constructs in relation to innovative characteristics, namely relative advantage and compatibility, in order to enhance the explanatory power of the proposed research model. Besides, the normative accountability of the research model is strengthened by embracing two social influences, namely subjective norm and image. As the last antecedent to perceived usefulness, prior experience serves to bring in the time variation factor to allow level of prior experience to exert both direct and moderating effects on perceived usefulness.
The resulting research model is analyzed by partial least squares (PLS)-based Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) approach. The research findings reveal that all cultural dimensions demonstrate direct effect on perceived usefulness though the influence of uncertainty avoidance is found marginally significant. Other constructs on innovative characteristics and social influences are validated to be significant as hypothesized. Prior experience does indeed significantly moderate the two influences that perceived usefulness receives from relative advantage and compatibility, respectively. The research model has demonstrated convincing explanatory power and so may be employed for further studies in other contexts. In particular, cultural effects play a key role in contributing to the uniqueness of the model, enabling it to be an effective tool to help critically understand increasingly internationalized IS system development and implementation efforts. This research also suggests several practical implications in view of the findings that could better inform managerial decisions for designing, implementing, or promoting smart card-based E-payment system.
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Chun-Chien Lin, Yu-Ching Chiao and Yu-Chen Chang
This paper aims to draw attention to the information processing of speed regarding the specific approaches by which suppliers respond to downstream and upstream communications. It…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to draw attention to the information processing of speed regarding the specific approaches by which suppliers respond to downstream and upstream communications. It examines supply chain management and three-way communication between raw material providers, manufacturing suppliers and buying retailers.
Design/methodology/approach
Previous studies have investigated upstream and downstream communication as key drivers for framing the consequences of supply chain communication speed. This study applied a three-stage communication speed mechanism survey and acquired 210 validly matched paired questionnaires between selling suppliers and buying customers in a retailing industry supply chain to better understand and systematically model the empirical communication speed.
Findings
Downstream and upstream communication positively increases supply chain speed, which is weakened by the dysfunctional competition scenario. To highlight performance, the faster the speed, the greater performance the superior firm will achieve.
Practical implications
Suppliers are looking to enhance speed for better resilience in dysfunctional competition disruptions. This study offers guidelines and specified carbon footprint scenarios to provide managerial insight into their sustainability performance with a greater information processing mechanism. Slower speed may be exactly what many firms and supply chains need to integrate sustainability initiatives.
Originality/value
This study contributes to the supply chain management literature by shedding light on communication and information processing, of which the speed mechanism eventually enhances firm performance.
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Szu-Yu Kuo, Ching-Chiao Yang and Po-Lin Lai
Recently, inland Chinese regions have become the major manufacturing base for most manufacturing firms. Accordingly, with this change, many shipping companies attempted to provide…
Abstract
Purpose
Recently, inland Chinese regions have become the major manufacturing base for most manufacturing firms. Accordingly, with this change, many shipping companies attempted to provide proper logistics service activities to maintain their business. Hence, this study aims to empirically examine the logistics service preference segments for Chinese landlocked regions from a manufacturer's perspective. By understanding these attributes, not only shipping companies but also logistics companies can provide proper service to their customers.
Design/methodology/approach
The preliminary logistics service attributes are determined using an interview and in-depth questionnaire with logistics experts from the local private and government sectors in southwest China and few international logistics coordinators. This study conducted importance-performance analysis (IPA) and used a customer dissatisfaction attitude index to evaluate the priorities for improving logistics service attributes. Cluster analysis is subsequently performed to group respondents on the basis of their factor scores.
Findings
Five crucial logistics service dimensions were identified by the factor analysis, namely, packing and storage, logistics supporting, logistics information, transportation planning and information inquiry. The results also revised the IPA model. The top five service attributes that needed to be improved were carrier selection, ship scheduling inquiry, route planning and inquiry, cargo receiving station and freight forwarding. By applying the factor analysis, this study reduced the 27 logistics attributes derived from the literature review to five underlying critical factors.
Originality/value
This study contributes to the inland logistics by investigating the preferences of manufacturers in Chinese landlocked regions. Moreover, in land logistics in China is lacking in the literature; hence, several important implications can be derived from this study's results.
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Chung‐Ching Chiu, Chih‐Hung Tsai and Yi‐Chan Chung
In the early industrial age which with high intensity of machine and labor, using financial measurement index was good enough to tie in company’s mechanization and philosophy of…
Abstract
In the early industrial age which with high intensity of machine and labor, using financial measurement index was good enough to tie in company’s mechanization and philosophy of management and been in efficiency. But being comply with “New Economic age,” a new economic environment is full of knowledge and information, the enterprise competition had changed from tangible assets, plants to intangible innovation ability of knowledge. As recognizing the new tendency by enterprise, they value gradually the growth and influence from learning. Practice of organization learning not only needs firm structure and be in coordination with both hardware and software, but also needs an affect measurement model to offer enterprise to estimate learning performance. It’s a good instrument of financial performance measure mold in the past years, But it’s for measuring the past, couldn’t formulate enterprise trend to future, hard to estimate investment for future, such as development of products, organization learning, knowledge management etc, as which intangible assets and knowledge ability just the key factors of being win around competition environment in the future. In 1992, Kaplan and Norton brought up Balance Scorecard (BSC) on Harvard Business Review, as an instrument helping enterprise to measure performance, which is being considered to be a most influence management instrument. It added non‐financial index such as customer, internal process and learning growth besides traditional financial index, as offering enterprise an index to measure and manage intangible assets and intellectual property. As being aware of organization learning is hard to be ignored in the new economic age, this research is based on learning and growth of BSC, and citing one national material company try to let the most difficult measurement performance of organization learning, to be estimate through BSC, analyze of factor and individual case, to discuss the company how to make the related strategy and vision of organization learning to develop learning and growth of the structure of BSC, subject the matter of out put factors to be discussed, and measure the outcomes as a result of research. The research affect offers (1) the base implement procedure of carrying out BSC; (2) the reference of formulating measurement index while enterprise using BSC to estimate performance of organization learning; (3) the possibility bottleneck maybe forcing while carrying out BSC, to be an improvement or preventive for enterprise.
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Eddie Chi‐man Hui, Ann Yu and Russell Lam
The purpose of this paper is to examine the abnormal stock return of Hong Kong real estate firms following news of land acquisition and identify determinants to the abnormal stock…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the abnormal stock return of Hong Kong real estate firms following news of land acquisition and identify determinants to the abnormal stock return.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper employs the event‐study methodology and multivariate regression to test factors that are hypothesized to have effects on the abnormal return.
Findings
The paper indicates that on land acquisition announcement there is a significant positive price reaction. Also the market capitalization and debt‐to‐equity ratio of a firm is associated negatively with the level of abnormal price reaction.
Practical implications
This study has identified significant positive abnormal stock return following the news of land acquisitions by developers in the context of Hong Kong. It has also documented negative correlation between abnormal stock return and two specific factors of a firm, namely, market capitalization and debt‐to‐equity ratio.
Originality/value
This paper identifies significant positive abnormal stock return pursuant to land acquisitions by firms.