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Whether foreign direct investment (FDI) can promote technology progress in the host country, or not, has become an issue in recent decades. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the impact of FDI on regional technological capabilities.

This paper first analyzes the spillover effects of FDI with reference to actual conditions in foreign‐funded enterprises in China, then uses correlation analysis and regression analysis to show the impact of FDI on technological capabilities. This paper compares the R&D expenditures in foreign‐funded enterprises and FDI origin countries between three typical regions – Shanghai, Jiangsu, and Guangdong – to show the influencing factors of spillovers.

The impact of FDI on regional technological capabilities is found to be weak; FDI has little use for enhancing indigenous innovation capability. The regions with higher technological capabilities will attract the higher quality of inward FDI, and the powerful technological capabilities and abundant human capitals in domestic enterprises are essential factors to stimulate the spillover effects of FDI.

The arguments could be discussed more fully if an empirical model could be established to disclose the determinants of spillover effects. How to measure the spillover effects quantitatively is a key problem for future research.

This paper discloses the mutual relationship between domestic and foreign‐funded enterprises. The findings in this paper provide some insights for both the host countries and the foreign investors.

Institutional actors are critical allies for grassroots movements, but few studies have examined their effects and variations within the non-democratic context. This chapter argues that while institutional allies are heavily constrained and unlikely to give open endorsement to grassroot activists, some institutional activists indirectly facilitate movement mobilization and favorable outcomes in the process of advancing their own political agendas. Drawing upon in-depth interviews conducted in 2008 and 2012, I illustrate this argument by examining the Anti-PX Movement – a landmark grassroots environmental movement against a chemical plant – in Xiamen, China. I find that the environmental institutional actors were constrained and divided, yet some still fostered opportunities for movement mobilization and in turn exploited the opportunity created by the protesters to pursue their policy interests, thus facilitating positive movement outcomes. As long as the claims are not politically subversive to the authoritarian rule, this type of tacit and tactical interaction between institutional activists within the state and grassroot activists on the street is conducive to promoting progressive policy changes.

The value‐premium is the empirical observation that “value” stocks (low market/book) have higher returns than “growth” stocks (high market/book). The purpose of this paper is to propose a new explanation for the value‐premium that the authors call the limits to growth hypothesis.

To guide the testing, a dynamic equity valuation model was used that has the property that profitability increases risk for value firms in anticipation of future growth‐leverage, whereas, profitability “covers” the capital expenditure costs of growth, which decreases risk for growth firms. Because the authors interpret dividends as a corporate response to growth‐limits, they test for this predicted differential relation between profitability and risk for value versus growth stocks with the returns of profitable dividend‐paying firms.

It is found that profitability increases returns to a greater extent for dividend‐paying value firms compared to dividend‐paying growth firms, which is consistent with a differential relation between profitability and risk. At the same time, it is also found that growth firms have lower returns than value firms.

The authors use the limits‐to‐growth hypothesis to explain why profitability can either increase or decrease risk. High‐profitability dividend‐paying growth firms have lower returns than low‐profitability dividend‐paying value firms. This value‐premium is consistent with the argument that high profitability “covers” the capital expenditure costs of growth, which decreases risk and, thus, returns. At the same time, profitability increases returns to a greater extent for value stocks compared to growth stocks, which is consistent with the hypothesis that profitability increases risk for value firms in anticipation of future growth‐leverage.

The main purposes of this paper are as follows. Exploring whether there is significant difference in the model of core competence between H‐T firms and T‐Ms in Taiwan. Investigating whether there is significant difference in the explanatory power of dimensions of core competence both for H‐T firms and T‐Ms in Taiwan.

The samples used in this study are the management levels of two H‐T firms and three T‐Ms in Taiwan. The authors collected a company‐wide opinion through questionnaires to examine the core competence, including strategic planning, production process innovation, supply chain management, logistics management, quality management and R&D.

The major findings are summarized as follows: through path analysis, it is found that the model of core competence for the H‐T firms is different from that of the model for T‐Ms. R&D capability is regarded as the most important source for core competence both by H‐T firms and T‐Ms. Strategic planning in H‐T firms is regarded as an important dimension in constructing core competence. The capabilities of supply chain management and logistics management for T‐Ms significantly affect core competence, because these businesses must focus more on services.

High‐tech firms (H‐T firms) and traditional manufacturers (T‐Ms) differ from each other in terms of the business environment. It is interesting to explore the core competence both in the H‐T firms and the T‐Ms as these two have distinct business environments.