湛茂阳临港经济圈中阳江港比较优势产业定位研究

2012年"湛茂阳"临港经济圈发展设想的提出,为湛江、茂名、阳江发展港口经济带来新的模式,也为阳江港的发展带来了严峻的挑战。在粤西的2 200多公里海岸线上,港口泊位多达150多个,湛茂阳三大港口都希望通过合作,为三大港口的经济振兴带来一轮全新的飞越。然而,如何有效合作?在准备合作的道路上,阳江港应如何调整产业定位,实现阳江港经济的可持续发展,使湛茂阳的港口经济合作走向多赢是一个值到探讨的重要课题。笔者通过比较优势理论,采用定量分析的方法,寻找近3年阳江港产业的比较优势,尝试构思合适阳江港本土的优势产业定位,从而促进阳江港区域经济的发展,更好地迎接湛茂阳经济圈带来的机遇和挑战。     

中外人员培训发展趋势及对电力企业的启示

近些年来,我国电力企业人员培训获得长足发展,但与国外先进理念及做法相比,仍存在一定差距。本文运用比较研究法,剖析国内、外人员培训发展总体趋势及其异同,以获取相关经验、发现不足,进而联系我国电力企业,提出相应建议。     

Institutions as constraints and resources: Explaining cross‐national divergence in performance management

This article compares performance management practices in call centres from four telecommunications firms in the United Kingdom, France, Denmark, and Germany. Findings show that different combinations of institutional constraints, such as strong job security protections, and participation resources supporting worker voice were influential in shaping choices among policies to motivate and discipline workers. Performance management most closely approached a high‐involvement model where both constraints and resources were high, where worker representatives were able both to restrict management's use of sanctions and to establish procedures that improved the perceived fairness of incentives. Findings contribute to debates concerning the role of contextual factors in the design and effectiveness of HRM.     

Subsidiary-specific advantages for inter-regional expansion: The role of intermediate units

This paper explores the distinctive deployment of resources and capabilities by subsidiaries in order to develop an intermediate role within the MNC. Based on the regional management perspective, we focus on a specific intermediate role—the springboard subsidiary—that helps overcome the liability of inter-regional foreignness. Our results, which are based on a dataset covering 188 subsidiaries, show that the probability of taking on this role is contingent upon experiential knowledge about the target region, as well as a rich knowledge base derived from a wide range of activities and a broad geographical scope. Our findings also show that possession of slack resources does not necessarily mean that a subsidiary will take on this role, as such slack must be combined with experiential knowledge. This paper serves as a first step in helping MNCs plan resource allocation to handle inter-regional expansion.     

Competitive and Comparative Advantage: Towards a Unified Theory of International Trade

The field of international business/economics is largely dualistic in nature. On one hand is the economics literature which has, for two centuries, focused on the notion of comparative advantage (technology, factor proportions) while on the other is the business literature which has recently developed the concept of competitive advantage. This paper presents a reconciliation of the two based on global value chain/supply chain analysis and the concept of vertical comparative advantage. It is shown that the theory of competitive advantage's epistemological comparative advantage lies with its ‘how to’ approach to developing an advantage, while the theory of comparative advantage's epistemological comparative advantage lies with its account of ‘what is’ and that both are complementary. However, it is also argued that the failure to recognize this complementarity as well as the shortcomings of each have prevented and continue to prevent the emergence of an integrated, empirically-consistent theory of international trade – in short, prevented us from taking advantage of the gains from epistemological trade.     

Ronald Jones's duality analysis as a foundation for applied general‐equilibrium modeling

Ronald Jones made seminal contributions to general‐equilibrium theory, moving away from an emphasis on the existence of equilibrium to algebraic formulations which enabled us to characterize key relationships between parameters and variables, such as that between tariffs and domestic factor prices and welfare. But the analysis remained limited in value for policy evaluation: the analysis was local, it provided only qualitative results, it was limited to very small models, and strictly interior solutions had to be assumed. The contribution of this paper is largely pedagogic and methodological. I show how the tools and approach pioneered by Jones can be generalized via the use of duality, complementarity and the Karush–Kuhn–Tucker theorem into a global, quantitative analysis of large changes in high‐dimensional models which also allows for regime changes and corner solutions. I then show how the resulting nonlinear complementarity problem directly translates into a numerical model using the General Algebraic Modeling System (GAMS).     

Climate,diseases, and the origins of corruption

It has been commonly observed that tropical countries tend to suffer from intense corruption and underdevelopment. This study provides an explanation for this long-standing disparity across the world based on variation in the intensity of ultraviolet radiation (UV-R). The central hypothesis is that UV-R is positively associated with the (historical) prevalence of eye diseases, which significantly shortens work-life expectancy as a skilled worker. This helps shape the worldwide distribution of corruption by affecting the incumbents' window of opportunity. Using data for up to 139 countries, I consistently find empirical support for the positive relationship between UV-R and corruption. The main findings withstand accounting for numerous alternative explanations for international differences in corruption levels. Employing individual-level data from the World Values Survey, I document suggestive evidence that exposure to UV-R is linked to surveyed respondents' tolerance towards corrupt activities. Furthermore, a subnational analysis for China lends credence to the cross-country evidence.     

When companies improve the sustainability of the natural environment: A study of large U.S. companies

In light of the call for companies to abandon current approaches to environmental management, this study adds to the environmental strategy literature and uses the evidence of competitive dynamics among companies to identify a mechanism by which companies invest in proactive environmental strategies and thereby improve the sustainability of the natural environment. An examination utilizing fixed effects regressions on a sample of large U.S.‐based companies reveal that even after controlling the number, environmental and financial performance of leading (environmental) companies, laggard (environmental) companies are more likely to invest in proactive environmental strategies when their leading peers display higher sustainability orientations. Neither the expectation of government regulation nor social movement pressure was found to be influential in this relationship. Therefore, the future dominance of companies' investments in the sustainability of the natural environment will be driven by companies themselves as long as competitive advantages are expected.     

Moving beyond the tensions in open environmental innovation towards a holistic perspective

This paper analyses factors determining open environmental innovation (EI) and explores the possibility of embracing their tensions to achieve integrated environmental strategic goals. Building on recent literature linking open innovation and EI, the study assumes open EI strategic goals as a multidimensional construct based on the “synergistic and interwoven nature” of four identified enabling factors, that is, partners, knowledge, benefits, and motivations. A fuzzy‐set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) based on Boolean algebra is conducted to analyse a set of 186 European companies operating in the telecommunication and information and communication technology (ICT) service industries. Making important theoretical, managerial, and policy contributions, this paper offers insights into the key factors enabling open EI and the tensional relationships within and between them. In doing so, it captures the non‐linear effects among these factors and the strategic goals related to an open EI strategy. It also suggests how the paradox theory might help in addressing the tensional dilemma of open EI strategy.     

Relationship between city size and firm productivity – A new interpretation using the Chinese experience

This paper contributes to the literature on the relationship between city size and firm productivity by focusing on agglomeration, selection (market competition), and sorting (presence of firms with diverse productivity) effects using Chinese firm-level data for 1998–2013. Contrary to the existing literature, our parametric regression estimates from nearly two million firms show that when the selection effect is controlled, productivity advantage in big cities is reversed. This outcome is explained through a quantile regression showing the existence of left-sided sorting (inefficient firms sort themselves to larger cities) in big cities which is not captured in existing empirical literature. We further find that (1) left-sided sorting is stronger in exporters than non-exporters; (2) is also generated mainly in enterprises with high asset-liability ratios; and (3) selection has a positive effect on firm productivity, suggesting that market competition is key in an explanation of the rapid growth of big cities in China.