US small retail businesses’ perception of competition: Looking through a lens of fear,confidence, or cooperation

The U.S. retail industry has undergone dramatic changes, leading to the closing of brick-and-mortar retail stores on a large scale. Understanding perceived market competition among small retail businesses may help explain why certain businesses survive or fail in the altered retail environment. This study investigates small retail businesses' perceptions of competition within/outside the community, underlying reasons for their perceptions, and variations in perceptions by different business characteristics. Contrary to common expectations, we found that more than half of businesses interviewed were optimistic in the face of competition. Our data reveal two salient underlying reasons for pessimism and five for optimism. These perceptions tended to differ by operational locality (urban clusters vs. urban areas), business revenues, and innovativeness. Based on the findings, we developed propositions and a framework of small businesses' perceived competition and sustainable competitive advantage. We discussed theoretical and practical implications for small retail businesses’ sustainable growth in the challenging retail environment.     

Enrichment for retail businesses: How female entrepreneurs and masculine traits enhance business success

Studies indicate that more male entrepreneurs are pursuing business ventures than their female counterparts. Latterly, there has been increased research interest in female entrepreneurs and their positive contribution to the retail economy. The main purpose of this study was to examine how some specific masculine traits can be enculturated into individuals (i.e. female entrepreneurs). The study also reviewed literature that discussed reasons which hinder female entrepreneurs in the retail world. The reasons range from being risk averse, being too agreeable and being overly anxious about failure. Through qualitative research exploration of female entrepreneurs, semi-structured interviews were undertaken to examine and understand their experiences. Themes which emerged from questioning the ten female entrepreneurs enabled the researcher to construct a theoretical framework. Analysis of the content findings showed that female entrepreneurs were indeed willing to adopt specific masculine traits. The result of this investigation is that through implementing specific masculine traits, female entrepreneurs have greater chances of success in their retail businesses. Although the research presented valid findings regarding the benefits of masculine traits on the retail industry, the research was limited by the sample size and the location of the research. This contribution remains unique in the way that it provides valuable information to the retail industry about the process of overcoming failure through enculturating masculine traits into female entrepreneurs.     

大数据视域下的企业孵化生态建设

论文以生态系统理论讨论分析企业孵化生态,有助于解决当前可持续创业中的问题。目前企业孵化生态建设主要有科技研究、市场开发和商业应用三大部分。这些企业孵化生态组成部分不仅使企业孵化的功能逐渐完善,在网络平台上也已具备了基本的信息技术服务。市场开发和商业应用已经汇聚了人财物的产供销价值链,逐渐向多元化、多模式、多机制的发展方向过度,为打造出全过程、多层次、立体化的企业孵化生态系统提供建设性方案。     

Too-Big-To-Fail: Why Megabanks Have Not Become Smaller Since the Global Financial Crisis?

ABSTRACT

More than ten years after the global financial crisis, what has happened to the ‘too-big-to-fail’ (TBTF) banks whose reckless behavior was among its preconditions, but which received public support and guarantees in the midst of that crisis? Insofar as this too-big-to-fail status helped create the crisis and then imposed costs on the rest of society, we would expect these banks to have shrunk. We investigate the evolution of 31 global-TBTF banks and find that their overall size has hardly recorded any substantial change. However, there is no sense of urgency in the flourishing post-crisis literature on TBTF banks about the need to contain their size; the prevalent view therein is that if properly regulated, the risks that arise from a financial system dominated by TBTF banks are manageable. This view rests on the same overly narrow theoretical underpinnings whose flaws were exposed in the crisis. We argue that too-big-to-fail banking is embedded in a set of self-reinforcing policies—consolidation, balance-sheet support through quantitative easing, favorable regulations, bank lobbying, and geo-economic and geo-political considerations—which explain why these banks have not shrunk and why they remain a threat to financial stability, well after the lessons of the crisis should have been learned.     

Identifying the ‘knowledge base’ or ‘intellectual structure’ of research on international business, 2000–2015: A citation/co-citation analysis of JIBS

The purpose of this study consists in analyzing the existing literature on international business from all the research papers published in Journal of International Business Studies (JIBS) during the period of time comprised between 2000 and 2015. The authors apply bibliometric methods to that end –in particular, document citation and co-citation analyses (DCAs)– so that they can try and identify the main research lines within the aforementioned scientific field or domain; in other words, the ‘intellectual structure’ of the discipline examined. Social networks analysis was also used to carry out the representation or visualization of such structure or knowledge base. The highly interdisciplinary nature of the research undertaken, since the study field still keeps its characteristic diversity and interdisciplinarity or the need to integrate a variety of theoretical frameworks or approaches into the development of a widely-accepted theory about the field under study become evident. Amongst these theories would be the new institutional theory, the strategic theory or perspective or others such as the transaction cost theory or the agency theory, applied to the context of internationalization and to the field of international business, on whose integration the future development of this field may largely depend.     

Collaborative business models: Aligning and operationalizing alliances

It is not unusual for companies to generate substantial revenue through alliances. However, alliance failure rates are high, leaving much revenue at risk and value unrealized. The big challenge facing managers is to align company interests with alliance interests. Such alignment can only be achieved when executives pay considerable attention to building the right collaborative business model. In this article, we synthesize the insights of the existing literature to arrive at three collaborative business models—sharing, specialization, and allocation—that managers can use to address the specific requirements of their alliances. Because the literature provides limited insight regarding how to operationalize these models, we highlight what managers need to focus on when operationalizing each of these models. We find that the choice for an overall business model is relatively straightforward in most cases but that operationalization of business models requires more complex combinations of management techniques. Finally, we show how the three collaborative business models can be combined to build hybrid models.     

The Neutrality Illusion: Biased Economics,Biased Training,and Biased Monetary Policy. Testing the Role of Ideology on FOMC Voting Behaviour

This research is trying to shed light on two myths that are usually widespread: the first one being the idea of the academic economist as a neutral scientist finding uncontestable consensual truths, thanks to uncontestable empirical methods, the second, the idea of the central banker as a Weberian neutral bureaucrat setting aside personal beliefs to act mechanically for the common good. Deconstructing this ‘neutrality illusion’, this work argues that economics is actually a divided and ideologically marked discipline despite its aim at natural-science-type-legitimacy. It argues in a related discussion that such ideological bias also impedes a purely neutral conduct of monetary policy, undermining the very idea of central bank independence. Linking these two arguments, it argues that graduate training in economics is the first place for the formation of biased preferences, because of the substantial ideological sorting that exists across universities. Using a unique database on FOMC members’ votes and ideology, the paper tests this idea empirically and despite unavoidable caveats, finds robust evidence of a systematic impact of the ideological features of their alma mater on FOMC members’ voting behaviour – impact that we found more important than the other traditional determinants of central bankers’ actions.     

Ethnic discrimination in hiring,labour market tightness and the business cycle - evidence from field experiments

Several studies using observational data suggest that ethnic discrimination increases in downturns of the economy. We investigate whether ethnic discrimination depends on labour market tightness using data from correspondence studies. We utilize three correspondence studies of the Swedish labour market and two different measures of labour market tightness. These two measures produce qualitatively similar results, and, opposite to the observational studies, suggest that ethnic discrimination in hiring decreases in downturns of the economy.     

企业孵化器国际研究的知识图谱分析

以Web of Science核心合集中收录的1990-2019年710篇企业孵化器相关文献为研究对象,基于CiteSpace可视化分析工具,绘制知识图谱。通过文献的时空分布,文献共被引分析,关键词共现网络分析等了解企业孵化器国际研究的概况、知识基础和研究热点。结果显示,企业孵化器国际研究发文量在近3年出现爆发式增长；知识基础大致可以分为两类：企业孵化器的作用和发展研究,对企业孵化器绩效的评估。研究热点主要集中在四个方面：企业孵化器绩效评价,企业孵化器绩效的影响因素分析,孵化网络与资源流动,孵化器对中小企业成长的影响。并提出对企业孵化器研究的未来展望。     

体外孵化项目的合法会计信息失真研究——以爱尔眼科为例

新经济、新业态的发展,新商业模式不断涌现,会计信息生产者按已有的会计准则和职业判断进行确认、计量、记录和报告,路径依赖下的会计处理程序可能会形成合法性信息失真。体外孵化成为企业扩张的加速器,也是隐藏风险的“雷”,目前的会计处理程序展现了一份资产、利润都高速增长的财务报表,而交易的风险可能被隐匿。本文以运用并购基金实现体外孵化的典型案例爱尔眼科作为研究对象,通过阐述体外孵化项目投资逻辑,分析复杂的商业交易造成控制权的模糊,致使其会计信息未反映经济实质以及内含的风险,以此提示信息使用者以及为监管层提供政策建议,当前会计准则和规范滞后商业模式发展,相关部门应该更关注市场的新商业模式以及其会计处理程序和信息披露监管。