New perspectives on East Asian leadership in the age of globalization: local grounding and historical comparisons in the Asia Pacific region

ABSTRACT

Many management and leadership studies have traditionally been dominated by Western theories, perspectives and cases. Non-Western leadership requires additional caveats in arriving at generalizations. The theoretical trap of conceiving Asian corporations either as irrelevant concerning leadership effectiveness or as maintaining only culturally determined leadership derives from the lack of historical understanding of Asian cases. Our collection used both historical and contemporary cases of Japan, South Korea and China to show that these Asian economies have tried to some extent balance their traditional norms and values of leadership with those from the West. A key to understanding Asia is that all three countries have historically pursued leadership mandates in running both public and private corporations, although ‘corrupt’ leadership practices were also rampant during different historical periods. Further studies of leadership in non-Western cases are necessary to devise methodological and theoretical alternatives to Western-centric perspectives. In our collection, we analysed how a dynamic and evolutionary view of leadership fared in its attempt to clarify some of the conundrums surrounding East Asian leadership. From our results, it is indicated that historical and comparative methods must accompany any analysis of leadership.     

The effects of power on consumers’ evaluation of a luxury brand's corporate social responsibility

This paper examines how power affects consumers’ responses to corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives of luxury brands. The results of three studies show that high‐power individuals evaluated a luxury brand's CSR campaign more positively than low‐power individuals. High‐power individuals viewed CSR activities as being more fluent than low‐power individuals. This study further demonstrates that power influences consumers’ responses to nonluxury brand's CSR activities. Low‐power individuals, who are more receptive to warmth, evaluated nonluxury brand's CSR more favorably rather than high‐power individuals.     

Does economic performance affect officials’ turnover? Evidence from municipal government leaders in China

As is well known, Chinese central government has full authority to determine the provincial and local officials’ turnover. However, China has not in detail interpreted the standards of officials’ promotions so far. In this paper, the latest database of city-level leaders for the period between 2002 and 2013 is utilized to investigate the influences of economic performance on party secretaries’ odds of being promoted. The estimation results by a panel multinomial logit method indicate that municipal annual GDP per capita is significantly positively associated with leaders’ chances of promotion. Specifically, the average GDP growth rates during leaders’ tenures have much higher effects. Moreover, some important factors of leaders’ personal characteristics also affect the political turnover. For instance, party secretaries’ connection with China’s Communist Youth League, political experience, educational level and professional expertise all have positive impacts on their chances of obtaining a promotion. In contrast, leaders’ ages and tenures are found to be negatively related to their promotion possibilities.

     

Determinants of students’ entrepreneurial intention to compete in a fast-pitch competition

Despite the heightened popularity of entrepreneurship education, there remain open questions regarding best practices in co-curricular programs. Using the theory of planned behavior, the authors examine how students’ intention is shaped to increase the likelihood of participation in entrepreneurship co-curricular programs. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to examine the relation between entrepreneurial identity and entrepreneurial intention theory. They find the popular personality trait, openness, is related to ambition, which reveals the interaction between personal elements (personality/identity) and contextual elements (aspirations to success/intention), a novel finding in the literature. This further illustrates the interconnectedness between the theory of planned behavior and the entrepreneurial event model     

Personalized goal-based investing via multi-stage stochastic goal programming

In this paper, we propose a goal-based investment model that is suitable for personalized wealth management. The model only requires a few intuitive inputs such as size of wealth, investment amount, and consumption goals from individual investors. In particular, a priority level can be assigned to each consumption goal and the model provides a holistic solution based on a sequential approach starting with the highest priority. This allows strict prioritization by maximizing the probability of achieving higher priority goals that are not affected by goals with lower priorities. Furthermore, the proposed model is formulated as a linear program that efficiently finds the optimal financial plan. With its simplicity, flexibility, and computational efficiency, the proposed goal-based investment model provides a new framework for automated investment management services.     

High accruals momentum

We examine the information content of high accruals momentum defined as a string of high discretionary accruals for four consecutive years. We find that firms that consistently report high levels of discretionary accruals experience low subsequent returns. The results are robust after we control for annual levels of discretionary accruals for the estimation period of high accruals momentum. Furthermore, the predictive power of the high accruals momentum for future returns is strongly persistent even after the existing accruals anomaly disappears. Our results also show that the high accruals momentum impact is more pronounced for low growth firms, suggesting that the overpricing of stocks with high accruals momentum is driven by managerial discretion to manage earnings.     

Assessment of the environmental sustainability of restaurants in the U.S.: The effects of restaurant characteristics on environmental sustainability performance

ABSTRACT

This paper investigated the current levels of environmental sustainability in restaurants across the U.S. to determine whether a restaurant’s proclivity for environmental sustainability depended on its characteristics such as chain affiliation or restaurant type.

A web-based survey was administered to 2,500 top-level restaurant managers, from which a total of 218 responses were judged as usable. The data were analyzed using independent

sample t-tests and ANOVA. This study presents an in-depth account of the environmental sustainability in restaurants across the U.S. based on an evaluation of top-level managers. This study also highlights the differences in restaurant environmental sustainability across different restaurant segments.     

‘A Comparison of the Contents of the Codes of Ethics of Canada’s Largest Corporations in 1992 and 2003’

This paper compares the findings of content analyses of the corporate codes of ethics of Canada’s largest corporations in 1992 and 2003. For both years, a modified version of a technique used in several other studies was used to determine and categorize the contents of the codes. It was found, inter alia, that, in 2003, as in 1992, more of the codes were concerned with conduct against the firm than with conduct on behalf of the firm. Among the changes from 1992 to 2003 were a significant increase in the frequency of mention of environmental affairs, legal responsibility as the basis of codes and enforcement/compliance procedures.     

后配额时代我国服装出口环境分析

我国是目前世界上最大的服装出口国,在服装生产和出口方面有着相当大的优势,但由于受到部分发达国家配额的限制,对这些国家的服装出口受到很大制约。自2005年1月1日起,这些发达国家取消了对纺织品的配额限制,为我国服装出口带来了新的机遇,也带来许多新挑战。本文先运用国别结构、贸易偏斜指数和贸易引力模型来衡量配额的影响,然后就配额取消后可能遇到的问题进行分析并提出对策。     

Selling trust in cyber space: social networking service (SNS) providers and social capital amongst netizens in South Korea

Abstract

Apart from excessive bonding amongst co-ethnics, social capital studies have sparsely discussed the negative effects of social capital, including excessive collective actions towards downward social mobility (e.g. imprisonment of social and political elites). As Bourdieu has noted, social capital can conflate problems of upward social mobility through various glass ceilings in the reproduction of elite power groups. However, it is also important to notice that less fortunate groups can debunk the dominant elite social network by participating excessively in social networking service (SNS) platforms, where they exchange distorted information about the elites to organize collective actions towards their downward social mobility. Gleaned from the recent cases of ferry sinking and candlelight vigilance in South Korea, SNS providers can sell trust in cyber space that can be easily transformed into social capital for collective character assassinations, political demonstrations, and economic sabotages at workplace. Based on the big data gathered from Naver, one of the leading SNS providers in South Korea, we find that Naver provides SNS users with a rare opportunity to encounter myriad opinion groups who will over time converge into one or two similar opinion groups that can be easily mobilized towards collective actions. Selling trust in cyber space on the internet and mobile devices is a unique commercial development in South Korea and its neighbouring countries, including Japan and Taiwan.