The Selection of Distribution Channels in China

This contribution first traces the development of the distribution system in China from state monopoly to one which permits the limited participation of foreign ventures, and examines the problems faced by foreign investors in managing the distribution channels under such a transitional economy. Due to China's abundance of linguistic, cultural and economic differences, combined with growing territorialism at the provincial level, different problems may be encountered in different citieslregions, and therefore foreign investors need to modify their distribution strategies accordingly. Detailed case studies are provided as illustrations.     

Firm Resources and Corporate Venturing Investment

Corporate venturing (CV) in which established firms invest in new entrepreneurial businesses involves identifying opportunities and creating new combinations of resources to seize opportunities. Moving beyond literature that has focused predominantly on the consequences of CV, we adopt a resource‐based view to examine how knowledge‐based and organizational‐slack resources relate to the level of firm CV. The implications of the findings for future research are discussed. Copyright © 2011 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Correlations between external knowledge and the knowledge chain as impacting service quality

Service Quality continues to be a major concern amongst consumers. As a result, in order to provide the continuous improvement of service quality that will lead to consumer satisfaction, this study explores the impact of external knowledge and knowledge chain on service quality. The results of this study found that absorptive capacity of the external knowledge is indeed an important source of competitive advantage. Hence, enterprises should apply the knowledge chain in order to gather external knowledge from customers, suppliers and competitors, as well as transforming the knowledge to enhance their service quality.     

Exploring the Influence of Organizational Ethical Climate on Knowledge Management

In recent years, knowledge management has been utilized as an essential strategy to foster the creation of organizational intellectual capital. Organizational intellectual capital can be derived both individually and collectively in the process to create, store, share, acquire, and apply personal and organizational knowledge. However, some organizations only focus on the development of public good, despite the concerns arising from individuals’ self-interest or possible risks. The different concern of individual and collective perspectives toward knowledge management inevitably leads to ethical conflicts and ethical culture in the organization (Jarvenpaa et al., J Manage Inf Syst 14(4):29–64, 1998; Ruppel and Harrington, IEEE Trans Prof Commun 44(1):37–52, 2000). The purpose of this study is to examine the ethical climate within the organization and its possible influence on members’ evaluation, satisfaction, engagement, and job performance with respect to knowledge management practice. The research results reveal that several types of organizational ethical climate coexist in the organization and have different degrees of influence on employees’ attitude as well as participation in knowledge management activities. In this article, we argue the importance of organizational ethical climate and highlight the implications of such a climate for facilitating knowledge management.     

RETRACTED ARTICLE: Modern Business Ethics Research: Concepts,Theories, and Relationships

The main purpose of this study is to explore and map the intellectual structure of business ethics studies during 1997–2006 by analyzing 85,000 cited references of 3,059 articles from three business ethics related journals in SSCI and SCI databases. In this article, co-citation analysis and social network analysis techniques are used to research intellectual structure of the business ethics literature. We are able to identify the important publications and the influential scholars as well as the correlations among these publications by analyzing citation and co-citation. Three factors emerged in this study are: (1) ethical/unethical decision making, (2) corporate governance and firm performance, and (3) ethical principles and code of conduct.     

The Relationship between Federal Deficits and Real Interest Rates

Real interest rates fluctuated a great deal since the 1970s. In the 1980s federal deficits accelerated and their impact on both nominal and real interest rates gained lots of attention. Based on monthly and quarterly data from January 1971 to December 1997 it is found that federal deficits had significant positive effect on the real interest rates: Personal income or consumption are found to have significant positive impact on the real interest rates, whereas expected inflation and money supply are found to have negative impact on the real interest rates. These findings are consistent with the conventional economic theory.     

Enterprise Bargaining and Productivity in Australia: What do We Know?

There appears to be widespread consensus, at least in industry and government, that enterprise bargaining has been beneficial for productivity. Many academics, however, have argued that the link between bargaining structure and workplace productivity is a contentious one, and that research has been unable to establish a relationship. The present paper re-examines the existing evidence. The review reinforces the need to exercise caution before asserting that enterprise bargaining is necessarily beneficial for workplace productivity. The main conclusion that emanates from this review, however, is not the absence of a clear-cut finding, but how poorly developed the relevant research literature is.     

Top Management Team Characteristics and Accrual-Based Earnings Management

This study examines how top management team (TMT) knowledge and average tenure affect accrual-based earnings management by investigating 4791 Taiwanese listed companies from 2006 to 2010. TMT members with more knowledge (higher education level, more accounting expertise, and greater prior top management experience) and longer average tenure have better performances and higher reputations, and are more aware of the litigation costs of earnings manipulations; therefore, they reduce managers' incentives to manage earnings (incentive-reduction effect). On the other hand, these TMT members are also likely to become entrenched and engage in more earnings manipulations (entrenchment-enhancing effect). The empirical results show that firms' TMT knowledge and average tenure are negatively associated with discretionary accruals, suggesting that the incentive-reduction effect is stronger than the entrenchment-enhancing effect, which makes TMT members less likely to engage in earnings management. Moreover, the above results are robust when employing different earnings management measures and suspect firm analyses, as well as considering endogeneity issues. Finally, the study suggests that the presence of a founding family may reduce the influences of TMT knowledge and average tenure on earnings management.