Design from Life

＂移动新主张＂绝不仅仅是汽车设计问题,我们需要解决运输、交通,即是大城市上下班出行、人们生活进一步提高后的郊游等整个交通系统问题。     

Fiber from Plants,Not Petroleum

Since the dawn of synthetic fiber technology, traditional man-made fiber (MMF), such as polyester, polyurethane or polypropylene, have found widespread acceptance across a broad range of applications, in woven, knit, and non-woven forms, and in both apparel and industrial end-uses. Whereas, as the pressure from petroleum resource and environment protection become more serious, the petroleum-based industry would confront more embarrassment and difficulties for the sustainable development in the…     

What China Can Learn from US Branding Strategies

Chinese textile industry is a fledgling in terms of brands strategy, not yet able to flap its wings in all-weather climates of international market. How to build up a good brand to be a great company or to have a successful firm with a great brand is of primary concern if China continues to take the lead in the coming days, not satisfied with its status quo as OEM supplier.     

How Much Do Employers Learn from Referrals?

This paper tests the hypothesis that referrals from various sources provide employers with more information about job applicants than they would have with‐out a referral. The study uses data that contain information on two workers in the same job, allowing the differences in job and firm characteristics to be canceled out and controlling for the possibility that workers with referrals from different sources (or no referral at all) sort into jobs that put different weights on individual performance. The estimation results are consistent with referrals from current employees providing employers with more information than they would have otherwise. Additionally, it appears as though hiring through friends or relatives of the employer may involve some favoritism that results in employers either collecting less information than they would otherwise or ignoring information when setting wages. The study finds weak evidence consistent with referrals from other firms or labor unions providing useful information, and no evidence that referrals from community organizations or other sources have any effect.     

De-facto standardization through alliances—lessons from Bluetooth

This paper discusses standardization of information and communications technologies. Standardization has become a domain of firm strategizing with information and communication technology standards being increasingly created through semi-open alliances. The paper analyzes the strategic logic of such standardization alliances based on an in-depth case study of the Bluetooth initiative. Similar to other successful standards described in the standardization literature, Bluetooth has been rapidly adopted by a large number of companies. The author argues that at least part of the success is due to the structure and design of the standardization alliance that promoted Bluetooth.     

The Biggest Weaving Machines Order from North Italy

The ITEMA Group, the world leader in textile machinery has signed the biggest supply of 1,500 weaving machines in the Chinese market on the 11th May, 2006.     

Does Buyer Experience Pay Off? Evidence from eBay

This study explores the relationship between buyer experience and final price in Internet auctions for a homogenous product. We find that more experienced buyers are able to purchase a homogenous product at lower prices, on average, compared to relatively less experienced buyers. The findings are robust to how we account for instances when auctions fail to result in a sale or when they end via the “Buy it Now” option. This result supports findings from the experimental auction literature on auction performance and experience using real auction data.     

Do Occupational Regulations Increase Earnings? Evidence from China

We examine the influence of occupational certification and licensing in China. In the empirical analysis, we find that licensing is associated with an average of 15 percent higher wages and certification with a 13–14 percent higher wage based on ordinary least squares estimates. However, using propensity score and instrumental variable estimates suggests that part of the positive effect of certification on wages is due to self‐selection. In addition, the characteristics of a certificate or license, such as the type and quantity, further influence wage determination in China.     

Do Recessions Transform Work and Employment? Evidence from Ireland

Two contrasting views tend to dominate the literature on the impact of recessions on employment. One view is that recessions amount to a ‘critical conjuncture’ for work and employment systems, a time when firms try to transform radically existing employment models. The alternative perspective is that firms, constrained mostly by the forces of path dependency, seek to adjust to the immediate or short‐term pressures of the recession but otherwise maintain the established way of organizing the employment relationship. The purpose of this article is to contribute to this literature by reporting the findings of a major study of the effects of the recession on work and employment in firms based in Ireland. The main finding to emerge from the study is that firms mostly have made improvised adaptations in response to the crisis and have shied away from far‐reaching transformational strategies.     

Is regulatory adoption ceremonial? Evidence from lead director appointments

Research Summary: Regulatory bodies often wrestle with the thorny question of whether to mandate a governance practice or allow for organic adoption. While mandates afford rapid diffusion, we theorize that they also result in ceremonial adoptions. Leveraging a quasi‐natural experiment, we compare adoption outcomes for a governance practice—lead director adoption—that was mandated by the NYSE but not the NASDAQ. We find that NYSE firms are more likely than NASDAQ firms to have installed a lead director as a symbolic management tactic, so their lead directors are less effectual. We also find that transient institutional investors are deceived by this symbolic management, but dedicated institutional investors are not. Managerial Summary: Shareholders and analysts often desire to see companies introduce strict governance measures, such as proxy access and independent boards. Consequently, regulatory bodies often wrestle with the thorny issue of whether and when to mandate such practices for all companies. What they might not realize is that mandates may not work as well as they seem. Although more companies adopt reform under a mandate, they do so merely as a symbolic gesture. We look at one governance reform—appointing a lead director—finding that companies who introduce this reform as a result of a mandate appoint someone that is relatively toothless. We also find, though, that savvy investors are not actually fooled by this tactic and will trade out of firms that attempt such symbolic management.     

Regulatory Risk and Market Reactions — Empirical Evidence from Germany

In this article we measure the effects of events on risk and return and analyze the persistence of the influencing variables on German energy companies. Therefore, we refer to event-study methods by means of the Capital Asset Pricing Model, GARCH-Modeling and Kalman filters. We find that the discussed events do not affect all companies in an equal manner. Moreover, we show that the impact on risk and returns is not persistent and does not lead to an increase in the overall systematic risk for the considered utility operators in Germany.     

Is the Erosion Thesis Overblown? Alignment from Without in Germany

It is sometimes alleged that collective bargaining coverage in Germany is understated because uncovered firms “orient” themselves toward sectoral agreements. In fact, although orientation has grown as sectoral bargaining has declined, their joint frequency has fallen. Further, where orientation occurs at firms that leave a sectoral agreement, it provides only partial compensation. The small deficits involved, in conjunction with some indirect evidence on joiners, suggest some modest attenuation of the undoubted decline in collective bargaining.     

How Do Firms Finance Nonprimary Market Investments? Evidence from REITs

This study explores the impact of investment characteristics, mainly investment location relative to the firm's primary market, on financing choices by real estate investment trusts (REITs). Using a large sample of commercial property acquisitions, we show that REITs are 4–8% less likely to use secured (mortgage) debt when acquiring properties in their primary markets than elsewhere. The documented evidence supports a demand‐side story for the relation between investment characteristics and financing. Moreover, the evidence is consistent with the hypothesis that REITs avoid mortgage financing in their primary markets to preserve operational flexibility in those markets.     

Are incentives without expertise sufficient? Evidence from fortune 500 firms

Agency theory predicts that incentives will align agents' interests with those of principals. However, the resource‐based view suggests that to be effective, the incentive to deliver must be paired with the ability to deliver. Using Fortune 500 boards as an empirical context, this study shows that the presence of directors who lack top‐level experience but own large shareholdings is negatively associated with firm value, an effect that increases in the number of such directors. Firm value rises after such directors depart from boards, with the greatest increases occurring when many of these directors leave. While agency theory highlights the importance of the right incentives being in place, this research suggests that this can be ineffective if the right resources are not also in place. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Does Asian management research need more self-confidence? Reflections from Russia

This commentary on Klaus Meyer’s article, “Asian Management Research Needs More Self-confidence,” in the Asia Pacific Journal of Management (2006), discusses the need for Asian management research to look beyond the pressures for publication in top-tier, Western scholarly academic journals. We reflect on our nearly two decades of research on Russian management to illustrate many of Meyer’s ideas and insights in a different transition economy. We support his call for more context-specific research that can also offer contributions to global management knowledge as well as indigenous management practice.

Improving developing country food security through aquaculture development—lessons from Asia

This paper provides a framework for examining aquaculture’s linkages to food and nutritional security by elucidating key hypotheses concerning the role of aquaculture in household food and income systems in developing countries. Taking examples from developing Asia, where aquaculture showed a steady growth over the last decade, the implications of aquaculture development are examined from the standpoint of its impact on employment, income and consumption. Analysis revealed clear evidence of positive income and consumption effects of aquaculture on households. However, employment effects are still not significant. The context of targeting small-scale and subsistence-oriented farmers as a means of improving food security in the developing countries has also been analyzed by identifying key socio-economic and policy factors affecting aquaculture adoption and its impact on the poor. The paper concludes that national policies for aquaculture development will need to concurrently address the food security and poverty questions more sharply than has been done at present, by providing institutional and infrastructure support for access to resources such as land and water and to markets by poor households. Finally, more empirical evidence should be collected on the varied opportunities aquaculture would provide to improve the income, employment and food consumption levels within households.     

When does transitioning from family to professional management improve firm performance?

Using long‐term data on Japanese family firms, this study explores when the transition from family to professional management leads to better performance. In order to avoid endogeneity bias, we employ propensity score matching and difference‐in‐differences techniques. We find evidence that firms that transition from family to professional CEOs outperform those that maintain family leadership. This performance improvement is more pronounced when (1) families maintain high ownership control but leave no family legacy behind, (2) when the transition moves from non‐founder family managers to professionals, and (3) when professional managers graduated from elite universities. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Consequences of “Consideration Payments”: Lessons from Radio Payola

The prohibition of radio payola in 1960 gives us an opportunity to examine the effect that “consideration payments” had on the record labels that used them and on overall product variety. Using a historical Billboard chart data, we find that the prohibition of payola reduced musical variety and overall record sales, but may have helped increase access for smaller record labels. These findings support the theory that payola payments, which may impose a non-trivial financial burden on the record label, serve to reduce the radio station’s risk.