Perspectives on International Distribution:

A classification framework is derived from Hunt's Four Fundamental Explananda. The last five years of research in international distribution are then examined and classified within this framework. Using this research classification, areas lacking a strong research concentration are examined. Propositions on international distribution are made, and areas of potential research focus are identified.     

The Large Family Firm in Twentieth-Century France

This survey of family capitalism in twentieth-century France demonstrates that, by using alternatives to managerial structures, especially the holding company, families were able to reconcile expansion with personalised control, without sacrificing efficiency. This article demonstrates that familial control, most usually associated with the staple industries, also persisted in new industrial sectors and in retailing in the inter-war period and into the post-war era. Since by the inter-war period many of the firms in these sectors were large in terms of employment, levels of integration and capitalisation, it appears that personal capitalism should not always be equated with stagnation and conservatism: This survey also shows that the decline of family ownership and control in large-scale companies was not always the product of the quest for scale economies. Indeed, by highlighting the contrasting economic and sometimes political pressures facing firms in a range of sectors, it demonstrates how difficult it is to provide any general explanation of a loss of familycontrol.     

The Common Good of the Firm and Humanistic Management: Conscious Capitalism and Economy of Communion

This study examines corporate stakeholder orientation (CSO) across industries and over time prior to the introduction of mandatory CSR. We argue that CSO is a legitimacy signal consciously employed by firms to demonstrate their shareholder and specific non-shareholder orientations in the midst of institutional pressures emerging from country and industry contexts. Using a 7-code index of CSO on CEO–shareholder communications from India, we find that in general large firms in India exhibit a pre-dominant, significant and rising trend of pro-shareholder orientation in the six-year period immediately preceding the CSR law. Yet, we uncover significant industry differences in CSO potentially driven by four key factors: the degree of competitive dynamics, nature of products and services, extent of negative externalities and social activism, and exposure to international markets. Our findings support the view that while some minimum threshold of regulatory intervention is required to balance the interests of business with society, legislation raises questions in relation to the usefulness of a uniform one-size-fits-all CSR across all industries.     

国际多元化与企业绩效关系之元分析

通过对包含105个效应值、1 264 724个总样本量的分布于Association of Business Schools (ABS) Academic Journal Guide 2015年期刊排名3区和4区的58篇相互独立实证研究的元分析,本研究探究了企业绩效在多大程度上与国际多元化有关,潜在影响因素是否对国际多元化与企业绩效关系具有调节作用。研究结果表明:国际多元化与企业绩效呈显著的正相关关系,且这种正相关关系具有高度情景依赖性;基于数据的可用性与可靠性,本研究从资源观视角归纳出了企业内部异质资源、外部环境、测量与方法因素等三方面的潜在影响变量,结果显示各影响因素的作用程度不尽相同。这表明国际多元化与企业绩效关系受企业异质性、全球经济稳定性、国家竞争优势、研究方法和测量标准的影响。     

The Phenomenon of Substantive Conflict in the Family Firm: A Cross-Generational Study

This study investigates the influence that family members exert on the extent and frequency of substantive conflict within family firms across generations as a result of their familial relationship (distance) with the owner/manager of the firm and the positions these family members occupy in the family work group and social (non-work) group. Following Beckhard and Dyer (1983), the construct of substantive conflict was vested in four key issues pertinent to family firms: (1) ownership continuity or change; (2) executive leadership continuity or change; (3) power and asset distribution; and (4) management's vision for the role of the firm in society. The results establish a relationship between conflict in a family business and the composition of the family's work group, non-work (social) group, and the extensiveness of the family's social interactions. The relationships between conflict and family influence were found to be moderated by the generations (first, second, third, or later) among involved family businesses.     

Time Perspectives in International Joint Ventures:

This paper recognizes a new era for international joint ventures (IJVs) in which venturers must agree to center the venture's efforts in developing new products, regardless of its previous primary purpose. After the reasons behind the cyclical evolution in the purposes and motivations of the venturers is reviewed, the paper argues that time is a multi-dimensional variable which every organization enacts in a unique fashion. IJVs must entrain the respective time reckoning systems of the partners if the venture is to avoid strategic and operational difficulties. Assuming that the venturers' temporal asymmetry yields asynchrony in the venture, the venturers' divergent time horizons are used to demonstrate the likely impact on marketing issues. This concept extends the literature on problems unique to IJVs by identifying an element which will help assess the compatibility of potential IJV partners throughout the life cycle of the venture's industry as well as provide a neutral issue on which all entities may operate for better results in all phases of the industry's life cycle.     

中国家族企业管理创新

管理创新是指企业在现有资源的基础上,充分发挥人的积极性和创造性,通过一种新的方式来整合企业的资源,并能有效地加以实施,以达到管理效益最大化的动态过程。根据中国家族企业存在的管理障碍,中国家族企业管理创新应将新的管理要素引入企业管理系统,以更有效地实现组织目标的创新。     

Firm Experience and International Trade Fairs

This paper examines the behaviour of firms at international trade fairs (ITF). It advances the idea that prior ITF exhibiting experience shapes practice and performance. ITF usage is used as a proxy for experience and two groups identified—"heavy users" and "light users." Propositions are developed and tested on data collected from 303 Canadian companies. Key findings are that (1) fair selection practices appear to differ only marginally between heavy and light ITF users, whereas (2) exhibit planning and management practices, and (3) performance levels, differ sharply between heavy and light ITF users. Thus, experience impacts on ITF planning and management practices, and on performance levels, but less so on ITF selection.     

Firm Size and Geographical Aggregation: An Empirical Appraisal in Industrial Location

This paper assesses empirically the importance of size discrimination and disaggregate data for deciding where to locate a start-up concern. We compare three econometric specifications using Catalan data: a multinomial logit with 4 and 41 alternatives (provinces and comarques, respectively) in which firm size is the main covariate; a conditional logit with 4 and 41 alternatives including attributes of the sites as well as size-site interactions; and a Poisson model on the comarques and the full spatial choice set (942 municipalities) with site-specific variables. Our results suggest that if these two issues are ignored, conclusions may be misleading. We provide evidence that large and small firms behave differently and conclude that Catalan firms tend to choose between comarques rather than between municipalities. Moreover, labour-intensive firms seem more likely to be located in the city of Barcelona.     

外资并购与我国产业安全:综述及研究展望

20世纪90年代以来,我国外资并购呈现出快速发展的态势。学术界对于外资并购在企业发展、产业安全和经济安全中的作用一直存在很大的争议。目前的大部分研究着眼于宏观层面的分析,而对于产业层面与企业层面的经济安全研究的较少。本文在系统回顾与评述了国内外代表性文献与观点的基础上指出,未来的研究需要从静态研究扩展到动态研究、从定性分析扩展到定量分析、从宏观分析扩展到微观分析。涵盖微观、中观、宏观的多层次研究是今后进一步研究的重点与难点之所在。     

Faculty Perspectives on International Accounting Topics

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study was to provide insight as to the relative importance of various international accounting topics. A survey of all accounting professors listing an international specialization in the Accounting Faculty Directory was conducted in the fall 1991. The findings should be helpful in the design of an accounting course or curriculum regarding international issues.     

Fairness in International Trade and Investment: North American Perspectives

In this article, we examine an important but relatively under-researched form of corporate social responsibility, namely, employer support for employee voluntary activity. Using Canadian data, we examine two questions. First, we analyze the impacts of employer support on the total number of hours volunteered and on the voluntary activities which are undertaken. Second, we examine how employer support is distributed between male and female employees. Our results indicate that employer support is associated with a greater amount of volunteer activity by both men and women employees and in a wide range of voluntary activities. However, we also find that women are less likely to receive employer support than men and are less likely to receive support in the form of flexible work hours and time-off. These results are puzzling given that women typically face more binding time constraints than men. We conclude the paper by discussing how employer policies might be changed to address this finding.     

Reassessing Firm Size in International Marketing Research

This study investigates the relevance and importance of firm size as a current research variable in international marketing while being cognizant of the reasons behind previous researcher's focus on firm size. Utilizing two different databases and analyses, this study integrates existing research on the effects of firm size variables on decisions in international marketing and draws a general conclusion. The main research questions center on whether firm size matters in internationalization decisions and whether firm size is a meaningful proxy for specific firm resources. Our results suggest that the effect of size on internationalization becomes less significant over time and that the effect of firm size on choice of ownership is significantly less than that of other firm-specific variables such as R&D intensity and advertising intensity, suggesting that strategic international marketing decisions are more related to a firm's unique assets than to its size.     

Women Entrepreneurs and Family Firm Heterogeneity: Evidence from an Emerging Economy

Family firms add to the economic and social well-being of countries. While research on heterogeneity of family firms is gaining momentum, it has mostly been gender-neutral. The study fills this gap by examining heterogeneity of family firms owned and managed by women, in the context of a developing country—Brazil. The study draws upon the resource-based view of the firm to investigate the relationships between firm performance, family involvement, and financial resources at the start-up phase. An inductive analysis reveals two patterns. First, family firms that are started with the family achieve better performance than firms that are launched without the family and later evolve into a family business. Second, family firms that are funded with women entrepreneur’s own savings achieve worse performance than family firms that are started with borrowed funds. The results are useful for strategic decision making in fostering family businesses headed by women and proactive public policies for future innovation to enhance the success of women entrepreneurs.     

International Advertising Strategies by NIC Multinationals: The Case of a Korean Firm

Managers of new brands seek to leverage positive WOM and establish a critical mass of consumers who interact with their brands on social network sites (SNSs). Effective selection of ‘seeds’, or influencers, on SNSs, who will recommend the product and leverage the power of their social networks to influence other consumers is key to organic growth. This research examines the role of an influencer’s activity on a social network website (network size, membership duration, share-of-posts), brand message source (marketergenerated versus member-generated), and recipient type (SNS member versus nonmember) on an influencer’s decision to recommend a new brand and the recipient’s decision to make a referral visit. Empirical analyses of clickstream data from SNSs at a commercial website show that marketer- and consumer-generated brand ads differ in their impact on recommending propensity for high share-of-posts and long-term influencers, and for member and non-member recipients, which has implications for referral management.     

国际市场进入模式选择与企业异质性：一个文献综述

生产率差异是决定企业国际市场进入模式选择的重要因素。本文通过梳理近年来异质性企业贸易与投资文献,阐释了企业如何在贸易、水平型FDI、垂直型FDI和复合型FDI之间进行选择以及选择FDI的企业会采取何种进入方式的问题。现有的异质性企业贸易与投资模型较好地解释了发达国家的经验事实,但在企业异质性的来源、消费者需求结构以及发展中国家的市场扭曲等方面,异质性企业贸易和投资模型仍需进一步深入研究。     

Firm Growth and FDI: Are Multinationals Stimulating Local Industrial Development?

The aim of this paper is to improve our understanding of the empirical determinants of firm growth by extending the literature to include a new group of variables related to foreign direct investment (FDI), namely the degree of foreign ownership and technology spillovers. Based on recent developments in the field, our analysis also encompasses the role of sunk costs and financial constraints, while quantile regression techniques are adopted as more suitable to the data available (2,640 manufacturing firms operating in Greece in the 1992–1997 period). Our findings highlight the role of FDI in increasing firm growth with varying intensity depending on industry groups and regression quantiles, and vindicate the use of new variables.     

International Acquisitions,Domestic Competition and Firm Performance

This paper investigates the impact of foreign acquisition on domestic firm productivity. In contrast to previous studies it applies a difference‐in‐differences methodology based on a matched panel of firms in order to trace out such changes. It finds evidence of significant positive productivity effects following acquisition by US and European multinationals, at least in technology importing industries. Higher productivity gains are achieved the more competitive the industry in which acquisition occurs.     

家族控股、终极所有权与企业绩效——来自我国上市公司的经验证据

借鉴Driffield等(2007)的研究方法,运用终极产权论追踪上市公司的终极控股股东,分析我国家族企业金字塔结构下的控股股东和终极所有权对企业绩效的影响。研究发现:第一大股东持股比例与企业绩效呈倒U型关系,第二至五大股东持股比例之和与企业绩效呈U型关系;家族上市公司的企业绩效与家族控股股东的控制权负相关,与现金流权正相关,与超控制权负相关;另外,家族上市公司的企业绩效与是否委派管理层负相关,与董事长与总经理是否合一负相关。同时,按家族控股股东的控制权大小分组检验也得到了类似的结论。