A multivariate statistical analysis of the characteristics of problem firms in Hong Kong

This paper presents a two-group discriminant analysis of the characteristics of problem firms in Hong Kong. The purpose of this study is to identify and describe the common financial characteristics which distinguish problem firms from nonproblem firms.Benjamin Y.K. Tai is a Professor at the Department of Accountancy, California State University, Fresno. Lawrence S.T. Tai is a Lecturer at the Department of Accounting & Finance, The Chinese University of Hong Kong.     

Adjustment of Western Business Expatriates in Hong Kong Versus the Chinese Mainland

Business expatriates assigned to Hong Kong and the Chinese mainland, mostly from Western Europe and North America, responded to a survey assessing the extent of sociocultural and psychological adjustment. As expected, results showed that the expatriates were better socioculturally adjusted to Hong Kong than the Chinese mainland, whereas no difference was found for psychological adjustment between the two samples. Examining the adjustment of different nationalities it was found that French business expatriates were less well socioculturally adjusted both in Hong Kong and the Chinese mainland than their British and U.S. counterparts. Practical implications of these findings for business expatriates as well as for their firms are discussed and future avenues for extending research of this nature is explored.     

Causality of interest rate,exchange rate and stock prices at stock market open and close in Hong Kong

By an ARIMA approach and verified by the Granger causality tests, the causality of daily interest rate, exchange rate and stock prices in Hong Kong were explored for the period 1986 to 1991. Depending on the subperiods being considered, sporadic unidirectional causality from closing stock prices to interest rate, and weak bi-directional causality between stock prices and the exchange rate were found. The overall evidence, however, appears to show that the Hong Kong market efficiently incorporated much of the interest rate and exchange rate information in its price changes both at daily market close and open.The author would like to acknowledge helpful comments from two anonymous referees, helpful suggestions by Dr Daniel Cheung and research assistance from Theresa Tam. This project is supported by a research grant from the Institute of Social Studies, The Chinese University of Hong Kong.     

Small Firm Marketing: A Comparison of Eastern and Western Marketing Practices

This article reports on the analysis of 110 published, undisguised stories about Chinese owner-managers in Hong Kong and determines whether Chinese small firms exhibit the same marketing activities and behavior as their Western counterparts. Content analysis suggests that Chinese small firms are production oriented, whereas small American firms are customer oriented. Chinese small firms are also found to have limited marketing expenditure while their owner-managers have limited marketing expertise. The findings also suggest that Chinese small firms do little strategic marketing planning. One possible reason for this may be that Chinese owner-managers apply innovative tactics and change their marketing planning techniques to suit the characteristics of their firms and their particular circumstances. Thus, it is not unusual to find that Chinese small firm marketing can be described as entrepreneurial and their marketing planning activities as unstructured.     

Up-grading and performance: the role of design, technology and business strategy in Hong Kong's electronics industry

This study tests the hypothesis that companies who move away from the traditional Hong Kong business model by adopting ‘up-grading’ strategies enjoy superior performance. A set of 14 variables is used to capture the dimensions of strategy, encompassing the business, technology and design domains. The results of both comparative and configurational approaches show that there are indeed performance benefits to be had. The broader implication is that Hong Kong manufacturing firms are beginning to escape the ‘iron fetters’ of a business model originally imposed on them by both material and ideational constraints, and to reap performance benefits as a result.Howard Davies is an Associate Dean in the Faculty of Business at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. David Ko completed his DBA thesis under Prof. Davies's supervision.     

Upward and downward influence tactics in managerial networks: A comparative study of Hong Kong Chinese and Americans

This paper reports an empirical investigation of individual preferences in the use of managerial influence tactics by Hong Kong Chinese and Americans. Subjects in a cross-cultural scenario study were asked to evaluate alternative upward and downward influence tactics in terms of their preferred usage. The findings indicate a main effect for culture and for direction of influence attempt. In addition, direction of influence attempt interacts with subject gender and culture on a tactic-by-tactic basis to reveal differences in influence preferences. Implications of the findings and directions for future studies are discussed.This research was supported by The Chinese University of Hong Kong. The special assistance of Mimi Kam and Ricky Lam in back-translation of the research instruments is appreciated, as are the contributions of Joseph Raelin of Boston College and Harold Welsch of Depaul University in data collection.     

International business research output and rankings of Asia-Pacific universities: A 40-year time-series analysis

This study measures and ranks the performance of countries and academic institutions based on a 40-year analysis of publications appearing in 14 leading business and management journals. The focus is on the evolution of Asia-Pacific institutions in international business research output during this period. In addition, an examination is performed to identify factors associated with Asia-Pacific institutions that have achieved the highest rankings. This research shows that the Journal of International Business Studies and the Journal of World Business were central in spreading international business research, as well as in supporting research by authors from the Asia-Pacific region. Further, schools such as Harvard, Wharton, and University of South Carolina have maintained the highest ranks in research output throughout the 40-year period, but recent years have witnessed the emergence of the Chinese University of Hong Kong and University of Hong Kong, among others, in those top ranks.     

Empirical study of the subjective meanings of culture between American and Chinese

Subjective culture is a group's characteristic way of perceiving its social environment. This study analyzes cultural meanings through free verbal association derived from the Associative Group Analysis technique. More than one hundred important and relevant stimulus words were identified. Respondents were asked to list all the ideas associated with each stimulus word. The purpose is to find out the differences and similarities in the subjective meaning of selected words among American, Hong Kong and PRC Chinese. The research results provide empirical data on the understanding of culture-specific meanings of words. It is cultural experience that produces the unique distribution of association in a particular word. The spontaneously emerging response clusters offer deep insights into what is salient and what is dominant in the group's subjective meanings of selected themes.The authors are from The Chinese University of Hong Kong.     

Do the best new product development practices of US companies matter in Hong Kong?

Past research offers numerous “best practice” studies in New Product Development (NPD). One important characteristic of the earlier “best practice” studies is that they are primarily based on Western samples. Because management practices, cultures, and norms differ around the world it has been argued that the findings of the earlier studies will likely to be less applicable to firms managing NPD outside the West. This study fills this gap by surveying Hong Kong companies and comparing the NPD activities in Hong Kong with those in the US. The results revealed interesting similarities and differences between US and Hong Kong firms with regard to their NPD activities.     

International Diversification, Industrial Diversification and Firm Performance of Hong Kong MNCs

Although multinational corporations (MNCs) are not new to business research, Asian MNCs and their performance have yet to be widely studied. This study investigates the relationship between international diversification, industrial diversification and firm performance of MNCs from Hong Kong. In contrast to previous findings, the results show that Hong Kong MNCs are more internationally diversified, but not performed better, than domestic firms. Also, among Hong Kong MNCs, international diversification has a positive impact on profitability and sales growth, but not on the profitability. Industrial diversification also enhances profitability stability but reduces profitability significantly. Neither the hypothesized inverted U-shaped relationship between international diversification and performance nor the interaction effect from both international and industrial diversification strategies on performance can be validated. Implications are discussed with reference to the local context.     

Feeling trusted by business leaders in China: Antecedents and the mediating role of value congruence

This paper examines the antecedents of felt trust, an under-explored area in the trust literature. We hypothesized that subordinates’ felt trust would relate positively with their leaders’ moral leadership behaviors and negatively with autocratic leadership behaviors and demographic differences between leaders and themselves. We also hypothesized the above relationships to be mediated by the leader-member value congruence. Results supported our hypotheses that value congruence mediated between autocratic leadership behaviors and demographic differences and subordinates’ felt trust, but not moral leadership behaviors, which had direct effects on subordinates’ perception of feeling trusted. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Interlocking Directorates, Firm Strategies, and Performance in Hong Kong: Towards a Research Agenda

Filling a gap in the interlocks literature which has been largely centered on the West, we present preliminary data on the pattern of interlocking directorates among the top 200 largest corporations in pre-1997 Hong Kong. Then we identify four separate groups of firms in Hong Kong, and suggest propositions based on the resource dependence perspective on the critical relationships among their interlocking directorates, firm strategies, and performance. These propositions have the potential to form the building block of an emerging research agenda that will shed light on the role of interlocking directorates in an increasingly important part of the world.     

Benefit or damage? The productivity effects of FDI in the Chinese food industry

We investigate the impact of foreign direct investment (FDI) on the total factor productivity of Chinese food firms using firm-level census data between 1998 and 2007 (174,940 sample food firms). We test for within-firm, within-industry, and vertical effects. We find that the effect of FDI on the productivity of Chinese food firms depends significantly on the type of FDI and its countries of origin. FDI from non-HMT (Hong Kong, Macaw and Taiwan) regions can improve the productivity of the invested firm, and also increases the productivity of domestic food firms through vertical industry linkages. However, domestic food firms may be crowded out by non-HMT investment in the same industry. HMT investment can generate positive within-industry productivity spillovers, but negative vertical spillovers. Our findings have immediate implications for policymakers in China, as well as for governments of less developed countries that are formulating foreign investment policies.     

Perceptions of the political environment and top management orientations in Hong Kong public enterprises

Although the scope for unfettered private initiative in the Territory remains substantial, the degree of government economic intervention in Hong Kong is greater than is generally realised. Thus,inter alia and contrary to popular belief, public enterprise constitutes a noticeable segment of the local economy. In the present article, an attempt is made to draw some conclusions about this sector's characteristics on the basis of attitudinal data.Both authors are with the University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong     

China’s business network structure during institutional transitions

This study adopted a structural approach to examine the formation and characteristics of Chinese business networks via interlocking directorates during a stage in China’s institutional transitions. Analyses of the network structures of 949 listed companies revealed that: (1) Chinese business networks were smaller in scale and lower in density than their Western counterparts; (2) no nationwide network with a dominant center existed; (3) interlock occurred mainly in the form of smaller business groups which tended to be regionally fragmented; (4) ties were more prevalent among industrial peers than with financial institutions; and (5) government ownership was predominant. These findings therefore deepen our understanding about the pattern and extent of business interlock in China. Not only do these findings provide substantive implications to the notion and dimensionality of guanxi, but they also offer inspiration to managers and policy makers by illuminating key characteristics of network structure. Laying these foundations shall pave the way for future research in the structure of Chinese business networks.

境外上市与企业投资效率

截至2021年11月,我国单独境外上市企业占到境外上市企业总数的88.32%,但单独境外上市的研究明显与该数据不匹配,研究数量缺乏。为扩充该方面研究,本文以2012~2020年单独在美国和中国香港上市的中资企业为研究对象,对境外上市与投资效率关系进行检验。实证结果发现,单独境外上市与境内上市企业相比投资效率更低,区分企业上市地点后发现,规模大、信息透明度低、存在代理成本的赴港上市企业比境内上市企业投资效率低,规模小、代理成本高、信息透明度低的赴美上市企业比境内上市企业投资效率低。通过机制分析发现,信息透明度、境外上市和非效率投资三者存在"遮掩效应",境外上市企业未能受到有效的信息约束。     

Capital investment practices: A survey of large corporations in Malaysia,Singapore and Hong Kong

This paper presents the results of a survey on the capital investment practices of large corporations in Malaysia, Singapore and Hong Kong. Our findings are fairly consistent with those from similar U.S. surveys. However, Malaysia, Singapore and Hong Kong companies seem to use multiple techniques, both simple and sophisticated, in evaluating investment projects, while U.S. companies appear to make great use of discounted cash-flow rate of return. Although Malaysia, Singapore and Hong Kong companies often make annual cash-flow forecasts over the life of a project, they do not undertake much analysis of risk involved in the project. Moreover, there is room for improving the practice of project implementation, the post-audit of implemented projects, and the use of post-audit data.Dr Wong Kie Ann is with the School of Management, National University of Singapore; Dr Edward J Farragner is with the Department of Finance, DePaul University, U.S.A.; and Mr Rupert K.C. Leung is with the Department of Business Management, Hong Kong Baptist College.     

Strategies of upward influence: A cross-national comparison of Hong Kong and American managers

This study compares American and Hong Kong Chinese strategies for advancing in organisations. Evaluated are the likelihood of using a particular strategy, the perceived risk associated with each strategy, and the ethical appropriateness of the strategy. Multivariate analysis of variance was used to determine overall differences. Univariate analysis of variance identified the particular strategies that differentiated the American and Hong Kong respondents. For example, the Hong Kong Chinese were more likely to use informal information networks. The Americans were more likely to employ more individual strategies, such as image management, in order to differentiate themselves from the competition in their organisation.