Internetization as the necessary condition for internationalization in the newly emerging economy

The internationalization of entrepreneurship is becoming increasingly facilitated through the use of the internet. This article introduces the term “internetization” to refer to the process of increasing adoption, diffusion, and deployment of internet-based technologies and processes that increasingly serve as the back bone of internationalization, especially in the innovative entrepreneurial firms. This process may be compared to the firm’s adoption and use of the internet and the internet-based processes in transforming the firm to a hybrid network internally and externally within the firm’s home and international markets, especially when the members of its external network have already internationalized. Internationalization of the firm, which has been much studied in the international business literature may provide a parallel analogy for study of internetization. Based on these analogies and within the context of previous literature in internationalization, a brief examination of a typical rapidly-internationalizing firm through the use of the Internet, and the user-generated provisions of Web 2.0 in particular, points to the impact of internetization on internationalization. Various theoretical and research issues are highlighted and discussed, including the important interactions that exist between the processes of internetization and internationalization. Conclusion suggests that internetization may have become the necessary condition for internationalization. The paper calls upon the IE scholars to respond to the theoretical challenge of integrating internetization processes into internationalization, especially for the smaller, entrepreneurial and innovative firms.     

Sex Differentials in Earnings in the South Korean Labor Market

We examine gender differences in earnings among South Korean workers in 1988 – the year the South Korean National Assembly enacted the Equal Employment Opportunity Act. Using the "88 Occupational Wage Bargaining Survey on the Actual Condition," we calculate women's mean earnings as a percentage of men's mean earnings by major industrial category and educational attainment. We find a larger wage gap among clerical and sales workers than production workers or professionals. Generally, the more education a woman has, the smaller the gap between her earnings and those of her male counterparts. Women with a middle-school education have a mean income 53.5 percent that of comparable men, while the female-to-male wage ratio among college graduates is 76.1 percent. We analyze wage differences separately for women and men. Following Ronald Oaxaca's (1973) work, we decompose male–female wage differentials. We also calculate a discrimination coefficient. Our work shows that, all else equal, men earn from 33.6 percent to 46.9 percent more than women with comparable skills. We attribute the difference to gender discrimination.     

Ownership structure,board composition and the market for corporate control in the UK: an empirical analysis

This paper analyses the board composition and ownership structures of a sample of companies that have been acquired and those of a matching control sample that have not. We find significant governance differences between acquired firms and the control sample. Firms with the following characteristics were more likely to be acquired: they had the same person acting as CEO and chair, a higher proportion of non-executive directors, larger institutional shareholdings and higher director shareholdings. An analysis of small firms also found evidence of higher CEO shareholdings. We also find that treating all take-overs as a single group leads to a model mis-specification which does not identify the incentive effects of board and CEO shareholdings present in non-hostile acquisitions. These results are consistent with two agency-derived hypotheses, financial incentives and effective monitoring. We also find that targets exhibit lower growth potential but do not have worse accounting performance.     

A Cluster Analysis of Young Adult College Students' Beef Consumption Behavior Using the Constructs of a Proposed Modified Model of Planned Behavior

The theory of reasoned action (TRA) served as the theoretical framework for this study. This study focused on the development and analysis of a proposed modified model of planned behavior (MMpB) to investigate the beef consumption habits of young adult college students. The participants were a convenience self-selected sample of young adult college students from a major southeastern and southwestern university. A self-report survey was administered to (N = 914) students in classrooms at both universities. Using cluster and discriminant analysis three distinct cluster groupings were found based on the behavior construct.     

Non-audit fees, institutional monitoring, and audit quality

We posit that the effect of non-audit fees on audit quality is conditional on the extent of institutional monitoring. We suggest that institutional investors have incentives and the ability to monitor financial reporting quality. Because of the reputation concerns and potential litigation exposure, auditors are likely to provide high audit quality, when they also provide non-audit services to clients, particularly when clients are subject to high institutional monitoring. We find evidence that, as non-audit fees increase, audit quality (measured by performance-adjusted discretionary current accruals and earnings-response coefficients) reduces only for clients with low institutional ownership but not for clients with high institutional ownership. Our results are robust after controlling for auditor industry specialization, firms’ operating volatility, size effect, and potential endogeneity between institutional ownership and audit quality.     

From original equipment manufacturing to branding: entrepreneurship,strategic leadership,and Taiwan’s firm transformation

This paper investigates firm transformation from original equipment manufacturing (OEM) to original brand manufacturing (OBM) based on variant experiences of Taiwan’s top global brands. Taking the competitive advantage of practicing OEM for multinational corporations (MNCs), latecomer firms can generate capital and accumulate capabilities by engaging with the global production network. Rarely does every firm transform into a global enterprise. We propose that only entrepreneurs with strategic leadership competence, which serves to manage a delicate balance between stability and change in a firm, are capable to facilitate firm transformation from OEM to a global enterprise practicing OBM. We provide an analytical framework that combines the research fields of entrepreneurship, strategic management, and leadership to analyze firm growth and firm transformation of Taiwanese firms. In light of possible branding dilemma when straddling dual-track businesses, successful transforming firms can alleviate this problem either by separating their OBM units from their OEM units or by creating a symbiotic relationship with their MNC customers. How Taiwanese firms first took advantage of initiating OEM to create capital and capabilities and later transformed into OBM provide useful experiences for other latecomer firms.     

Accidental,unprepared, and unsupported: clinical nurses becoming managers

To what extent have hospitals developed their skilled clinicians to perform the administrative and human resources (HR) manager role of the ward manager? We consider this research question through an analysis of an acute hospital called ‘The Hospital’ where the executive team is aiming to adopt a form of high-performance work system (HPWS). We focus primarily on explanations in terms of conditions, rather than the personalities of individual managers, which are most powerful in shaping their behaviour. There has long been a failure of hospitals (and other employing organisations) to develop fully the skills required by employees before they become line managers. Line managers are a critical link in the high-performance chain and this study illustrates that, despite their rhetoric, hospitals may still have much potential for implementing schemes to develop nurses further to prepare them for line-manager positions and to support them after they move into such roles. We infer from this study that such hospitals may not yet have completed the journey to having HPWS. Hence, there is still much scope for such hospitals to progress and enjoy the benefits that proponents claim for HPWS.     

International market selection and subsidiary performance: A neural network approach

How should multinational enterprises (MNEs) select international markets? We develop a model of international market selection that adds firm-specific advantages and transaction cost considerations to previously explored target market factors based on Dunning's Eclectic Framework. Results obtained using neural network (NN) analysis indicates that our model has strong predictive power in explaining international market selection. Further tests show that firms selecting international markets predicted by the model reported significantly higher subsidiary performance relative to firms whose investments were not predicted by the model. Our results provide strong initial evidence that a firm-level strategic approach to international market selection facilitates MNE success.