The evolution of public industry R&D institute – the case of ITRI

Public industrial research institutes are important in regard to aiding industry development in many countries. Research institutes have to constantly change their strategies according to their industrial environments in order to remain influential. The Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) has been recognised as a successful institute in facilitating industrial development. During its 40‐year development process, ITRI has gone through three stages of strategic repositioning and organisational reforms. The evolution of the organisational structure and the interactions with its social‐technological environment are both complex and dynamic. This study proposes a framework which integrates the role of the institutes with organisation structures and strategies to analyse the process of the evolution of ITRI. Based on the framework, this study uses system dynamics to identify the underlying structure driving the process of its evolution. The result shows that it is important to align the organisational structure with development strategies; in a long‐term perspective, the strategies for short‐term and long‐term goals can reinforce each other. The recent transition of ITRI suggests a new direction‐seeking role for public research institutes to play among the national innovation systems. This study also discusses the potential impacts of the system dynamics approach to R&D management.     

Determinants and implications of long audit reporting lags: evidence from China

Audit reporting lag is the single most important determinant influencing the timeliness of the release of financial statements. In this study, we first explore the determinants of audit reporting lags in China where the audit market for listed firms is dominated by non-Big 4 auditors. We then examine the implications of long audit reporting lags in subsequent years. We find that selected measures of audit risk and complexity, and auditor expertise are all associated with the length of audit reporting lags in China. Firms with long audit reporting lags are more likely to have the receipt of non-standard opinions in subsequent periods. There is also evidence that firms with extremely long audit reporting lags tend to have more restatements in the subsequent year. As prior research has not specifically investigated the consequences of long audit reporting lags in subsequent years, this study makes an important contribution to the literature in this area.     

Entrepreneurial financing in new business ventures: a help-seeking behavior perspective

How and from whom prospective entrepreneurs seek their start-up capital for new venture formation represent fundamental questions in entrepreneurial financing. Drawing on research of help-seeking behavior, we propose that apart from economic rationale entrepreneurs’ decisions to seek financing may be influenced by socio-psychological factors. Using a scenario experiment (venture risk x relational proximity) to investigate how prospective entrepreneurs considered funding from family and outsiders, it was found that they tended to seek family financing when the family was close and the risk was high, and inclined to seek outsider funding when the venture risk was high and the family was not close. The findings might seem paradoxical but they actually underscore the influence of socio-psychological factors in entrepreneurial financing decisions and offer novel contributions to the entrepreneurship, informal investment, and education literatures.     

Imported inputs and privatization in downstream mixed oligopoly with foreign ownership

This paper examines welfare implications of privatization in a mixed oligopoly with vertically related markets, where an upstream foreign monopolist sells an essential input to public and private firms located downstream in the domestic country. The impact on domestic welfare of privatizing the downstream public firm is shown to contain three effects. The first is an output distortion effect, which negatively affects welfare since privatization decreases the production of final good for consumption. The second is an input price lowering effect resulting from a decrease in derived demand for the input. When the level of privatization increases, a decrease in final good production lowers input demand, causing input price to decline and domestic welfare to increase. The third is a rent‐leaking effect associated with foreign ownership in the downstream private firm. The rival domestic firm strategically increases its final good production, causing profits accrued to foreign investors to increase and domestic welfare to decline. Without foreign ownership in the downstream private firm, the optimal policy toward the public firm is complete privatization as the output distortion effect is dominated by the input price lowering effect. With foreign ownership, however, complete privatization can never be socially optimal due to the additional negative impact on domestic welfare of the rent‐leaking effect. We further discuss implications for domestic welfare under different privatization schemes (e.g., selling the privatization shares to the upstream foreign monopolist or to the rival domestic firm).     

Organizational Visibility,Stakeholder Environmental Pressure and Corporate Environmental Responsiveness in China

This article investigates the relationship between organizational visibility and corporate environmental responsiveness in China. It also examines whether this relationship is mediated by stakeholder pressure, and whether the strength of the relationships among organizational visibility, stakeholder pressures and corporate environmental responsiveness is moderated by the type of enterprise ownership. Based on the responses from a survey involving 131 enterprises, this study suggests a potentially positive and significant correlation between organizational visibility and corporate environmental responsiveness in China. However, the study reveals surprisingly that stakeholder pressure for environmental improvements does not seem to account for the above correlation. Organizational visibility is found to be negatively associated with stakeholder pressure in the case of Chinese‐owned enterprises, and stakeholder pressure has no significant associations with corporate environmental responsiveness. In addition, the moderating effect of enterprise ownership is strongly evidenced, which provides important policy implications for developing effective mechanisms to stimulate environmental management practices. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment     

Strategic orientation and new product performance: The roles of technological capability

Although prior research has examined the linkage between strategic orientation and new product performance, existing empirical evidence suggests exploration of the effects of a firm's internal factors on this linkage is required. This study aims to fill the marketing literature gap by addressing how technological capability moderates the strategic orientation‐new product performance relationship. This study measures new product performance as a two‐dimensional construct to avoid the oversimplified bias. Research hypotheses are tested using a sample of 121 information system product projects and a hierarchical regression approach is utilized. Results show that (a) technological capability strengthens the market orientation‐performance relationship and (b) technological capability affects the financial performance effects of market and technology orientations via market performance. Copyright © 2014 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Uncovering the Value of Green Advertising for Environmental Management Practices

This paper extends previous environmental management research by building and empirically testing a model of the contingency effects of green advertising on the relationships between environmental management practices in terms of environmentally conscious manufacturing and product stewardship, environmental reputation and financial performance. We examine the value of green advertising in sharing and publicizing information about organizational achievements in environmental preservation in a business‐to business context with the Taiwanese electronics manufacturing industry. The theoretical propositions are largely confirmed by structural path analyses of survey responses collected from 122 Taiwanese electronics manufacturers. Green advertising delivers financial benefits only for those manufacturers that do not have an established environmental reputation. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment