Expatriate management succession in foreign business subsidiaries

In most foreign subsidiaries, expatriate top managers are routinely exchanged after a certain period of time. The handing over procedure between the expatriate predecessor manager and his successor has attracted very little academic research. A proper succession ensures continuity and the accumulation of experience in the foreign operation. Our sample includes expatriate business managers employed by companies from Australia, Germany, Holland and Italy assigned to Hong Kong. A mail questionnaire is used to collect the information, and this investigation is a direct extension of a previous exploratory study undertaken by one of the authors. The main issue in this paper is to investigate the duration of the overlap period at the foreign subsidiary. This dependent variable is related to three sets of independent variables: personal, corporate and subsidiary characteristics.Dr Jan Selmer is Reader and Head, Department of Management, and Mrs Vivienne Luk is Senior Lecturer and BBA (Hons.) Degree Course Leader, both at the School of Business, Hong Kong Baptist University. The authors gratefully acknowledge the helpful comments and suggestions of two anonymous reviewers as well as the Chief Editor on earlier versions of this paper. The research was supported by a Faculty Research Grant from Hong Kong Baptist University.     

Information Flows Between the U.S. and China Commodity Futures Trading

Using a bivariate GARCH model, we examine patterns of information flows for three commodity futures traded in both the developed U.S. market and the emerging China market (copper, soybeans and wheat). For copper and soybeans, the two commodities that are subject to less government regulation and fewer import restrictions in China, we find that the U.S. futures market plays a dominant role in transmitting information to the Chinese market, a result that confirms the importance of the U.S. role as a leader in the global financial market. For the heavily regulated and subsidized wheat commodity, our empirical results indicate that the U.S.-China futures markets are highly segmented in pricing, although information transmission via volatility spillover across markets is present.     

China’s Corporate Governance and Reforms

I. IntroductionSince 1978, China’s economic reforms have called for an incentive mechanism to beincorporated in the state-owned enterprises (SOEs), while the reforms have demonstratedconsiderable success. In the early 1990s, the Chinese government took further steps andbegan to list SOEs on stock exchanges to raise external capital and improve their efficiency.Corporate governance still remains an important issue in China as shown by the largenumber of corporate failures and scandals in r…     

ADJUSTED ESTIMATES OF UNITED STATES–CHINA BILATERAL TRADE BALANCES: AN UPDATE

Abstract.  Large differences exist between the official United States and Chinese data on trade balances between the two countries. In this paper, four adjustments are made to the export and import data of the two governments: (i) freight along side (f.a.s.)-free on board (f.o.b.) and cost, insurance and freight (c.i.f.)-f.o.b. conversions; (ii) re-exports through Hong Kong (and elsewhere); (iii) re-export markups; and (iv) trade in services. After adjustments, our best estimate for the 2005 bilateral trade balance is $US170.7 billion, in China's favour, which is much larger than the official Chinese balance of $US114.2 billion but also much smaller than the official US balance of $US201.6 billion.     

Convergence and spillover of house prices in Chinese cities

The issue of house price convergence in 34 Chinese cities is investigated. We augmented the convergence model with contemporaneous spatial dependence in house prices and found that price convergence and positive spatial spillover are both present. We explicitly addressed the endogeneity problem by introducing a Bayesian instrumental variable setup, which was estimated with particle filtering techniques. From a growth poles perspective, the empirical evidence indicates that the spread effect in regional house prices outweighs the backwash effect. The identified positive spatial spillover has two effects on the growth of house prices in Chinese cities. First, the spillover elevates the trajectories of the steady-state growth paths of house prices. Second, the spillover narrows the gaps between the growth paths of house prices in neighbouring cities. Shocks to the socio-economic variables of a city generate their own effects on domestic house prices that dominate the effects arising from cross-city price feedbacks, thus mitigating the prospect of level convergence. Our findings also suggest a collaborating role between time and spatial dependence parameters. The identification of inter-city spillover, which is a conditioning factor for regional house price convergence, offers implications to policies that are most likely to be effective in reducing regional disparity.     

What Ethical Leadership Means to Me: Asian,American, and European Perspectives

Despite the increasingly multinational nature of the workplace, there have been few studies of the convergence and divergence in beliefs about ethics-based leadership across cultures. This study examines the meaning of ethical and unethical leadership held by managers in six societies with the goal of identifying areas of convergence and divergence across cultures. More specifically, qualitative research methods were used to identify the attributes and behaviors that managers from the People’s Republic of China (the PRC), Hong Kong, the Republic of China (Taiwan), the United States (the U.S.), Ireland, and Germany attribute to ethical and unethical leaders. Across societies, six ethical leadership themes and six unethical leadership themes emerged from a thematic analysis of the open-ended responses. Dominant themes for ethical and unethical leadership for each society are identified and examined within the context of the core cultural values and practices of that society. Implications for theory, research, and management practice are discussed.     

Attaining harmony: understanding the relationship between ecotourism and protected areas in China

This paper explores the power of both traditional culture and modernity, their interaction, and ecotourism as defined and developed in China, and suggests a new framework for ecotourism policies. It argues that issues in ecotourism should reflect scientific and empirical evidence, but also integrate traditional Chinese cultural beliefs, and political and social factors, to achieve sustainability. The protected area system, central to ecotourism in China, was introduced by government to bring modernity and globalization. The management model follows western values, tending to separate humans from nature for conservation purposes, using institutionalized western zoning systems. This approach is inconsistent with millennia-old Chinese cultural values about relationships between nature and humans, centred around tian ren he yi – humans and nature as a unified entity. Instead of managing conflicts, attaining harmony (in a subjective experiential way) is the fundamental Chinese approach. The paper explores conflicts between the two value systems, and how Confucian “middle ways” are being crafted to balance the fast-growing special needs of Chinese eco-tourists with the top-down regulation of protected areas. It notes new developments in protected area tourism management in the West, and opportunities to blend Chinese traditional values about harmony with evolving western practice.     

A two-stage test for one-way analysis of variance

A two-stage analogue of the Ftest for one-way analysis of variance is proposed. Critical values are given for selected cases and the method of obtaining critical values is described. Comparisons of the one-stage and two-stage tests are made in terms of the expected sample size required to achieve a given power.