Born-global: The case of four Vietnamese SMEs

Despite the fact that many firms in a wide range of industries in various countries internationalize at or near inception, research on factors leading to the formation of born-globals has been limited to firms from advanced, open economies. In order to give a voice to the phenomenon of Vietnamese founding born-globals, we conducted an exploratory, multiple-case study. Three findings of this study are: (1) the major driver to the formation of Vietnamese born-globals is the entrepreneurs’ leadership desire together with the need for short-term profits; (2) their choice of internationalization mode is influenced by market conditions as well as the internationalization degree of the industries in which they find their business opportunities; and (3) the reason why other motivators found in earlier studies do not apply lies in the peculiarity of the Vietnam context.

Sequential entry and plant location in oligopolistic competition

Weberian location theory is confined to a single firm framework, and pays very little attention to the interdependence among firms. To fill up this gap, this article incorporates oligopolistic competition into a simple Weberian model to investigate industrial location patterns when firms are shortsighted, enter sequentially, and locate once-and-for-all. It is shown that the location of a new entrant is closer to (farther away from) the market site compared with the existing firms if the industry is characterized by diseconomies (economies) of scale.     

Strategic management under duopoly

The purpose of this paper is to present a general conjectural variation model to provide an integrative treatment of strategic management under duopoly. It is shown that the nature of the desired distortion of managers' incentives depends critically on the magnitudes of the managers' conjectural variations with respect to outputs as well as the owners' conjectural variations with respect to incentives. In particular, it has been demonstrated that when the owners' conjectural variations with respect to incentives are zero, the owners will motivate their managers to maximize profits and provide no incentives for sales under consistent conjectures. However, the owners make their managers behave more (less) aggressively and produce more (less) than profit-maximizers if the managers' conjectural variations with respect to outputs are larger (smaller) than the actual response.     

Optimum location and the theory of the firm under demand uncertainty

This paper presents a formal mathematical model to investigate the theoretical impacts and implications of demand uncertainty on the optimum location decisions of the firm in linear space. It will be shown that the results and implications of optimum location under uncertainty will be different from that applicable to the state of certainty.     

浅谈人文精神的含义

作为西方文化中一个独立的模式,人文精神是以人为中心的价值,第一是自然的对立,从人的经验出发理解世界;第二每个人的价值在自身的尊严和人格的完善;第三强调理性,但反对工具理性,强调内在的质的价值。作为学问,人文精神重道德和社会风气。     

Flexible cutoff values for fit indices in the evaluation of structural equation models

Researchers often struggle when applying ‘golden rules of thumb’ to evaluate structural equation models. This paper questions the notion of universal thresholds and calls for adjusted orientation points that account for sample size, factor loadings, the number of latent variables and indicators, as well as data (non-)normality. This research explores the need for flexible cutoffs and their accuracy in single- and two-index strategies. Study 1 reveals that many indices are biased; thus, rigid cutoffs can become imprecise. Flexible cutoff values are shown to compensate for the unique distorting patterns and prove to be particularly beneficial for moderate misspecification. Study 2 sheds further light on this ‘gray’ area of misspecification and disentangles the different sources of misspecification. Study 3 finally investigates the performance of flexible cutoffs for non-normal data. Having substantiated higher performance for flexible reference values, this paper provides to managers an easy-to-use tool that facilitates the determination of adequate cutoffs.     

Comparative Analysis of Ownership Transformation and Performance Relationship among Major and Regional Banks in Australia

This article attempts to clarify existing doubts with respect to the performance of private and privatised banks versus public banks; that is, it is an attempt to clarify the ownership–performance relationship. The analysis takes explicit account of the privatisation transformation, including its intermediary stage, and the status of the economy. The ownership–performance model is estimated using cross‐sectional time‐series data and is used to test the influence of ownership changes on performance. Alternative performance measures are considered. The empirical findings show that ownership transformation in the case of regional banks has resulted in improved performance, whilst the benefits in the case of major banks were not significant, even though these banks have become more competitive.     

Technology choice under duopoly

This paper presents a conjectural variation approach to demonstrate that competing firms will often distort their cost structures away from strict cost minimization for strategic reasons. In particular, it is shown that the nature of the desired distortions of production technology depends critically on the magnitudes of the firms' conjectural variations with respect to outputs as well as the firms' conjectural variations with respect to technology. These results are in sharp contrast to the conventional wisdom based on monopolized or perfectly competitive markets.