International entrepreneurship: A critical analysis of studies in the past two decades and future directions for research

International entrepreneurship (IE) is an emerging field with a rapidly growing body of knowledge. This paper examines gaps, issues and trends of the IE in the last two decades. First, it suggests an integrative framework based on international business, entrepreneurship, strategic management, social network and marketing theories. The suggested model highlights the significant role played by the entrepreneur/team, firm and network resources that act as antecedents to international opportunity development and value innovation. Second, it suggests four typologies of firms (born global, enduring global, early exporter and mature exporter) that can be studied under the IE theme. Finally, we discuss future research directions.     

Japan's concessions towards trade fairness: Mistaken western views

It is now acknowledged even by US officials that Japan's recent efforts to liberalize trade have been remarkable. Our author, who has recently published a book on “Japan's Options for the 1980s”, argues that the continuing EEC complaints about Japan's behaviour as a trading partner are unjustified: Japan is simply being made a scapegoat for the EEC's own failures.     

Can We Meaningfully Speak of Changes in Price under the Regime of Changes in Techniques?

Abstract

This paper presents a simulation exercise on Sraffa's system under various types of technical changes to show that the direction of changes in prices of commodities is contingent on the choice of the numeraire. Thus, such a comparison of prices in two systems turns out to be meaningless. This result points to the arbitrary nature of the neoclassical supply functions, as they inevitably compare prices across several Sraffa systems on the basis of an arbitrarily chosen numeraire. We anticipated such a result from our reading of Sraffa as part of his ‘prelude to a critique of economic theory’.     

Customization of the online purchase process in electronic retailing and customer satisfaction: An online field study

This paper investigates the customization of the online purchase process in electronic retailing. We conceptualize customization relevant to the two constituent sub-processes in the online purchase process: (i) decision customization—the customization of the information content delivered to customers to help them in the decision-making sub-process; and (ii) transaction customization—the customization of the purchase transaction sub-process for each customer. We draw on and synthesize the theoretical perspectives of Website Usability, Technology Acceptance Model, and Transaction Costs, to triangulate and deduce hypotheses linking customization of the online purchase process in electronic retailing and customer satisfaction. The hypotheses are tested by analyzing: (i) primary data on customization of the online purchase process collected from an online field study involving a direct observation and content analysis of the websites of 422 retailers; and (ii) secondary data on customer satisfaction with the online purchase process for the same set of 422 electronic retailers collected from a publicly available data source. The research method used for the empirical analysis is Multivariate Analyses of Covariance (MANCOVA). The results indicate that decision customization that provides choice assistance by way of personalized product recommendations is positively associated with customer satisfaction with the decision-making sub-process; and transaction customization, oriented towards making the transaction sub-process personal, convenient, and interactive is positively associated with customer satisfaction with the purchase transaction sub-process. Additionally, the results indicate that both decision customization and transaction customization are associated with overall customer satisfaction with the online purchase process of electronic retailers. The contributions, managerial implications, and limitations of the study, and directions for future research are discussed.     

Understanding Supermarket Competition Using Choice Maps

In this paper we propose a model which combines the spatial interaction models with the latest developments in internal market structure analysis and allows us to infer supermarket competition from revealed preference data. Using a nested logit formulation we model consumers' store choice decisions to be a two stage process in which consumers choose first the suburb and then the store from which to buy groceries. Hence, our method allows retail managers not only to understand the advantage (or disadvantage) of having their store chain in a particular area but also assess the competition within that area. Comparisons to Factor Analytic Choice Map is made.     

Differentiating Between Dimensionality and Duration in Multidimensional Measures of Poverty: Methodology with an Application to China

We develop a multidimensional poverty measure that is sensitive to the within‐individual distribution of deprivations across dimensions and time. Our measure combines features from a static multidimensional measure (Alkire and Foster, 2011a ) and a time‐dependent unidimensional measure (Foster, 2009 ). The proposed measure separately identifies—and can therefore be decomposed according to—the proportion of the poverty score attributable to: (i) the concentration of deprivations within periods; (ii) the concentration of deprivations within dimensions. In doing so it allows for a poverty ranking that is robust to assumptions about the trade‐off between the two components. Previous measures have not allowed for the features proposed here due to the inability to calculate the exact contribution of each dimension to overall poverty. We overcome this by adapting to our measure the Shapley decomposition proposed in Shorrocks ( 2013 ) (based on Shapley, 1953 ). The measure is applied to data from China, 2000‐2011.     

Are firms with state ownership greener? An institutional complexity view

This study investigates the role of state ownership in green innovation from the institutional complexity viewpoint. We posit that state ownership can be characterised by two seemingly competing logics: institutional logic, which emphasises that firms with state ownership can acquire resources to promote innovation; and efficiency logic, which states that firms with state ownership have low resource utilisation effectiveness. On the basis of the integration of both views, we suggest a U‐shaped curvilinear relationship between state ownership and green innovation. Data from Chinese listed firms from 2003 to 2015 confirm our hypothesis. Moreover, we also find two macro‐level contingencies that moderate this relationship: regional innovation readiness and industrial competition. The U‐shaped relationship between state ownership and green innovation is more pronounced when regional innovation readiness and industrial competition are higher. This study advances previous research on environmental innovation by arguing that state ownership is characterised by institutional complexity rather than being a monolithic construct.