Customers’ savings rate and share of wallet: the moderating role of religion and ethnicity/immigrant generation vis-à-vis attitude as mediator

This study explores the role of attitude toward money, religion and ethnicity in the relationship between income and consumer behavior. The three-country (Australia, Canada and China) study sampled 755 consumers and uses structural equation modeling and multivariate analysis to test for mediating effects of attitude toward money and moderating effects of religion and ethnicity/immigrant generation. Religion is found to be a moderating variable for savings rate and share of wallet, while ethnicity/immigrant generation only moderates the association between income and savings rate. We also demonstrate the interaction effects of religion and ethnicity/immigrant generation with income as determinants of savings rate and share of wallet. This research provides the foundation for modeling savings rate and share of wallet, incorporating attitude, religion, and ethnicity/immigrant generation, as well as income, demonstrating the need to include other factors (i.e. demographic factors in addition to attitudinal/satisfaction measures) to better identify, understand and strategically target consumer segments with potential for profitability and growth.     

Financial Liberalisation and Growth in China’s Economic Reform

This paper summarises China’s financial liberalisation experience and examines the contributions of financial resources on economic growth during the post‐reform period. Financial liberalisation has resulted in the reallocation of the four sources of total investment in fixed assets: state budget appropriation, national bank loans, self‐raised funds, and foreign investment. We find that the growth of GDP and industrial production are positively related to the growth of self‐raised funds and foreign investment. We conclude that the use of foreign investment and funds raised by the enterprises themselves are more efficient than the government’s appropriation and provision of bank loans.     

Structural relationships among organisation service orientation,employee service performance,and consumer identification

Numerous studies have examined relationship behaviour linking enterprises and consumers from the enterprise perspective rather than the consumer perspective, including consumer approval and relationship maintenance. To redress this imbalance, this study investigates three issues linking the enterprise and consumer perspectives. The first issue involves analysing the influence on the consumers that arises from integrated internal and external environmental resources using service orientation business strategies. The second issue involves exploring the foundations of the relationship factors based on consumer identification that serves to establish consumer relationships. The third issue involves discussing consumer and staff evaluations and experiences of the service. The following opinions can be induced based on the analytical results. Both internal and external environmental characteristics positively affect the service orientation of business. Service orientation positively impacts consumer perceptions of employee service performance. Consumer perceptions of employee service performance have positively impacted consumer identification.     

Hong Kong's industrial success: an entrepreneurial perspective

This article examines the role of entrepreneurship in the industrialization of Hong Kong. Kirzner's concept of entrepreneurship is applied to explain the industrial dynamics of the economy. Using the electronics industry as illustration, this article argues that Hong Kong's manufacturing industry has been driven principally by adaptive entrepreneurship, which takes the form of small-scale enterprise, product imitation, subcontracting and spatial arbitrage. Furthermore, those firms adopting imitative strategies were able to survive, though many of them relied on very small profit margins. Radical innovative strategies were seldom adopted and were not feasible in the environment of Hong Kong. Adopting adaptive entrepreneurial strategies, Hong Kong's manufacturers learned from foreign firms and imitated their products. Later, by exporting improved commodities at lower prices, they competed against the original suppliers from economically more advanced countries. This constitutes Hong Kong's industrial success.     

On a Recent Naturalism Debate in Business Ethics – from a Philosophy Point of View

The article discusses the meaning of consciousness and presents a collective consciousness view of business organizations and their development. It proposes an integrative hierarchical framework of three levels of organizational consciousness: material, social and spiritual. The concepts of excellence, ethical and moral temperament of organizations at different levels of consciousness are also discussed. The article describes the features of social and spiritually conscious business organizations, taking some examples from secondary sources. Overall, it is an attempt to link the ideals of human evolution with the potential behaviour of business corporations. Ashish Pandey is leading research function at Pragati Leadership Institute, 301, Beaver Grandeur, Baner road, Pune, India. He is also scholar of Fellow Program in Management with Management Development Institute, (M.D.I.) Gurgaon. Rajen K. Gupta is Professor of OD with M.D.I., Gurgaon. He is an OD consultant, alumnus of Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur and holds doctoral degree from Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, India. Earlier version of the paper titled “Organization Development as Evolution of Collective Consciousness of Business Organization” was presented in the Global OD Summit, 2006, at Mysore, India and was adjudged the best paper in ‘Future-focus’ stream.     

Relation Between Predisclosure Information Asymmetry and Trading Volume Reaction Around Quarterly Earnings Announcements

This study investigates the effects of differences in predisclosure information asymmetry on trading volume reaction during quarterly earnings announcements. The analyses show that trading volume reaction to quarterly earnings announcements is positively related to the level of predisclosure information asymmetry and to the magnitude of the price reaction to the announcements. These results are consistent with Kim and Verrecchia's (1991a) theoretical trading volume proposition, and with Atiase and Bamber's (1994) tests of the proposition based on annual earnings announcements. This study also provides evidence on the relation of predisclosure information asymmetry and trading volume before and after quarterly earnings announcements.     

Disparity in factor contributions between coastal and inner provinces in post-reform China

The paper discusses China's post-reform regional economic growth imbalance relative to input disparity in technology, physical and human capital. Financial sources and types of ownership are used to construct physical capital. Technology is measured by innovation investment, and human capital is constructed from schooling years per capita. The results show that domestic bank loans and foreign-owned enterprises are important in coastal provinces, while state appropriation and state-owned enterprises are important in inner provinces. Technology and foreign investment have a larger impact on output growth in coastal provinces. Human capital is endogenous for coastal provinces, but is exogenous for inner provinces.     

Hong Kong's entrepreneurship: behaviours and determinants

It is widely known that Hong Kong's economic success is to a large extent attributed to its dynamic entrepreneurs. However, economic studies on Hong Kong's style of entrepreneurship are few. This paper attempts to throw light on this issue. It argues that Hong Kong is an entrepreneurial society. A unique feature of Hong Kong's style of entrepreneurship lies in its ability to conduct ordinary, rather than extraordinary, discovery. Through the use of guerrilla business strategy, imitation and regional arbitrageurship, entrepreneurial firms in Hong Kong are able to exploit narrow profit margins and to survive global competition. Moreover, the cultural, economic and political environments of Hong Kong are found to be favourable in incubating adaptive entrepreneurship. This paper concludes that, although Hong Kong's style of entrepreneurship emerges out of its unique environments, Hong Kong's experience can be useful to other developing economies. The critical issue is whether latecomer countries can successfully develop adaptive entrepreneurship compatible with their backgrounds so as to exploit international market opportunities.     

Repeated Protection for Sale

This paper addresses whether the efficient equilibria characterized by Grossman and Helpman's one‐shot protection‐for‐sale game are renegotiation‐proof in an infinitely repeated setting. We propose a simple strategy profile that can support the efficient, truthful equilibrium in each period as a strongly renegotiation‐proof subgame perfect equilibrium. This result provides another plausible reason to explain why the truthful equilibrium may be focal in the game of protection‐for‐sale. In addition, when the timing of the contributions is specified explicitly, the special interest groups should minimize the upfront payment to the government before policy implementation to reduce the possibility of the collapse of such relational contracts.