The Impact of Career Capital on Expatriates' Perceived Marketability

We examine how the development of three types of career capital (knowing how, knowing whom, and knowing why) during an international assignment affects the perceived marketability of organizational expatriates. Using the perceived marketability perspective and long‐term follow‐up data, we show that knowing how is seen as the most transferable type of career capital, while the development of other aspects of career capital has little impact on perceived marketability. We also show that career capital development is more recognized in the external market than by current employers. Our findings expand our understanding of long‐term career marketability among people who have completed international assignments. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Could lean practices and process innovation enhance supply chain sustainability of small and medium‐sized enterprises?

Small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) adopt lean practices (LP) to reduce waste across their organisational value chain, which helps achieve sustainability. Process innovation (PI) has also been applied through cleaner production, environmental management system, ecodesign, and so on to address both customers' needs and legislations by policymakers. Although prior studies reveal the effect of sustainable practices, LP, and PI on sustainable performance separately, less is known on the integrated effect of them on sustainability performance. Moreover, studies on mediating effect of LP and PI on sustainability performance are scant. This is significant as LP and PI are considered to be the enablers for achieving sustainability performance. This research addresses this knowledge gap. The research first theorises a model integrating these four major constructs (sustainability practices, LP, PI, and sustainability performance) through hypotheses development. Subsequently, using structural equation modelling, it is tested whether each of sustainability practices, LP, and PI effect sustainability performances. Additionally, mediating effect of LP and PI between sustainability practices and performances is derived. The study uses data from 119 SMEs within manufacturing industries in the Midlands, United Kingdom. Further, a few case studies have been undertaken to validate the findings from quantitative analysis. The overall results show that although sustainability practices, LP, and PI help achieve sustainability performance of SMEs supply chain through efficiency and responsiveness respectively, the mediating effect LP is more compared with PI. Moreover, SMEs adopt LP when they are economy focused and implement PI when they are pressurised by customers and/or policymakers.     

The role of corrosive internalisation and denial of responsibility in stabilising inequality in South Africa

ABSTRACT

This paper examines how capabilities inequality is stabilised through its consequences on those at both ends of the distribution. It outlines the development of the balance model, which is argued to help highlight these consequences. Specifically, how adverse environments associated with lack of access to resources and poor treatment can lead to internal consequences which further corrode capabilities. At the same time, denial of this corrosion or its importance is critical for those who benefit from the inequality. To avoid moral constraints being triggered it is important, necessary even, for them to see those who suffer as outside of their moral universe, or their suffering to be in no way associated with their advantage. Corrosion and denial work to stabilise the system. For those in the middle of the distribution, they may work to do so in combination. Appreciating these internalised consequences is key to addressing inequality in South Africa.     

A Note on Family Influence and the Adoption of Discontinuous Technologies in Family Firms

The 4Cs model of command, continuity, community, and connections is useful for examining the effect of family influence on the adoption of discontinuous technologies. However, assuming that family influence differs only in degree rather than kind is naive because such an assumption ignores the likelihood of heterogeneous behaviors among family firms. In this conceptual note, we extend prior work and explain how heterogeneity in the family's relative emphasis on command, continuity, community, and connections requires that the multifaceted and potentially nonlinear nature of family influence be considered when analyzing strategic decisions concerning family firm innovation.     

Política de la legislación laboral en el sur de China. Las cámaras de comercio y otros organismos extranjeros ante las leyes sobre negociación colectiva

En 2010, tras la huelga en Honda, hubo protestas laborales en toda China. Los gobiernos de Shenzhen y Guangdong reaccionaron desempolvando los proyectos de Decreto sobre consulta colectiva y de Normativa sobre gestión democrática de las empresas, retirados con anterioridad. Pero tras la oposición frontal de cámaras de comercio y organismos gubernamentales extranjeros, hongkoneses y taiwaneses, volvieron a retirarse. Mediante entrevistas, los autores revelan los medios de influencia en la legislación laboral china de estos actores, cuyas actitudes dependen de la posición de las empresas representadas en las cadenas mundiales de producción y del modelo de relaciones laborales de su país o territorio de origen.     

Digital Transformation Through Exploratory and Exploitative Internet of Things Innovations: The Impact of Family Management and Technological Diversification*

This study examines the impact of family management on digital transformation with specific regard to the firm’s development of Internet of Things (IoT) innovations. Drawing on the distinctive characteristics of firms with family managers, such as the focus on family‐centered noneconomic goals, long tenure, emotional ties to existing assets, and rigid mental models, it hypothesizes that increasing family involvement in the top management team is negatively related to the development of IoT innovations that are distant from a firm’s existing technology base (i.e., exploratory IoT innovations) compared to exploitative IoT innovations. Further, the study proposes that the firm’s degree of technological diversification, especially in unrelated forms, reinforces this relationship. The longitudinal analysis between 2002 and 2013 on a sample of publicly traded German firms allows us to test our hypotheses from the beginning of the emergence of the IoT concept. Our findings show that due to the particular characteristics of their managers, family‐managed firms do not welcome the risks related to exploratory IoT innovations, and the benefit of risk diversification from technological diversification is lower than the cost of abandoning family‐centered goals. As our results imply that the involvement of family managers constrains the development of exploratory IoT innovation, the top management team composition in firms that intend to be at the forefront of the digital transformation should be accurately designed by avoiding a high proportion of family members.     

Double continuation regions for American and Swing options with negative discount rate in Lévy models

In this paper, we study perpetual American call and put options in an exponential Lévy model. We consider a negative effective discount rate that arises in a number of financial applications including stock loans and real options, where the strike price can potentially grow at a higher rate than the original discount factor. We show that in this case a double continuation region arises and we identify the two critical prices. We also generalize this result to multiple stopping problems of Swing type, that is, when successive exercise opportunities are separated by i.i.d. random refraction times. We conduct an extensive numerical analysis for the Black–Scholes model and the jump‐diffusion model with exponentially distributed jumps.     

Analysing Systemic Risk in the Chinese Banking System

We examine systemic risk in the Chinese banking system by estimating the conditional value at risk (CoVaR), the marginal expected shortfall (MES), the systemic impact index (SII) and the vulnerability index (VI) for 16 listed banks in China for the 2007–2014 period. We find that these measures show different patterns, capturing different aspects of systemic risk of Chinese banks. However, rankings of banks based on these measures are significantly correlated. The time‐series results for the CoVaR and MES measures suggest that systemic risk in the Chinese banking system decreased after the global financial crisis but started rising in 2014.     

Semi-analytical prices for lookback and barrier options under the Heston model

Decisions in Economics and Finance - Under the Heston stochastic volatility model, we derive semi-analytical formulas for the prices of path-dependent options with payoffs linked to the maximum or...