The Volatility of Foreign Portfolio Investment and the Access to Finance of Small Listed Firms

This paper examines the impact of foreign portfolio investment (FPI) volatility on the access to capital of small listed firms. The volatility of FPI is significantly associated with decreased access to finance for small listed firms only in years when nations are considered less “creditworthy.” Even in these times, however, the benefits of FPI are not completely depleted. These results underscore the significance of both a good financial system that minimizes capital flow volatility and national creditworthiness in inspiring confidence in foreign investors.     

How and when do prior international experiences lead to global work? A career motivation perspective

While research suggests a link between individuals' prior international experiences and their future participation in global work, we know little about how and the conditions under which this relationship occurs. Drawing on career motivation theory, we conceptualize global identity as a mediator between individuals' density of prior international experiences—defined as the extent to which time spent in culturally novel countries has provided individuals with developmental opportunities—and their global work aspirations, which in turn leads to their global work involvement. Further, this multi-stage mediation model holds mainly when individuals receive positive feedback regarding their intercultural competencies (i.e., cultural intelligence) from their peers. We test our model using a multi-wave multi-source dataset spanning 6 years. We discuss implications for the literatures on prior international experiences and global careers.     

Demographics and the long-horizon returns of dividend-yield strategies

This paper investigates the relationship between demographic changes and the long-run returns of dividend-yield investment strategies. We hypothesise that in a world where components of wealth are mentally treated as being non-fungible, the preference for high dividend-paying stocks by older investors means that the excess returns of high dividend-yielding stocks, relative to other stocks, should be positively related to demographic clientele variation. In particular, we find that, consistent with the behavioural life-cycle hypothesis, long-run returns of dividend-yield investment strategies are positively driven by changes in the proportion of the older population. Our results are robust when controlled for the Fama–French factors, inflation rate, consumption growth rate, interest rates, tax clienteles, time trend and alternative definitions of both dividend-yield strategies and demographic variation.     

Who are ‘managing’ the lawyers in China? Control and commitment in an evolving institutional and cultural context and gendered implications

National legal systems are distinctive with strong institutional legacies and societal contexts. Research on the lawyers' work and their operating environment in China has been limited. This study fills part of this gap by investigating the nature of work and career prospect, with gendered implications, in six Chinese law firms. We argue that the lack of commitment to each other between the employer and the lawyers is a result of the governance structure, culture and business process of the law firms, societal norms, market pressure and the active involvement of other stakeholders. The political, economic, social and physical insecurity that engulfs lawyers' work environment undermines their ability to uphold justice for the weak, standards of the profession and ethical values of the society. The study has implications for western law firms operating in China as well as for Chinese law firms that intend to internationalize as part of an emerging trend of Chinese professional services firms. It also has broader implications for human resource management of professional services organizations in China.     

Ethnic homophily perceptions as an emergent IHRM challenge: evidence from firms operating in Sri Lanka during the ethnic conflict

Ethnic conflict is a defining characteristic of the post-Cold War era and is prevalent particularly in emerging economies, areas of increasing interest to multinational enterprises. Yet little is known about the international human resource management challenges arising from such societal context. Utilizing social identity theory, we propose that ethnic homophily perceptions in the workplace – an employee's assessment that colleagues prefer working with ethnically similar others – is a reflection of the societal context and can be detrimental to the organization if not managed appropriately. We investigate whether contact theory offers insights to manage such perceptions. Drawing on a sample of 550 managers in Sri Lanka during a period of protracted ethnic conflict, we found that employee sensitivity to ethnic conflict in the societal context is positively related to ethnic homophily perceptions in the workplace, and that both ethnic diversity in workgroups and quality of work relationships serve to reduce perceptions of ethnic homophily.     

Effect of investor fear on Australian financial markets

We examine the relationship between changes in the level of investor fear (proxied by the ASX 200 implied volatility index) and Australian financial market returns. We document a statistically significant relationship, across asset classes, where returns decline as investor fear increases. Returns are more sensitive to changes in the level of investor fear during the financial crisis of 2008–2009, when investor fear spikes sharply. Taken together, the results confirm that Australian financial market returns are closely related to prevailing levels of investor fear.     

Rethinking the Role of State-owned Enterprises in China’s Rise

The massive overseas expansion of Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOEs) is a central aspect of China’s ‘rise’ to great-power status. There is significant disagreement, however, over how to interpret SOEs’ role. Are they instruments of Chinese statecraft, being directed purposefully from Beijing as part of a ‘grand strategy’? Or are they relatively autonomous, profit-maximising businesses, their free-wheeling behaviour often undermining Chinese foreign policy? Finding that there is evidence for both theses, we provide a framework to explain this. We propose theorising party-state/SOEs relations using the concepts of state transformation and regulatory statehood. We show that the Chinese state’s fragmentation, decentralisation and internationalisation since the late 1970s has substantially increased SOE autonomy and weakened but also transformed the executive’s control, reconfiguring it towards a regulatory mode of governance. Party-state/SOEs relations are thus characterised not by direct command and control but weak oversight and ongoing struggles within the party-state. We illustrate this using a case study of China Power Investment Corporation and its Myitsone hydropower dam project in Myanmar. Here, a central SOE clearly defied and subverted central regulations, profoundly damaging Sino-Myanmar state-to-state relations. Party-state authorities are now struggling to rein in this and other central SOEs.