Institutional change and strategic choice: debating the ‘stage-model’ of strategy in emerging economies

The popular ‘stage-model’ of strategic choice amid institutional change is found unable to account for the diverse strategies in emerging economies, which, this essay argues, is due to the model’s misplaced search for standard strategies which are said to be (1) dictated by linear transition stages and (2) determining the performance of stylized ‘firm types’. Assuming historical inevitability and blind to human agency, the model is at odds with Knight’s notion of uncertainty, with North’s thesis of adaptive efficiency and with Schumpeter’s theorizing on entrepreneurship. Studies on strategy in emerging economies, such as in the case of contemporary China, are in urgent need of an actor-centred, process-oriented and uncertainty-sensitive reorientation. This step, we conclude, may emerge by learning from the ‘practice-turn’ in the social sciences, taking politics seriously, incorporating evolution/complexity insights and enriching the methodology toolkit.     

Agglomerating or dispersing? Spatial effects of high-speed trains on regional tourism economies

Following the paradigm of New Economic Geography, this study examines the impact of high-speed train (HST) services on the spatial structure of regional tourism economies in China. We collect panel data of 286 Chinese cities from 2007 to 2016 and adopt tourism-revenue location quotients to measure the relative agglomeration level of tourism economies for a city. According to the estimation results, tourism economies tend to agglomerate from the cities outside the HST network to those inside the network. Also, tourism economies start to disperse among cities within the network as more HST services become available. Furthermore, the results unveil the spatial heterogeneity of HST impacts. The moderating effects exerted by other transport modes are examined as well. Lastly, implications are provided for policy-makers and stakeholders on how to internalize the benefits from HST networks on tourism development.     

中国商业成本文化变革趋势

纵观社会主义市场经济体制改革目标确立以来的中国商业史,成本导向是重要的商业文化主题.低成本战略是二十年来我国大多数企业的选择.本文通过对我国企业二十年来的发展史进行研究,发现我国企业在成本控制观念上表现出了六大趋势,即从规模经济到精益生产,从避险求利到范围经济,从生产成本到寿命周期成本,从查错防弊到内控审计,从生成成本到倒逼成本,从成本节约到战略成本管理.     

Evaluating Stakeholder Theory

This paper is the third in a series of four that is directed at understanding and assessing stakeholder theory for the purposes of business ethics. It addresses the suitability and viability of the theory, rejecting objections of a moral and efficiency sort based (respectively) on claims about property rights and the economic superiority of the alternative stockholder approach, but accepting that implementation problems require limiting both the number of groupings admitted to stakeholder status and the degree of responsibility towards them. The conclusion looks forward to the construction of a suitably limited version of the stakeholder approach in a fourth paper drawing upon this one and the previous two.John Kaler teachers at the University of Plymonth Business School. He is the co-author of An Introduction to Business Ethics (Chapman and Hall, 1993; ITP, 1996) and Essentials of Business Ethics (McGraw-Hill, 1996), and co-editor of the ‘Teaching Business Ethics’ website hosted by the Institute of Business Ethics.