Chinese Outward Foreign Direct Investment: A Review of Empirical Research

In the past decade, Chinese outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) has become a major element of global capital flows. As a consequence, recent years have witnessed an increasing growth in the number of papers focusing on Chinese companies “going global.” This paper reviews 112 empirical papers focusing on Chinese OFDI that were published in major scholarly journals between 2002 and 2014. We report on individual and institutional contributions, citations, the theories and methods used and the research topics. We also identify the research gaps and discuss the implications of our literature review for future theory building.     

Type of diversification and firm resources: new empirical evidence from the Spanish tourism industry

This paper analyses the diversification strategies followed by tourism firms from the perspective of the resource‐based view. More specifically, it seeks to verify whether the composition of the firms' resources has a bearing on the decision to undertake one type of diversification or another (related or unrelated). From a mail survey to 80 Spanish tourism firms, we identified 94 entries into new business areas. We applied an ordered logit regression and have statistically confirmed that intangible resources lead to a more related type of diversification. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Business and management in China: A review of empirical research in leading international journals

Asia Pacific Journal of Management - China’s growing economic importance has led to a significant increase in the volume of empirical research about business and management in this country...     

The relationship between managers' environmental perceptions,environmental management and firm performance in Spanish hotels: a whole framework

The examination of the possible direct link between environmental protection and firm performance has generally produced mixed results. This paper contributes to the literature by considering the antecedents of hotel managers' environmental attitudes to check whether perceptions of the external and internal factors are behind the adoption of a proactive environmental management. The study also tests whether or not the resource‐based view of the hotel mediates the positive relationships of proactive environmental management and improved environmental performance with competitive advantage and financial performance. This contribution is original because this study develops a comprehensive whole picture of this path process, which has previously only been partially discussed in the literature. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A European role in intra-Asian commercial development: The Maclaine Watson network and the Java sugar trade c.1840–1942

This article concerns the Batavia (Jakarta)-based mercantile firm of Maclaine Watson (1827–1964) and its close commercial associates in the Netherlands Indies (modern-day Indonesia) and nearby Singapore. From its inception, the firm initially operated in the context of bilateral trade with Europe, in conjunction with its burgeoning role in the Netherlands Indies’ sugar export trade. By the century’s end, however, shifts in the direction of that trade meant that its prime commercial ventures were directed towards markets elsewhere in Asia. The significance of the firm’s involvement within intra-Asian trade and the region’s economic development forms the core of the article’s argument.     

Explaining the Strategic Groups–Firm Performance Relationship: A Multilevel Approach Applied to Small and Medium‐Sized Hotel Companies in Spain*

One of the main research questions in the field of strategic management is why firms obtain different performance levels. This paper answers this question from the strategic groups approach. This paper analyzes the linkage between strategic groups and firm performance offering a multilevel analysis about the relative importance of intergroup and intragroup performance differences based on the use of hierarchical linear models. The results show that intragroup differences explain firm performance better than intergroup differences.     

Sustainable development and intangibles: building sustainable intellectual capital

Sustainable intellectual capital is a promising starting‐point for the incorporation of environmental aspects into the general management system of a firm. This paper examines how sustainable intellectual capital helps to overcome the shortcomings of conventional approaches to environmental management systems. It does this by extending the concept of sustainability from relational capital to the three pillars of intellectual capital: human, structural and relational intellectual capital. A multiple case study was carried out with Spanish firms characterized by their high level of environmental leadership. The findings indicated that sustainable human intellectual capital, environmental training, information and awareness sessions help in the accumulation and utilization of knowledge. As for sustainable structural intellectual capital, the environmental technology portfolio is improved and new environmental departments are created. Regarding sustainable relational intellectual capital, the firm–environment link is very important. In the primary and secondary sectors suppliers become involved to a greater extent in the environmental management process, whereas in the service sector it is the customer who becomes more involved. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

External economies as a mechanism of agglomeration in EU manufacturing

Productive externalities are significant determinants of agglomeration, not deeply studied at the industry and international level. We analyse the impact on productivity growth of technological externalities, both inter- and intraindustry, national or international, at the industry level for the EU countries and the period 1995–2002. The results confirm the advisability of considering international externalities when countries are taken as regions, whose omission underestimates national spillovers. Together with national endowments and a central geographical position, the growth of productivity is encouraged by national and international specialization as a general result; moreover, it is fuelled by stronger interindustry spillovers and productive diversification, a result more evident for high technology industries, while lower technology industries are more sensitive to the omission of international externalities. Economic integration seems to be relevant, because supranational regions with less friction for goods and factor movements are more likely to take advantage of external economies as a mechanism of productivity growth and agglomeration.