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To understand the rationale for foreign direct investment of Chinese electronic companies, their location decisions and entry mode choices

Secondary data on foreign direct investment of the top 100 companies in China’s electronics industry are analysed. The first part covers an exploratory analysis of the industry and the second part presents a comparative longitudinal analysis of three case studies of representative companies: Haier, Huawei, and Lenovo.

The three key findings are: (1) market-seeking is the primary motivation for foreign direct investment of Chinese companies in the electronics industry, yet the strategic-asset-seeking gains importance as the internationalization of the company advances; (2) foreign investment path normally starts at adjacent foreign markets, but more distant markets are gradually targeted and become more important for the company; (3) wholly owned investments are the preferred market entry modes in the international expansion.

This research is based on secondary data, and more in-depth, interview-based studies are needed to explore the perceptions of decision-makers, and a plethora of contextual factors, which result in specific market entry decisions. As only the 100 largest companies were studied, future research should put under scrutiny also internationalization of smaller firms.

Implications of such findings are discussed in the light of classic internationalization theories as well as the current research on internationalization of companies from emerging/developing countries.

Provides an account of foreign direct investment in a context of a substantial and growing importance for the practice of international business, and identifies an agenda for promising future scholarly inquiries.

Reports citing excessive CEO compensation continue to make the news with evidence of peer relationships between the CEO and the compensation committee often the center of debate. The compensation committee of the board of directors determines CEO pay and is often comprises CEOs from other companies as well as non-CEOs such as academic, exgovernment, and professional individuals. This study examines the influence of the psychological factor of social comparison over accounting performance measures in a compensation experiment with 176 subjects. The results of this study are consistent with social comparison theory in that CEO director-subjects award greater pay and shield the compensation of the CEO when firm accounting performance is below average. Additionally, we find shielding is mitigated when subjects are informed that the decision of the amount of compensation awarded will be revealed to the public.

This chapter provides an overview of five modes of intellectual property (IP) protection – patents, designs, copyrights, trademarks, and trade secrets – available in the United States, the European Union, and Japan. After describing the purposes of and principal differences among the five types of IP protection and outlining the advantages of each form, the chapter provides country- and region-specific information. The authors highlight the aspects of IP law in which international harmonization has, or has not yet, occurred, and offer insights into the relative advantages of various national and regional IP protection systems.

This chapter provides an overview of the five main modes of intellectual property (IP) protection – patents, copyrights, trademarks, trade secrets, and designs – available in the United States, the European Union, and Japan. After describing the purposes of and principal differences among the five types of IP protection and outlining the advantages of each form, the chapter provides country- and region-specific information. The authors highlight the aspects of IP law in which international harmonization has, or has not yet, occurred, and offer insights into the relative advantages of various national and regional IP protection systems.

This chapter provides an ethnographic look at higher education strategic planning through the lens of Williams College’s 2018–2020 effort to develop a 20-year plan for the institution. The critical analysis of Williams’ multi-community engagement contributes to studies of higher education and to literature in the sociocultural anthropological field of “policy as a practice of power” by applying core tenets of the field to strategic planning analysis. Drawing on 12 months of participation-observation and documentary research, the investigation brings into focus Williams’ heterarchical leadership structure and the negotiation practices that contributed to establish the legitimacy and appropriation of William’s strategic plan values. The chapter also shifts toward a contextualized perspective of strategic planning, highlighting campus community divides and the practices that contributed to bridge these fault lines and foster trust during the Fall 2019 campus-wide outreach process. Through the chapter, the analysis re-interprets beliefs of strategic planning and implementation as a top-down, normative imposition, and brings an ethnographic lens to reveal practices of negotiation, convergence, and value appropriation.

In this chapter, we are among the first to investigate the actual course of affairs in AGMs with respect to shareholder forum rights. In the first part of the chapter, we provide descriptive statistics on the use of the right to ask questions and speak in AGMs in the Netherlands. We find that in an average meeting there are around 42 questions and remarks made by around 8 shareholders. Most of these questions and remarks seem to be relevant; with a categorization framework of 14 topics, we could already identify over 50% of these questions and remarks. However, we also find that the average number of shareholders that physically ask questions is only 8. Next, we consider the determinants of the use of these forum rights. In several panel data analyses with a Poisson distribution and a negative binomial distribution, we, inter alia, found that the ‘importance of the meeting’ generally contributes to the amount of questions and remarks and the number of shareholders that actively engage in discussions. We have also found that the number of speakers – and the number of private investors – that actively attend the AGM depends on previous attendance numbers. This may imply that there is a small base of very active (private) investors in the Netherlands. We conclude that the forum function of AGMs is definitely relevant, but given the low number of shareholders that make use of these rights, amendments may be considered.