Search results

Research on prosocial behaviour shows that help‐giving differs between the sexes. Gender role theory posits that males specialise in material aid, while females specialize in emotional support. Today, people increasingly help and support each other via online environments. The purpose of this study is to examine whether the genders of avatars used in online interactions influence help‐giving behaviour in similar ways as physical sex does in face‐to‐face situations.

An empirical study was conducted using a unique observational data set from a Japanese massively‐multiplayer online game. Instances of help‐giving were identified from conversation logs, coded, and analysed statistically to discover differences between male and female avatars and different help types.

Avatar gender is found to influence help‐giving in ways that deviate from expected gender roles: female avatars are more likely than males to provide assistance in the form of material support and labour, and no more likely than males to provide emotional support. Female avatars are more likely to give help to male avatars than other females. The results are explained using behavioural confirmation and self‐perception theory.

Physical sex was not controlled for, but most players were male. The study should be repeated in other environments.

The results suggest that designers can prime users towards prosocial behaviours by tuning the available line‐up of avatars.

The research question and use of observational data are novel. The study is valuable to online educators, companies seeking to reduce customer support costs through peer help, and policymakers dealing with ICTs and societal change.

Following the discussion at our recent Annual General Meeting, a questionnaire was sent out to all members. Almost half of them replied despite the fact that the time allowed for returning the questionnaire had been kept very short. Some members even provided detailed comments.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss how multinational enterprises have historically managed global patenting and to what extent the localization of patent management has supported the expansion of these enterprises. This study focuses on the electric appliance industry (one of the first industries to see the emergence of global companies) and consider the case of Siemens, a German multinational company, comparing it to General Electric (GE), an American company.

The work adopts a global business history approach. Taking GE’s global patent-management model, described by Nishimura (2004, 2009, 2016), as the benchmark, this study analyzed Siemens’ worldwide control of its intellectual property rights between 1890 and Second World War, using German, Japanese and American primary sources.

Patent management is a common means for firms to globalize and transfer technology internationally, but it can take various forms. While GE transferred patent management to its foreign subsidiaries (a process known as localization), Siemens kept worldwide patent management at its headquarters – except in Japan, where in time it transferred this activity to a joint venture. The transfer of production called for localization of patent management while focusing on exporting to other markets made it possible to keep patent management at headquarters.

Patents are usually a source for quantitative surveys. This paper uses them to discuss how multinational companies manage property rights globally. It is the first paper to address this issue by comparing two major actors in a similar industry.