Search results

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the lessons learned from two kaizen events for productivity improvement in a printing company. The paper suggests how to organize lean tools to improve productivity through the use of organized kaizen events in the printing industry to meet defined targets.

This paper is based on a field study involving participant observations. The relationships among the three specific tools, line balancing, standardized work and standardized layout that are used in a kaizen event of a printing factory, are examined.

Application of a mix of lean tools resulted in significant productivity improvements of 10-30 percent in the assembly area of the printing company. Based on the outcomes of the lean tools that are applied in various work areas, the best combinations of lean tools are identified and several key considerations are discussed.

This paper shows that a combined set of lean tools such as line balancing, standardized work and standardized layout can be applied to improve productivity in the printing operations, which is identifiable with a mix of processes that are both labor intensive and equipment flexible.

The paper fills the literature gap on the use of specific lean tools: line balancing, standardized work and standardized layout in the printing industry. The findings from this research can be applied to other assembly systems that are similar to the printing industry.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how perceptions of truthfulness of television advertising and perceptions of brands vary among urban and rural children in Mainland China and also to collect information about the basis of judgment children used to determine whether commercials are true.

Descriptive statistics were compiled to give the perceptions of television advertising and brands of the overall sample, as well as the urban and rural sub‐samples. Chi‐square tests and independent sample t‐tests were conducted to examine the urban‐rural difference in perceptions of television advertising and brands. The sample was divided into two groups that were of similar size (age six to nine and age ten‐15). Chi‐square tests were conducted to examine the age difference in advertising perceptions.

The urban‐rural difference in consumer perceptions of advertising and brands indicates that children's development in consumer socialization depends on the environment. Urban respondents were more skeptical towards advertising than rural children. Urban and rural children shared two similarities: older children were less likely to perceive television commercials truthful than younger children. Younger children liked television commercials more than older children.

The three surveyed urban cities were highly advanced in terms of their economies and advertising development compared with all other Chinese cities. The seven surveyed rural counties cannot be generalized to the very poor rural provinces in China.

The study should serve as an advertising guideline for marketers and advertisers that target urban and rural children in China.

This paper offers insights for employing different advertising message strategies to disseminate market information to urban as well as rural children in China.

Since its development by Tinbergen (1962), the gravity model of international trade has widely been applied to analyse the effect of various factors on trade relationships between countries. Past studies on trade gravity vary not only in the mix of model variables but also in how they have come into the analysis. This study reviews existing literature on bilateral trade with an aim to identify influential predictors such as changes of trade policy and national development strategy and highlight important yet understudied factors such as transport and logistics infrastructure, and sustainable development. To demonstrate the needs to examine these critical factors across industry sectors, the study presents the case of textiles and clothing (T&C) production and trade between China and its trading partners as an illustration. Through the literature review, it shows how the gravity model can be applied to address current issues in international trade arena such as the potential trade war between the US and China, China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), and other important factors shaping global T&C trade. This study offers future research directions for analysis of global trade in the T&C industry and contributes to the wider literature of international business and trade.

This study aims to develop a strategic framework for the success of coastal urban projects in Vietnam, which is one of the Asia Pacific countries significantly affected by climate change.

A questionnaire was used to collect data from practitioners in Vietnam. Principal component analysis (PCA) technique was used to identify critical success factors (CSFs) of coastal urban projects. A strategy map for the success of coastal urban projects was also proposed using the balanced scorecard (BSC) method.

This study identified 41 project success factors that could contribute to project success, and thence, extracted 11 CSFs for coastal urban projects using the PCA technique. In addition, 11 key performance indicators (KPIs) for coastal urban projects were listed and their linking with project success factors and CSFs was explored. Furthermore, a strategy map for the success of coastal urban projects was proposed using the BSC method. The strategy map included five perspectives: learning and growth, internal processes, social and environmental performance, financial performance, and stakeholders' satisfaction.

This study identified 11 CSFs for coastal urban projects and proposed a strategy map for the success of coastal urban projects.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether audit opinions of listed firms in China vary systematically with the political connections of the firm’s chief executive officer (CEO). Prior literature only shows the importance of political influence to auditor choice and audit quality.

A politically connected firm is defined as a firm in which the CEO has a political background. The authors use a “difference-in-difference” model to control for self-selection problems.

The authors find that the likelihood of receiving a favourable opinion in the subsequent period is positively associated with a CEO’s political connections. This positive association is stronger with CEOs connected to local government within the same region. The authors further find that the CEO’s political connections have more influence on favourable audit opinions in non-state-owned enterprises (non-SOEs) in a less developed and lower investor protection region. The influence is also less significant in the regions where there are more non-state-owned or foreign banks and where there are greater penalties for political corruption and relationship-based contracting.

The study complements and extends the existing literature on the role of political connections in the economy by providing evidence on the effect of a CEO’s political connections on audit opinions. The authors extend the research on auditing in emerging markets by explicitly accounting for unique institutional and market factors in China. They explore audit quality by observing how audit opinions are directly shaped by political and institutional factors.

Considers the effects on the mass media of China’s transition to a more open economy and the strategies which advertisers might use to overcome the problems it presents. Describes the media available (including the unofficial “black route”, the official but restricted private sector “white route”, and the state “red route”) and lists the challenges which advertisers face in using them. Suggests some strategies and practices which can help to overcome them and some hypotheses on future media use. Calls for further research in this area.

Among developing countries, the Republic of China in Taiwan (hereinafter Taiwan) has been experiencing economic growth accompanied by improving income distribution. Between 1964 and 1980, the average annual growth rate of the real gross national product was 9.92 per cent (Council for Economic Planning and Development (CEPD), 1982, p. 23). In the same period, the income ratio between the top 20 per cent and the bottom 20 per cent of families dropped from 5.33 to 4.17 and the Gini coefficient decreased from 0.36 to 0.30 (CEPD, 1982, p. 54; Directorate‐General of Budget Accounting and Statistics, 1980, (DGBAS), p. 44). To put it somewhat dif‐ferently, in 1964 the lowest fifth of households received 7.71 per cent of total personal income, and the highest fifth 41.07 per cent. But in 1980, the income share of the lowest fifth increased to 8.82 per cent while that of the highest fifth decreased to 36.80 per cent. The condition of greater equality in income distribution appears more obvious in the capital city of Taipei. In 1981, for instance, its Gini coefficient was estimated to be only 0.28 (Taipei Bureau of Budget, Accounting and Statistics, 1981, (TBBAS), P. 24).

Compared with the fierce price competition in 1998, the well‐order price competition is witnessed in Chinese iron and steel industry now and the pricing behaviors of steel firms also follow the certain rules. Based on the methods of collecting the secondary data and interviewing, this paper examines the pricing behaviors of firms to explain the how Chinese steel firms make their pricing decisions and maintain the well‐order competitive relationship among them. The authors found out that (1) most Chinese steel companies adopt a kind of strategic perspective in their pricing decision making, in which understanding of the market trend and the close attention to their competitors are both important; (2) there obviously exists price leader and followers in Chinese iron and steel industry, and the relationship between price leader and followers is relatively stable and the factor behind this phenomenon is the existence of a kind of informal platform of communication among competitors, government and trade associations.

Globalisation is generally defined as the “denationalisation of clusters of political, economic, and social activities” that destabilize the ability of the sovereign State to control activities on its territory, due to the rising need to find solutions for universal problems, like the pollution of the environment, on an international level. Globalisation is a complex, forceful legal and social process that take place within an integrated whole with out regard to geographical boundaries. Globalisation thus differs from international activities, which arise between and among States, and it differs from multinational activities that occur in more than one nation‐State. This does not mean that countries are not involved in the sociolegal dynamics that those transboundary process trigger. In a sense, the movements triggered by global processes promote greater economic interdependence among countries. Globalisation can be traced back to the depression preceding World War II and globalisation at that time included spreading of the capitalist economic system as a means of getting access to extended markets. The first step was to create sufficient export surplus to maintain full employment in the capitalist world and secondly establishing a globalized economy where the planet would be united in peace and wealth. The idea of interdependence among quite separate and distinct countries is a very important part of talks on globalisation and a significant side of today’s global political economy.

Looks at consumer research in Greater China including Mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. Maps out the contributions within this area and guides future research. Examines the state of the art over the 1979‐97 period, with particular emphasis on the topics that have been researched, the extent of the theory development in the field and the methodologies used in conducting research. Uses content analysis to review 75 relevant articles. Suggests that, while a considerable breadth of topics have been researched, there remains much to be done, there is further room for theoretical development in Chinese consumer behaviour studies; and the methodologies used need improvement and further refinement.