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Recent legislation in Europe and North America encourages women’s participation in corporate boards based on the belief that gender-diversified boards contribute positively to firm performance and increased competitiveness. Contrary to the West, the women’s participation rate in business has been traditionally high in China. The purpose of this paper is to find out whether gender-diverse corporate boards of Chinese automotive firms perform better financially than gender-homogeneous boards.

By drawing on data from the Chinese Government and Bloomberg, the authors compare and analyze the differences in financial performance (return on equity, asset growth, sales growth) and risk behavior (debt risk, R&D expenditure) of Chinese automotive firms with and without women on their corporate board.

There is significant evidence that firms with women on the board perform better across all three categories, with the exception of return on equity, for which they found no significant differences among the analyzed firms.

While women’s participation in corporate boards in China is low, the results of this study suggest to policy makers and firms alike to implement measures that support gender-diversified boards in order to take advantage of their potential to increase corporate performance.

So far, the performance of corporate boards of countries with a traditionally high share of female participation in the workforce has rarely been analyzed. Research focusing on the Chinese automotive industry is new and underrepresented, although China is the largest automotive market worldwide and a key industry of the domestic economy. This investigation contributes to the literature stream on board diversity in as well as to industry-related studies. With the example of the Chinese automotive industry, it provides empirical evidence of better performance of firms with gender-diversified boards within the categories tested.

The purpose of this research is to study the management approach of automotive industry managers and students in China.

This paper focused on comparing the leadership orientation of respondents and compared 200 working managers with 181 graduate students in the automotive industry.

It appears that these Chinese respondents from the automotive industry have significantly higher scores on the relationship orientation than task orientation. Managers have significantly higher scores on both dimensions of leadership. Similarly, the female respondents in China had similar scores as their male colleagues.

It appears that being socialized in a collectivistic or high context culture can lead to higher focus on relationship orientation. Based on the results, practical implications and application for future research are explored.

This paper is original and analyzes the leadership orientation of respondents.

The chapter looks at two recent acquisitions by Chinese companies of German firms operating in the automotive sector. In both cases it was the target firm that initiated the process, intentionally selling to a Chinese strategic investor. The main purpose of the chapter is to examine the main motivations that induce developed country MNEs to deliberately search for a buyer in China.

The chapter uses a case-study approach. Interviews were conducted with the managers that followed the entire process of sale and who were responsible for the search and the selection of a strategic investor in China.

Empirical findings show that major drivers in opting for Chinese investors are the potential synergies generating from resource redeployment, the ability of the acquired firm to maintain its autonomy and the opportunity to expand into the Chinese market.

The cases analysed show that developed country firms may take a proactive role in China in order to address their institutional-based disadvantages and to reduce and eliminate the liability of foreignness they may confront there. What is important is strong core competitiveness on their side, which can ensure their operational autonomy, such as technological leadership and superior quality and solid development. The policy implications are relevant, because in the current particular situation where many companies in Europe turn for sources of capital to emerging market firms, Chinese investors can facilitate target companies’ growth, with a positive impact for the local economy.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the historical development and characteristics of the globalizing Chinese automobile industry.

This study is positioned as an exploratory case study, using data triangulation techniques based on archival research and published reports of statistical agencies both at central government and single industry level.

China's automobile industry represents an extraordinary case of a development path toward globalization in a transitional economy. One of the obvious characteristics of the auto industry is that it necessitates technology transfer and innovative learning, which can be regarded as an important aspect of maintaining competitiveness in industrialization and global competition. The automobile industry in China is also characterized by state intervention and industrial regulations. The state initiated open-door reform has led to a mixed regulatory mechanism including both market-based competition and the legacy of a command economy. Other major features are demonstrated as follows: state-owned auto enterprises have been gradually given more freedom in the decision-making processes; the Chinese auto industry has shown phenomenal growth in the country's economic development with an average annual rate of about 9 percent. This achievement combined with the increasing impacts of globalization of production and market expansion has undoubtedly led to the increasing inflows of foreign direct investment in the form of international partnerships between the auto-producing MNCs and major local Chinese firms as per the industrial policies in the Chinese automobile industry.

This paper addresses an important topic, the historical development path of the Chinese automobile industry, but to date, it has received very little research attention. It advances the institution-based perspective and therefore develops a better understanding of changes in China's automobile industry over the past decades since 1949 and concludes that the combination of the influences of foreign technology, China's industrial policies and institutional dynamic processes has resulted in a unique dynamic development path for the globalizing Chinese automobile industry.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the internationalization of Chinese new global players through innovation-oriented Mergers and Acquisitions (M&As).

The paper combines the analysis of East-Asian and Chinese multinationals’ international expansion within international business (IB) and innovation domains, with the “latecomer” perspective. It is a conceptual contribution, based on the role of local institutions and firm’s absorptive capacity. A theoretical framework is developed, and further elucidated with two illustrative cases of Chinese M&As abroad in the automotive sector. Implications for theoretical development and practical application are then drawn.

Chinese firms’ M&As abroad have become one of the preferential modes of developing innovation capabilities. The success of these endeavors is argued to be the result of a combination of a strong push from government industrial policies, along with significant internal knowledge assimilation and transformation capabilities.

The paper extends IB literature integrating the latecomer firms’ perspective within a novel conceptual framework, which adds to the traditional resource-based arguments about incumbent MNEs asset and knowledge-seeking internationalization modes, as well as institutional and multi-dimensional absorptive capacity perspectives.

International business

Undergraduate/graduate/executive education.

China has become the world's largest producer of automobiles, surpassing the USA and Japan. The Chinese auto industry differs quite significantly from those countries though. While the industry exhibits a substantial degree of concentration in the USA and Japan in early 2011, it remained highly fragmented in China. The Chinese Central Government had announced a desire for consolidation, yet it remained unclear whether a significant shakeout would occur in the near term.

Like many Chinese automakers, Chang'an partnered with well-known global auto makers to develop, produce, and distribute its products. In the coming years, Chang'an hoped to develop more independence from its foreign partners, including the production and distribution of self-branded cars. However, the company grappled with how it could strive for independence while managing its existing joint ventures. Executives worried too about how to compete with foreign automakers who had achieved global economies of scale.

The case provides a rich description of the evolution of the Chinese auto industry, and it documents how the Chinese industry differs from other global markets. Readers can analyze the extent to which they believe scale economies provide foreign firms an advantage over smaller Chinese rivals, and they can evaluate the conventional wisdom regarding the industry's minimum efficient scale. The case also provides a detailed account of Chang'an's rise to prominence. The case concludes by offering an in-depth description of the firm's key rivals, and it presents the key questions being considered by Chang'an executives in 2011.

Enables students to examine how and why an industry's structure can differ substantially across geographic markets.

Enables students to examine whether the need to achieve economies of scale may cause substantial consolidation in the Chinese auto industry.

Provides an opportunity to evaluate the pros and cons of the joint venture strategies employed in China.

Provides an opportunity to examine how a relatively small firm can position itself against large multinationals in a high-growth emerging market.

Teaching notes.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the strategic response to Industry 4.0 for Chinese automotive industry and to identify the critical factors for its successful implementation.

A technological, organizational, and environmental framework is used to build the structural models, and statistical tools are used to validate the model. The data analysis helps to determine which factors have impact on the strategic response and whether their relationships are positive or negative. Interpretive structural modeling method is applied to further analyze these derived factors for depicting the relationship.

The result shows that company size and nature do not increase the use of advanced production technologies, while other factors have positive impacts on improving the technology adoption among the companies surveyed.

A strategic response to Industry 4.0 not only helps in improving organizational competitiveness, but it also has social and economic implications. For this purpose, empirical data are collected to measure the understanding of Industry 4.0 in the Chinese automotive industry.

Despite the fact that the Chinese Government has proposed the “Made in China 2025” approach as a way to promote smart manufacturing, little empirical evidence exists in the literature validating company’s perspective toward Industry 4.0. This paper is to fill the research gap.

There is a great reliance on fiscal incentives to sustain the automotive industry competitiveness due to several structural problems, among them the inefficiency of the supply chain. This paper aims to compare the supply chain structure of traditional automotive industry with the supply chains from South Korea and China. Based on strategic decision and transaction cost theory, this comparison seeks to exploit the factors that led to the inefficiency of automotive supply chains.

The authors used a qualitative approach and applied a multi-method research. They conducted semi-structured interviews with six executives from automakers representing the selected countries, carried individual meetings during one workshop and used secondary data from several sources.

Concepts identified in the research such as reliability, supply chain governance and automaker competencies led the authors to propose that the traditional automakers have higher transaction costs when compared to the new automakers due to the horizontal structure of their supply chain. While new competitors have vertical upstream supply chains, which indicates better profitability, traditional automotive industry is horizontal, depends on fewer Tier 1 suppliers and is disconnected from Tier 2, impacting negatively in the transaction costs and supply chain management.

This study suggests that automotive executives rethink the current upstream supply chain model by identifying the competencies required for their current and future competitiveness and implementing a vertical integration of these competencies.

This research exploited the inefficiency of supply chain as one of the explanations for the low competitiveness of the national automotive industry.

Technologies change quickly in the automotive industry. This can provide opportunities to firms from emerging economies who try to enter the world stage of automotive production, provided they can react to this more nimbly than established competitors. How technological change affects the supply chain coordination of incumbents from developed economies and new entrants from emerging economies should strongly determine the speed of competitive reaction. By using the example of automotive transmission development, the purpose of this paper is to provide a conceptual model for the analysis and offer research propositions.

The authors build a conceptual model based on information processing theory and offer research propositions based on case study evidence of four automotive original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and five suppliers.

The authors find symptoms of two larger trends: increasing specialization and technological linkages and a need to increase external supply chain integration beyond traditional structures. Comparing the effects on Japanese and German incumbents, the authors find that increasing external supply chain linkages proves to be harder for Japanese OEMs. Tight links and routines in the Japanese supply chain networks may harm OEM efficiency under the new technological conditions, e.g. the lack of complete part specifications and high demands for customization. Looking at effects on emerging market firms, Chinese OEMs use quasi-open modular production settings in transmission development and lean strongly on inputs from specialized foreign tier-one suppliers. Speed advantages must be weighed against long-term disadvantages of dependence and insufficient R&D investments.

The study explores how technological change affects inter-firm development processes. The authors propose a framework and hypotheses based on information processing theory and link the findings to the discussion on the impact of national institutional context on supply chain coordination.

OEMs wanting to adapt complex existing internal structures to the changing demands for information processing should focus first on improving internal capacities by improving the amount and richness of information flow. Implementing new standards for simultaneous and standardized software development across the supply chain is a key point for this. A second step should be to boost the internal capacity to process higher richness of information, i.e. to understand the meta-knowledge necessary to integrate across technological areas in the development of electronic control units (ECUs).

The authors draw on original interview data in developed and emerging markets and information processing theory to explore the complexity of inter-firm coordination in automotive supply chains.

The study aims to develop and test a supply chain wide green product development framework of focal firms and their major suppliers, in the context of the Chinese automotive industry.

An in-depth case studies approach is adopted for this study. Three automotive sector upstream supply chains involving 17 firms and 51 experts as respondents were interviewed on the importance and implementation effectiveness of 6Rs (reduce, redesign, recover, remanufacture, reuse and recycle) across the manufacturer and their respective tier 1 and tier 2 suppliers.

The results indicate that the Chinese automotive sector supply chains are mainly focused on “reduce” practices with immediate environmental and economic benefits. The investigated firms however had future implementation plans for “redesign” and “recovery” practices to become comprehensive in green product development (GPD).

The study facilitates automotive firms, industry policymakers and researchers the understanding of incorporating comprehensive GSCM practices across the upstream supply chain to achieve circularity. The study focused on upstream supply chain due to the concentration of major production practices in this section of the supply chain. However, the downstream supply chain equally deserve attention as well as the need to understand the mediating and moderating roles of the different Rs to tease out the pros and cons of achieving overall environmental sustainability.

There are very limited studies on comprehensive GPD for achieving optimal GSCM and sustainability. By simultaneous looking at a focal firm and its upstream supply chains GSCM practices, this study addresses a system-wide comprehensive GPD issues from implementation of 6Rs perspectives in the supply chain.