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Proposes that due to the worsening business environment in Taiwan in the 1980s many manufacturing enterprises, the majority being labour‐intensive small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs), were moving out to other developing countries. Explores how owner managers in the Taiwanese Electronic and Electric Appliances industry make a foreign direct investment (FDI) decision. Two semi‐structured questionnaires were designed to gather data about the respondents’ decision‐making processes. Field research was undertaken in Taiwan by personal interview over a period of three months and in total 35 companies participated. Discusses how a company’s internationalization experience and its size in terms of sales significantly influence the likelihood of a positive FDI decision. The likelihood of a positive FDI decision is also affected by owners’ personal characteristics. Additionally the decision makers appear to be influenced by friends and partners. States that the companies that make a positive FDI decision perceive the work ethic in Taiwan as deteriorating. Posits that 78 per cent of the most recent FDIs are in China: the major benefits being sought are low production costs and abundant labour supply. Says the most important reason for selecting China as the host country is the same language and cultural similarities. Explains that most FDIs are to produce products which have a price advantage; hence the FDI creates a vertical integration with the mother company in Taiwan. Seems that Taiwanese manufacturing SMEs will continue investing overseas to seek competitive advantages.

The purpose of the paper is to test the use of artificial neural networks (ANNs) as a tool in fraud detection.

Following a review of the relevant literature on fraud detection by auditors, the authors developed a questionnaire which they distributed to auditors attending a fraud detection seminar. The questionnaire was then used to develop seven ANNs to test the usage of these models in fraud detection.

Utilizing exogenous and endogenous factors as input variables to ANNs and in developing seven different models, an average of 90 per cent accuracy was found in the fraud detection prediction model. It has, therefore, been demonstrated that ANNs can be used by auditors to identify fraud‐prone companies.

Whilst previous researchers have looked at empirical predictors of fraud, fraud risk assessment methods and mechanically fraud risk assessment methods, no other research has combined both exogenous and endogenous factors in developing ANNs to be used in fraud detection. Thus, auditors can use ANNs as complementary to other techniques at the planning stage of their audit to predict if a particular audit client is likely to have been victimized by a fraudster.

Aims to evaluate the determinants of international pharmaceutical firms’ foreign direct investments (FDI) in the Chinese pharmaceutical manufacturing industry. Focuses on comparing the differences in FDIs between early entrants who started FDI before 1992 and the late entrants whose FDI started after 1992 in China. Field research was mainly conducted in China by personal interview as well as mail questionnaires over a period of three months in 1999 and 44 companies participated in total. The results of index of dissimilarity analysis, t‐test and Wilcoxon test consistently show that both early and late entrants are likely to agree that China’s huge market size played the most important role in motivating international pharmaceutical firms’ FDI in China. The results did not support the traditional FDI theories on domestic market imperfection and firm specific advantages.

The purpose of this paper is to shortly overview the research in international operations management (OM), to provide background to the papers published in this special section.

As a literature review, the paper investigates the past, present, and future of international OM. It is not a systematic review; the paper just highlights the most important international operational management research networks, streams and concepts in the field.

The paper finds that there is a time lag in the field of international OM compared to other research areas within international business and management. It provides some ideas for the future to be researched.

The paper gives a focused review on international research networks which has not been done before. It also identifies two different streams of researches in international OM: the stream investigating OM differences among geographical areas, and the stream dealing with issues of international manufacturing networks.

Purpose – This chapter provides details of research that attempts to relate traffic operational conditions on uninterrupted flow facilities (e.g., freeways and expressways) with real-time crash likelihood. Unlike incident detection, the purpose of this line of work is to proactively assess crash likelihood and potentially reduce the likelihood through proactive traffic management techniques, including variable speed limit and ramp metering among others.

Methodology – The chapter distinguishes between the traditional aggregate crash frequency-based approach to safety evaluation and the approach needed for real-time crash risk estimation. Key references from the literature are summarised in terms of the reported effect of different traffic characteristics that can be derived in near real-time, including average speed, temporal variation in speed, volume and lane-occupancy, on crash occurrence.

Findings – Traffic and weather parameters are among the real-time crash-contributing factors. Among the most significant traffic parameters is speed particularly in the form of coefficient of variation of speed.

Research implications – In the traffic safety field, traditional data sources are infrastructure-based traffic detection systems. In the future, if automatic traffic detection systems could provide reliable data at the vehicle level, new variables such as headway could be introduced. Transferability of real-time crash prediction models is also of interest. Also, the potential effects of different management strategies to reduce real-time crash risk could be evaluated in a simulation environment.

Practical implications – This line of research has been at the forefront of bringing data mining and other machine-learning techniques into the traffic management arena. We expect these analysis techniques to play a more important role in real-time traffic management, not just for safety evaluation but also for congestion pricing and alternate routing.

This paper aims to compare the readability of narrative annual report disclosure pre- and post-International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) adoption using a computational linguistics programme to determine if annual report disclosures have become more difficult or easier to read following the adoption of IFRS.

This paper empirically measures narrative annual report disclosure readability pre- and post-IFRS adoption using a computational linguistics programme. In this analysis, the authors control for variables that have been identified as relevant to the understanding of financial disclosures, such as size, business volatility, financial leverage and industry.

Significant relationships have been identified between IFRS adoption and reduced readability indicators using readability formulas, and also using other factors such as increased length of annual report disclosures and increased use of tables. Findings suggest that the adoption of IFRS has added complexity and resulted in reduced readability of annual report disclosures.

Academic backing to claims of IFRS’s negative implications for financial statements and their ultimate users should encourage action on the part of standard setters and report preparers to address the negative impacts of IFRS adoption.

This paper is the first to provide evidence that New Zealand equivalents to IFRS adoption have resulted in not only longer disclosures but also more complicated disclosures.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight an innovative approach to explore and evaluate the sustainability perspectives in e-commerce channels for additive manufacturing (AM). This approach helps the stakeholders to perform strategic planning dependent on a scenario-based analysis.

The paper structures the problem of understanding the sustainability perspectives of e-commerce channels for AM using value-focused thinking to identify the related fundamental objectives. These objectives assist in creating dynamic scenarios based on fuzzy cognitive maps of different e-commerce channels for AM.

To evaluate the proposed research methodology, four scenarios were developed for each e-commerce channel for AM. The exploration and evaluation of one of these scenarios assisted in explaining the whereabouts of the process to aid in strategizing decision situations and understanding these channels better from the sustainability perspective.

The approach presented in this paper can be used by the practitioners to perform strategic planning for prioritizing sustainability in e-commerce channels for AM; considering the consequences and trade-offs wrt the other factors. Moreover, the scenario-based analysis can be performed depending on the problem requirements of the stakeholder.

The paper addresses the gap of understanding the theoretical aspect of the sustainability perspective in e-commerce channels for AM and the practical aspect of exploring and evaluating them. A scenario-based analysis for each e-commerce channel based on the fundamental objectives of sustainability provides insights for implementation and directions for future research.

The purpose of this paper is to review the challenges of teaching values and ethics in mental-health, explore the differing perspectives of the key stakeholders and stimulate further questions for debate in this area; leading to a proposal of an alternative approach to educating mental-health professionals on values and ethics.

In current mental-health care settings, very few professionals work with homogeneous populations. It is imperative that mental-health education and training ensures health professionals are competent to practice in diverse settings; where ethics and values are bound to differ. Establishing professional practice not only involves considering concepts such as values and ethics, but also equality, diversity and culture. Incorporating values-based practice and cultural diversity training holds promise to education and training, that is truly reflective of the complexity of clinical decision making in mental-health. Further research is needed as to how these two frameworks can be unified and taught.