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The purpose of this paper is to use China’s World Trade Organization accession as a quasi-natural experiment and examine whether conglomeration affects firmss’ ability to respond to a significant increase in competitive pressure. Conglomerate segments have higher sales growth and higher profitability than singlesegment firms, when they face intensified import competition. Conglomerates’ outperformance is not observed when the markets in which segments operate already have high product market competition. Overall, conglomeration encourages competitiveness, and internal resources are allocated to relatively competitive segments.

This paper examines the comparative corporate performance of logistics companies in Korea, China and Japan. Based on the annual data from the listed companies, the growth rate of Chinese companies has surpassed that of Korean and Japanese companies and has labeled China as the fastest growing economy. How ever, labor efficiency of Chinese firms when calculated by total revenue per employee is the lowest of the three countries. In addition, the profitability of Chinese multimodal logistics companies and sea transport companies is also lower than that of Korea and Japan.

Using Data Envelop Analysis(DEA), the primary results regarding corporate efficiency among Korean, Chinese and Japanese logistic companies are as follows: In the multimodal industries, Japanese firms have revealed the highest level of efficiency, with Korean firms coming in second, and Chinese firms ranking third with distinctly inferior performance. This trend has also been examined in the maritime industries, in which the efficiency levels have been deteriorating continuously. However, in the air transportation industry Chinese companies revealed the highest level of efficiency, which resulted from the business characteristics of the government supported conglomerate companies.

While entrepreneurship may be driven by personal interests and lifestyle choices, entrepreneurial actions are not only economically driven opportunity-searching processes but also enactments of social transformation that may or may not lead to socioeconomic benefits. We advance that exploring these entrepreneurial processes can inform a theory of the firm that may explain how socioeconomic processes shape the socioeconomic environment of communities while serving individuals. This article discusses several understandings of the firm, as theorized in extant literature. Guided by these different conceptualizations, we present a case study of an artist and artisan cluster in Western Massachusetts to demonstrate various understandings of entrepreneurial processes. By way of conclusion, we develop the idea of the firm as a geographically embedded relational understanding aiding entrepreneurs to achieve personal goals while coconstructing their local environment.

The Korean airline industry continues to change in 20-year cycles structurally. The major changes are in their market through deregulation and liberalization resulting in adding more carriers, especially low-cost carriers (LCCs) from 2006. The authors categorize three types of LCCs in Korea: (1) independent LCCs, (2) LCCs subsidized by existing airlines as airlines-within-airlines (AwAs), and (3) LCCs supported by conglomerates and local governments. Independent LCCs have suffered financially during the research period from 2009 to 2013, especially from the impaired capital, even though these LCCs are growing rapidly and expanding their markets in domestic and international routes. AwAs’ efficiency is higher than that of independent LCCs, the roles in the market are limited because of cannibalization by their mother company.

One main concern and issue affecting earnings quality is the extent to which managers manipulate earnings to mislead stakeholders about the underlying economic performance of the company or to influence contractual outcomes that depend on reported accounting numbers. This study builds on prior research and examines empirically the relationship between board leadership structure and earnings quality of manufacturing firms in Nigeria. The purpose of this paper is to specifically focus on four board structure characteristics: board size, composition, proportion of non-executive directors and CEO duality.

Data used for this investigation were collected from secondary sources, i.e. annual reports and accounts. The study used the Pooled OLS regression model to examine the effect of the board structure on earnings management for a sample of 45 non-financial listed Nigerian companies (conglomerates, consumer goods and industrial goods firms) for the years 2011 to 2016.

Based on the analysis, board size and board composition were positive and significant. However, proportion of non-executive directors was negative and significant; while, CEO duality was positive and statistically significant. It was consequently recommended that audit firms should review their audit business model and become more circumspect of their client, e.g. provide fraud assessment and checks for earnings quality. Boards should not just reflect size but rather the skills and expertise of individuals appointed to the board. Furtherance to this, the effectiveness of boards can be improved by committees and sub-committees allocation of duties.

Few studies have addressed this area in the country.

The authors show that there is a negative relationship between economic policy uncertainty (EPU) and firm overinvestment using Korean data from 2007 to 2016. Since Jensen (1986) shows that a firm's free cash flow is an important factor of overinvestment, the authors examine how free cash flow influences the sensitivity of overinvestment to EPU. The authors find that a high level of free cash flow attenuates the negative effect of EPU on overinvestment. The authors find that there is no significant difference in the effect of EPU on overinvestment between Chaebol (Korean family-run conglomerates) and non-Chaebol firms, which is consistent with the literature that the features of Chaebol are weakening.