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The purpose of this paper is to examine the determinants of average health expenditures for inpatients in China with national data for period 2002-2010 and regional data during 2005-2010.

The semi-parametric framework is established to identify the determinants of health expenditures with local-constant least squares (LCLS) and local-linear least squares (LLLS) techniques. The LCLS technique aims to identify correlative determinants among all considered variables, and LLLS technique aims to further distinguish linear decisive and nonlinear control variables among all correlative determinants.

First, root mean square error tends to decrease with irrelative variables smoothed out in regression model, validating the modelling reasonability of the semi-parametric approach. Second, the determinants of average health expenditures for inpatients exhibit considerable variation among regions despite the fact that governmental health expenditure, GDP per-capita, and urbanization do impact average health expenditures for inpatients to a certain extent. Third, both linear decisive and nonlinear control variables vary greatly with national, provincial, and regional data.

First, the illiteracy rate should be further reduced nationally. Second, urbanization development and the average treatment number of inpatients for each physician per day should be strictly controlled in region A and C, respectively, in order to control average health expenditure for inpatients.

First, the semi-parametric framework with LCLS and LLLS techniques allows for data structure-oriented model in regions rather than a uniform and definite model for underlying structure. Second, the research undertakes for the first time a comprehensive data analysis of the determinants of average health expenditures for inpatients with national and regional data in China.

This paper seeks to identify factors potentially conditioning firms’ financial internationalization. Companies often internationalize their financial areas as part of their larger internationalization strategy. In other words, such an initiative is associated with the internationalization of non‐financial business areas. However, the move to financial internationalization may also obey a specific strategy designed to take advantage of the opportunities offered by increasingly global financial milieus and markets. Then again, of course, it may respond to a combination of the two, in which case all the factors mentioned are likely to exercise some influence.

To test these propositions, a sample of 461 firms located in the Basque Country (Northern Spain), were analyzed between 16 June and 13 July 2004. Primary data were collected by telephone surveys, with a specially designed questionnaire tested previously with a number of pilot businesses. The sample represents a confidence level of 95 percent and 4.25 percent as a maximum level of error. This sample was divided by company size and the sector each business worked in, maintaining, approximately, proportionality in each stratum with respect to the population. Mann‐Whitney and Kruskal‐Wallis tests and logit analysis were used, among others.

Companies most likely to go into debt abroad are larger and more internationalized commercially and in production. First are large exporting companies with one or more production facilities abroad (PFA), which are followed by: medium enterprises that export and which have at least one PFA and large companies that export but which have no PFA. The profile of firms with foreign shareholders begins with manufacturing companies that import, followed by commercial businesses that also import. One interesting feature is the low number of companies in the construction industry and the services sector, particularly the ones that neither export nor import.

A sample of 461 firms located in the Basque Country (Northern Spain) were analyzed and thus the sample might be geographically limited. Also, the degree of financial internationalization of these firms is relatively low. A sample which covers a greater amount of financially internationalized firms, might have led to more solid conclusions.

The most noteworthy practical implication of the paper is the confirmation that Basque firms still do not clearly perceive opportunities for financial internationalization. The barriers and risks to be faced beyond geographical borders weigh heavily. In other words, the threats companies are exposed to outweigh potential opportunities in international markets, or the conditions for financing and domestic financial investment available are in general more favourable than the conditions obtainable abroad.

Within the Basque firms, even if the commercial, supply and production internationalization has been analyzed at length, the financial internationalization has not. Moreover, the profiles of financially internationalized firms have not been analyzed previously on the basis of a different sample.

This paper aims to contribute to the construction of a framework that makes risk management (RM) more effective and visible. This is done by investigating how the concept of “risk” is included in various activities in the management accounting and control (MA&C) system.

A cross-sectional analysis of 72 Danish organisations extracted from an alumni database is conducted together with a factor analysis and a partial least squares structural equation modelling approach.

The authors find four latent variables, namely, expectation, attitude, subjective norms, processes and culture, which all have risk activities in MA&C as the depending variable. Attitude seems to be a powerful antecedent, whereas supporting processes and culture play a crucial partial mediator role for the inclusion of risk.

The findings add to the understanding of the interrelationships between risk and MA&C. An important caveat is that the authors use soft and self-reported data for the dependent variable and for the various independent variables.

The authors propose a dynamic and holistic framework for the analysis of risk. This framework eliminates the limitations found in many prior studies that have neglected the interrelated importance of attitude and supporting processes and culture. The results of this study also provide valuable insights for managers who wish to consider and to explore the interrelations of a number of antecedent risk issues that influence different risk activities in MA&C.

This paper is one of the few papers that assess the impact of different risk issues on firms’ different MA&C activities by including the theory of planned behaviour. The potential key role that supporting processes and culture play as partial mediators for risk inclusion is particularly interesting. The research extends prior research by constructing a framework that makes that implementation of RM processes in the MA&C system more effective. It also proposes a validation process that can lessen the model risk possible.

Employees older than 55 years of age have a much lower share in training than other employees. The purpose of this paper is to propose that one of the reasons for this phenomenon that has not been taken into account so far is that their training is less effective.

This paper shows that training of older employees indeed is less effective in the self-assessment of training participants. Training effectiveness is measured with respect to key dimensions such as career development, earnings, adoption of new skills, flexibility or job security. Besides age a broad range of explanatory variables is included as covariates in a large linked employer-employee data set.

The paper finds that main reason for the differences in training effectiveness during the life cycle is that firms do not take into account differences in training motivation. Older employees get higher returns from informal and directly relevant training and from training contents that can be mainly tackled by crystallised abilities. Training incidence in the more effective training forms is, however, not higher for older employees. Given that other decisive variables on self-assessed effectiveness such as training duration, financing and initiative are not sensitive to age, the wrong allocation of training contents and training forms therefore is the critical explanation for the lower effectiveness of training.

This paper therefore shows to human resource managers why old employees rate training effectiveness lower and indicates what can be done in order to improve training effectiveness of old employees. It uses a large and detailed data set entailing more than 6,000 employees from about 150 establishments.

The optimization of a process requires exact knowledge of the process, which is knowledge of correlations and inter-dependence between the process-determining variables and the knowledge over the actual condition of the process. In a data rich knowledge poor process like spinning, where the exact relationships between machine, material, climate and quality are yet to be concluded objectively, this research focuses on the use of artificial neural networks as a tool to find out the correlations between decisive variables and to determine the optimum settings. Drawing frame is considered to be the last fault correction point in spinning preparation chain, therefore, its settings has a vital role to play towards yarn quality. Leveling action point is one of the important auto-leveling settings involving an automatic search function at Rieter drawing frame RSB-D40 and requiring a large amount of sliver. In this study, attempts were made to optimize the leveling action point. Optimization of draft settings is also within the scope of this article. The ANNs were used to achieve such objectives and they were found to be very helpful in identifying the optimum settings and hence decreasing material loss and improving sliver quality.

Describes the theory on information acquisition by the individual in relation to buying goods. Gives the results of six investigations carried out in Denmark into the operation of variable and testing of basic hypotheses in the theory of information acquisition by individuals. Reveals the difficulties of practical application of the present model.

The purpose of this paper is to shed light on the question: how can we study clusters from a systemic perspective?

First, clusters are discussed from a strategic point of view, then it is determined what is meant by a systemic perspective. In part two of the paper systemics applied to the study of clusters is discussed. In the last part of the paper a systemic research strategy for the study of clusters is discussed.

The paper produces a research strategy based on three main entities: composition, environment and structure.

The paper develops a systemic research strategy for the study of innovation based in clusters.

Considers the question: how can we study organizational fields from a systemic angle of incidence? First determines what is meant by a systemic perspective, and then what is meant by an organizational field. Designs a superior methodological scheme, where the main entities in the systemic approach are clarified. Looks at the underlying process for each of the main entities in the research scheme. Develops a systemic research strategy for the study of organizational fields.

The purpose of this paper is to show how to construct a strategy canvas for a business school based on students' perceptions of the importance of critical value dimensions of its undergraduate offering(s) and its comparable performance on each. This can be used in evaluating the school's extant strategy and in developing a new innovative one.

A survey research is used to solicit and measure students' perception. This is then subjected to proper statistical analysis to draw conclusions, which are then used to construct the strategy canvas.

The findings show the strengths and weaknesses of the school's current strategy profile. They suggest how to use resources to improve performance on critical value dimensions and trigger thinking on new innovative dimensions.

Limitations include the focus on one constituent (students) of the business school, and the choice and size of the sample.

The use of students' perception to construct a strategy canvas proved to be useful and revealing. It shows how the strategy profiles of competitors compare and where to look for further information. This process helps create, evaluate, and develop new strategic insights.

The paper endeavors to use the rigor of survey analysis to provide valid and reliable information on the basis of which to construct a strategy canvas. This, perhaps, represents the first attempt to bring this combination to the context of higher education management.

Globally, supply chains compete in a complex and rapidly changing environment. Hence, sustainable supplier selection has become a decisive variable in the firm’s financial success. This requires reliable tools and techniques to enhance understanding on how supplier behavior evolves with time and to select the best sustainable supplier. System dynamics (SD) is an approach to investigate the dynamic behavior in which the system alterations correspond to the system variable changes. Fuzzy logic usually solves the challenges of imprecise data and ambiguous human judgment. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This work presents a novel modeling approach for integrating information on supplier behavior in fuzzy environment with SD simulation modeling technique. This results in a more reliable and responsible decision-support system. Supplier behavior with respect to relevant sustainability criteria were sourced through expert interviews and simulated in Vensim to select the best possible sustainable supplier. The simulation runs were carried out in four scenarios, namely, past, current, future and average time horizon for four different suppliers. A multi-criteria decision-making model was presented to compare results from the systems dynamics model.

An increase in the rate of investment in sustainability by the different suppliers causes an exponential increase in total sustainability performance of the suppliers. The growth rate of the total performance of suppliers outruns their rate of investment in sustainability after about 12 months.

While a significant work exists regarding supplier selection, little work has been found that investigates how to insure sustainable suppliers maintain their status for a long period of time.