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The purpose of this paper is to examine possible types of network formation among immigrants in the diaspora and between those immigrants and the locals in different countries. The authors present the model by considering different possible interactions between immigrants and the new society in their host country. Spread of migrants from the same origin in the diaspora may well increase international trade between the different countries, depending on the types of networks formed. The authors present possible applications of network structure on the country of origin, such as on international trade. The authors find that when the size of the diaspora is sufficiently large, the natives in the different countries will be willing to bear the linking cost with the immigrants because the possible benefits increase with increasing size of the diaspora.

Developing a theoretical approach for the formation of networks in the diaspora.

Those that immigrated first determine the outcome. Policy maker can affect the type of network formed by allocating resources to the first immigrants. They can approve subsidies and tax reductions for international trade. The type of network formed (assimilation, integration, separation or marginalization) affects the level of, and benefits from international trade worldwide, as well as the composition of the imported products. The authors show how leadership is established and how leadership increases over time. More immigrants from the same origin become established all over the world, and new linkages are created with the first immigrant, increasing the possibilities for global trade.

The research in this paper is original.

The purpose of this paper is to postulate the impact of preferential trade agreements (PTAs) on internationalization strategies of member countries’ firms. The study also aims to triangulate the proposed model using empirical data from PTA partner economies.

The mixed methods research design is used for the purpose of inquiry as suggested by Creswell. The inductive reasoning based on critical literature review and grounded theory methodology is used to postulate the model. Explanatory strength of the model is triangulated using empirical longitudinal trade data of Pakistan with her bilateral PTA partners, i.e. Malaysia, Mauritius, Iran, Sri Lanka and China. Internationalization indices are adapted following the Ietto-Gillies and London (2009) and Petri (1994) to measure the intensity and geographical diversification dimensions of internationalization. Country-level trade statistics are used as a proxy of firm-level data to explain the international expansion of home firms resulting from PTAs.

Empirical results confirm a strong and long-term impact of PTAs on the intensity and extensity dimensions of internationalization over post-agreement period in Pakistan and member economies. Gravity index depicts greater concentration of Pakistan's trade in FTA markets and thereby confirms the influence of PTAs on international market selection. Analysis at sectoral level depicts a contraction in services trade whereas expansion in the manufacturing firms’ export growth to member economies.

The paper extends the theory of internationalization by identifying PTAs as exogenous variable influencing internationalization strategies of member countries’ firms in a developing South Asian context. Coupled with findings from empirical data, the study identifies PTAs as a new strategic trade policy tool available to policy makers for promoting and influencing the home firms’ internationalization strategies.

This paper seeks to examine the impact of firms' technological capability and other firm and environmental characteristics on the growth of small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) in six transition countries at different stages of transition. It compares three advanced Central Eastern European countries (Poland, Hungary, and Czech Republic) with three laggard countries in South Eastern Europe (Albania, Macedonia, and Serbia and Montenegro).

A theoretical framework is proposed based on three groups of factors influencing SME growth: innovative and entrepreneurial features of the firm, characteristics of the firm, and those related to the institutional/business environment. Subsequently this paper uses the Business Environment and Enterprise Performance Survey (BEEPS) conducted by the World Bank/EBRD in 2002 and 2005 to test a number of hypotheses regarding the determinants of SME growth.

The two groups of countries have similarities and differences: both display similar trends with respect to the growth process; both are affected by entrepreneurship activities positively; but the institutional barriers affecting the two groups are somewhat different. It was also found that, despite the growing importance of SMEs in all transition economies, they still face many institutional barriers – which have prevented them from making a greater contribution.

The key limitations of the empirical investigation are the qualitative nature of survey data and the shortcomings associated with self‐declaration of entrepreneurs. It is important for future research to complement this line of research with panel data.

This cross‐country study extends current understanding of the determinants of SME growth in various stages of transition economies based on a unique data set. It also provides some implications for policymakers as well as entrepreneurs/managers for improving the growth of SMEs.

The refined process structure tree (RPST), the hierarchy of non-overlapping single-entry single-exit (SESE) regions of a process model, has been utilized for better comprehension and more efficient analysis of business process models. Existing RPST methods, based on the triconnected components of edges, fail to identify a certain type of SESE region. The purpose of this paper is to introduce an alternative method for generating a complete RPST utilizing rather simple techniques.

The proposed method first focuses on the SESE regions of bonds and rigids, from the innermost ones to the outermost ones, utilizing dominance and post-dominance relations. Then, any SESE region of a series nested in a bond or a rigid is identified with a depth-first search variation. Two-phase algorithms and their completeness proofs, a software tool incorporating visualization of stepwise outcomes, and the experimental results of the proposed method are provided.

The proposed method utilizes simple techniques that allow their straightforward implementation. Visualization of stepwise outcomes helps process analysts to understand the proposed method and the SESE regions. Experiments with 604 SAP reference models demonstrated the limitation of the existing RPST methods. The proposed method, however, completely identified all types of SESE regions, defined with nodes, in less computation time than with the old methods.

Each triconnected component of the undirected version of a process model is associated with a pair of boundary nodes without discriminating between the entry and the exit. Here, each non-atomic SESE region is associated with two distinct entry and exit nodes from the original model in the form of a directed graph. By specifying the properties of SESE regions in more comprehensible ways, this paper facilitates a deeper understanding of SESE regions rather than relying on the resulting RPST.

The purpose of this paper is two‐fold: to discuss the key factors determining foreign direct investment (FDI) intra‐industry spillovers and to examine the presence and the extent of these spillovers in Switzerland, by testing them for the services/construction industry, where there is currently a scarcity of evidence.

The assessment of spillovers calls for a detailed analysis of these effects according to the mechanisms by which they occur (namely, the increase in competition, demonstration effects, and worker mobility), and whether the size and the extent of spillovers depend on the interaction between their mechanisms and the existing technological capacities of domestic firms.

The regression results are affirmative, in that domestic firms with high technological capacities appear to gain spillover benefits from FDI heightening competition, while mid‐ and low‐technology firms benefit a lot from demonstration effects. In addition, spillovers for high‐ and mid‐technology firms appear to be largely co‐determined by the level of their human capital. Only domestic firms that invested heavily in absorptive capacity benefit from spillovers.

The evidence on spillover effects has not yet been conclusive. Hence, this paper proposes some components for a research agenda on FDI and intra‐industry spillovers.

The study provides insights for Swiss policy makers about how to promote the beneficial spillover effects of FDI.

The process of spilling over is correctly described in a more satisfactory model and then the impact of this process is accurately identified.

Integrating the resource-based view (RBV) with pay dispersion research, the authors examine how the allocation of resources between hiring new employees and compensating current employees, as well as the allocation of resources among new employees, affects organizational performance.

The authors use panel data on Major League Baseball teams. The authors also use system generalized method of moments (GMM) estimations to control for the impact of past performance on current performance, unobserved individual heterogeneity and omitted variable bias.

The authors find that the larger the portion of the human resources (HR) budget allocated to hiring new employees, the poorer organizational performance becomes unless the focal organization has already significantly underperformed. The authors also find that pay concentration among new employees has a positive impact on organizational performance unless the focal organization has already significantly overperformed.

This study extends RBV research by examining how resource allocation patterns affect organizational performance, which has rarely been studied. Moreover, by showing the organizational context's significant effect on the outcome of financial allocation for resource acquisition, this study extends both the RBV research and the pay dispersion research.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the general public’s information needs concerning open source software (OSS) and OSS answerers’ motivations for sharing their knowledge of OSS in social Q&A.

Two studies were carried out. In Study 1, a content analysis classifying OSS-related questions posted during December 2005-December 2012 in Yahoo! Answers was employed to investigate the general public’s information needs regarding OSS. In Study 2, an online survey was conducted with OSS answerers in Yahoo! Answers in order to examine what motivates them to share and continue to share their knowledge of OSS in social Q&A. In total, 1,463 invitations were sent out via Yahoo! Answers’ internal e-mail function to those who provided answers to OSS-related questions during September 2009-September 2012. In total, 150 usable surveys were returned and used for data analysis.

The findings from Study 1 indicate that the general public is most interested in finding out if there is OSS that meets their software need in a certain category (51.4 percent). Other popular question categories include the general description of OSS (15.6 percent), technical issues that they have with OSS (9.8 percent), and the advantages/disadvantages of using OSS (7.0 percent). Results on OSS answerers’ motivations from Study 2 support that all seven motivations identified (i.e. altruism, enjoyment, ideology, learning, reputation, reciprocity, and self-efficacy) are important, with the smallest mean value being 4.42 out of seven (i.e. reciprocity). However, only altruism, ideology, self-efficacy, and enjoyment were found to significantly influence contribution continuance intention.

With social Q&A growing in popularity, OSS communities that look for ways to draw in more users from the general public are recommended to increase their presence in social Q&A. The findings with regard to OSS answerers’ motivations can also help OSS community leaders attract and guide more members who are interested in sharing their OSS knowledge in social Q&A.

By classifying OSS-related questions that are publicly available in Yahoo! Answers, this study offers a breakdown of the general public’s information needs regarding OSS. In addition, results on OSS answerers’ motivations suggest that in order to sustain their member contributions in social Q&A, OSS community leaders should pay more attention to nurturing the motivations that are intrinsic (i.e. altruism, self-efficacy, enjoyment) and integrated (i.e. ideology).

This paper aims to analyse the general trend of a funding scheme of civic education over the past 30 years in terms of the number of projects and the amount of their subsidies, the targeted groups, the content of the activities and the nature of the grantees.

Using statistical data of sponsored projects over three decades and interviews with ten informants.

There has been a shift in the concerns and priorities of these projects. Through the incentives and by setting the themes for funding, the government has regulated the civil society’s involvement with civic education and helped to fashion the officially endorsed values. But it is no longer effective to mediate state–civil society relationship and to cope with the new political scenario.

This paper demonstrates the changing state–civic society relationship over the years with a solid large-scale database. This study advances the knowledge about public funding projects related to citizenship education in particular and sponsorship as a means of governance in general.

This study employs a multivariate GARCH model to investigate the relative sensitivities of the first and the second moment of bank stock return distribution to the short‐term and long‐term interest rates and their respective volatilities. Three portfolios are formed representing the money center banks, large banks, and small banks, respectively. Estimation and testing of hypotheses are carried out for each of the three portfolios separately. The sample includes daily data over the 1988‐2000 period. Several hypotheses are tested within the multivariate GARCH specification. These include the hypotheses of: (i) insensitivity of bank stock return to the changes in the short‐term and long‐term interest rates, (ii) insensitivity of bank stock returns to the changes in the volatilities of short‐term and long‐term interest rates, and (iii) insensitivity of bank stock return volatility to the changes in the short‐term and long‐term interest rate volatilities. The findings indicate that short‐term and long‐term interest rates and their volatilities do exert significant and differential impacts on the return generation process of the three bank portfolios. The magnitudes and the direction of the effect are model‐specific namely that they depend on whether the short‐term or the long‐term interest rate level is included in the mean return equation. These findings have implications on bank hedging strategies against the interest rate risk, regulatory decisions concerning risk‐based capital requirement, and investor’s choice of a portfolio mix.

This study aims to investigate the impact of three types of online customer-to-customer interaction qualities on customers' participation intention through customer–firm affection in online mass service contexts to address the influence of several types of intercustomer interactions.

The data were amassed using retrospective experience sampling. The hypothesized relationships were examined utilizing structural equation modeling.

The results demonstrate that the perceived quality of the friend-interaction (e.g. [non-]verbal online interaction with friends), neighboring customer-interaction (e.g. [non-]verbal online interaction with stranger users) and the audience-interaction (crowding) has a significant impact upon customer participation intention, mediated by customer–firm affection.

This research was performed in the situation of online mass services (e.g. massively multiplayer online role-playing games). Future studies could extend the findings by conducting further studies across various types of services and by comparing results across different categories of mass services (e.g. hedonic vs utilitarian).

Online mass service marketers should focus on facilitating all three types of online customer-to-customer interactions (i.e. friend-, neighboring customer-, and audience-interaction). For example, online game developers may need to require users to communicate and collaborate with not only friends but also stranger users to progress and succeed in online multiplayer games.

The current study differs from prior research by addressing the influences of not only online intercustomer interaction qualities but also customer–firm affection on customer participation intention.