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The purpose of this paper is to investigate payout smoothing in two emerging markets – China and Taiwan. The authors conduct a comparative study of two emerging market economies that have common cultural and historical characteristics but have experienced different government systems and different approach to the market-based system.

The authors collect firm-level data from Standard and Poor's Compustat Global database, which covers 5,298 public firms in China and Taiwan during the period 1996–2015, and use a variance decomposition methodology to estimate the smoothness of corporate payout in a common empirical framework that includes net income, and debt and investment policies.

Overall, the empirical findings support recently proposed theories of joint determination of corporate payout behavior with debt and investment policies. The authors find that debt and investment policies absorb the majority of shocks to net income, and that debt policy is the main shock absorber. Furthermore, the authors show that firms in China follow a similar strategy with their counterparts in United States and smooth their payout. In contrast to firms in China and US, the payout of the Taiwanese firms is relatively highly sensitive to net income shocks.

To the best of authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to use a joint model to empirically investigate the extent to which debt and investment policies are used to keep corporate payout smooth in emerging markets.

The purpose of this article is to empirically explore the sensitivity of payouts to cash flows and the other financing decisions, such as debt and investment, of firms.

Using panel regressions based on COMPUSTAT data for 7,544 public firms during the period 1973–2013, we estimate the sensitivity of total payouts. Specifically, following the theory presented in Lambrecht and Myers (2012), we test the interdependent financing decisions of the firm. First, we compute total payout as the sum of cash dividends and net stock repurchases; second, we examine the sensitivity of total payouts to changes in the firm’s net income, debt and investment. Furthermore, we present several tests to demonstrate the robustness of our results.

We suggest evidence in support of the theory in Lambrecht and Myers (2012) showing that there is a negative relationship between total payouts and investment. Furthermore, we find that total payouts are positively associated with net income and debt of the firm.

Previous research has shown how cash flows affect different financing decisions, but it is not clear how total payouts are sensitive to other financing decisions. The focus of this paper is the response of total payouts to investment policy, debt financing policy and changes in cash flows.

The purpose of this paper is to study the payout policy for public firms in different countries. The authors are interested to understand the similarities and differences in the behavior of firms across different countries.

The authors use firm-level data collected from Compustat Global for public firms across the world. The sample consists of more than 23,000 firms for the period 1990–2015 in 94 countries. The authors estimate the corporate payout in an empirical model that incorporates other corporate financing decisions, such as investment and debt policies.

The findings support recent corporate governance theory, which asserts that payout policy is influenced by investment and debt policies, and cannot be determined independently. Furthermore, the authors find that geographic/cultural/institutional variation influence the response of payout policy to other corporate financing decisions. Additional tests are presented to demonstrate the robustness of the main findings.

The interpretation of the results for certain regions could be limited due to data availability. The authors believe the authors have a good coverage especially for countries in Asia, relative to the other regions.

To the best of our knowledge, this study is the first one to look at payout policy and its relationship with investment and debt policy in such a large scale of firms across the world with coverage of 94 countries and 16 years. The authors document differences in public firms’ attitudes toward payout policy according to geographic/cultural/institutional reasons.

A boom in e-commerce in Korea has sparked off high daily-volume demand for small-sized home delivery services, which poses a great challenge to distribution networks, especially in urban areas where traffic congestion, accessibility, and pollution are serious problems. In addition, security issues for people who live in small townhouses and detached houses without security systems and guards have received increasing attention from the government and society. Thus, the introduction of a new alternative for home delivery services, unmanned parcel lockers, is urgent for residents living in these areas. This paper examines and compares potential socio-economic impacts in terms of costs and benefits when such lockers are installed at selected locations in residential areas. The results show that this policy is worthy of adoption, with several undeniable benefits to local communities. In addition, sensitivity analyses estimate the economic performance of this project at different social discount rates, and they check the sensitivity of economic performance based on variations in the variables. The value of travel time savings was identified as a critical and dominating factor directly affecting economic performance.

The purpose of this paper is to expand the Swiss Index of Customer Satisfaction (SWICS) model by investigating the role of customer dialogue in the interrelationships among customer satisfaction, customer trust, perceived value and customer loyalty upon Vietnam banking industry.

The conceptual framework was developed from both an exploratory research with focus group method and the literature. A structural equation model linking customer dialogue to customer satisfaction, customer trust, perceived value and loyalty is tested using data from a sample of 389 Vietnamese individual bank customers.

The results indicate the key role of customer dialogue in bank marketing since it not only has an independent impact on customer loyalty but also mediates the effect of customer satisfaction on loyalty completely and the relationship between customer trust and loyalty partially. Besides, the central role of customer trust was also highlighted since it mediates totally the effect of perceived value on both of customer dialogue and customer loyalty while explaining partially the path from customer satisfaction and customer dialogue.

First, regarding sample size, the authors have used suitable sampling methods with adequate sample representation. However, a larger sample size with more diverse age range and usage of various banking services may be more helpful and effective for the path analysis and managerial implication. Second, the authors have used only a limited set of measurement items due to the concerns of model parsimony and data collection efficiency. For example, perceived value can be measured upon more detailed dimensions, and yet the author focussed only on some selected measures based mainly on their relevance to the context studied.

The findings imply that building trust and engaging with customers better through communication are keys for Vietnamese commercial banks to gain more customer loyalty in such competitive conditions.

The study is noteworthy that it adds perceived value and customer trust in the SWICS model and investigates the interrelationships between all variables in a single model.

The qualitative (focus group) portion of this study aims to examine the perceptions and opinions of corporate and nongovernmental organization (NGO) executives in Vietnam about corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs, issues and priorities in Vietnam, the role of various external stakeholders in supporting CSR practices and how corporates and NGOs can work together to support each other’s CSR agendas. The quantitative (survey) portion of this study aims to examine how Vietnamese companies across different sectors prioritize CSR issues and goals, budget for CSR, report on CSR and centrally (or decentrally) manage CSR programs.

This is a qualitative and quantitative research study of executives in NGO, multinational and domestic-only firms operating in Vietnam. Qualitative (focus group) data were collected from 20 participants in three focus groups. Quantitative data were collected through an online survey of respondents from 186 companies throughout Vietnam.

The focus group findings support the research literature that CSR agenda and priorities amongst Vietnamese domestic companies are strongly influenced by long-standing norms, values and religious beliefs embedded in the Vietnamese culture that support their role in charitable giving and improving the welfare and well-being of Vietnamese citizens. The findings also indicate that CSR and sustainability programs are more fully funded and developed by multinational subsidiaries in Vietnam who have more capital and human resources to support their initiatives. The survey findings indicate that enhanced reputation, attracting new customers, securing more sustainable supply chains, developing innovative or new products/services and improving risk management are the top five business goals amongst the 186 companies surveyed.

While the qualitative research uncovered important trends and issues in CSR amongst NGO and corporate participants, the focus was limited to the defined geographic areas of two main urban hubs.

The current review aims to examine the growth trajectory, most influential documents, intellectual and conceptual structure of the literature regarding gender issues in family business research.

The bibliometric analysis was performed using 224 documents from 1991 to 2020 extracted from the Web of Science database.

The review finds that this field's knowledge grew exponentially during the last three decades, mainly after 2003 and the last several years. Based on the co-citation analysis, three major research lines are identified: “Women's challenges and opportunities in the family business”, “Gender diversity in the family business corporate board”, and “Gender and family SMEs management.” The temporal co-word analysis reveals that “Gender diversity in the family business corporate board” is the latest research line.

By reviewing prominent cited references and documents that cited them, the authors provide the landscapes and research gaps of three major research lines for further development.

This study aims to examine how embeddedness influences consultants' information seeking when making decisions within a social network of relationships, and how these social networks evolve throughout the project delivery stages. The study is grounded in social network theory and examines embeddedness from three perspectives: structural (network cohesion), relational (tie strength in terms of friendship and knowledge awareness) and actor prominence.

A social network analysis (SNA) questionnaire was administered to a team of consultants working on a management consultancy project in Shanghai, China. The SNA measures of density, degree centrality and betweenness centrality were used to analyse relationship patterns among project team members, permitting comparison between the networks. Networks were also compared across the three project delivery stages of collect, consider and create.

Structural embeddedness was observed in the active information seeking behaviour among consultancy team members. The moderate network density of the self-organising information seeking networks across the project delivery stages ensures that the team remains connected but avoids information redundancy and overload. Relational embeddedness was evident through the multiplexity of ties among team members with overlapping friendship and information seeking relationships. The knowledge awareness network's sparseness indicates a team of autonomous knowledge workers with distributed expertise. Project managers were the most prominent actors across the three project delivery stages, underlining these actors' relational leadership role.

The study provides a deeper understanding of collaborative decision-making behaviours in dynamic-project environments. Limited attempts have been made to visualise and analyse the relationships involved in small consulting teams. The novelty of the network approach adopted stems from its ability to offer a structural view of the relationship among consultants, thus offering a distinctive and arguably more complete picture of consultancy team dynamics.

The study validates the social network theory of embeddedness in a real-world collaborative decision-making setting and provides a deeper understanding of information seeking behaviours for decision-making in dynamic-project environments. From a project management process viewpoint, the evolving nature of the information seeking network as it changes across the project stages with associated actors' roles was also visualised graphically, offering a distinctive and arguably more complete picture of consultancy team dynamics.

Realizing the value of social capital to small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in developing economies, where relationship networks play a big role in filling the gaps that are left by dysfunctional institutions, the purpose of this paper is to gain an empirical understanding of various forms of social capital in relation to the innovation of SMEs in Zimbabwe.

Primary data is collected from SMEs across several regions in Harare, where instrument validity is checked with confirmatory factor analysis, and hypotheses are tested using moderated regression analyses.

A positive influence is observed for both alliance capital and reputational capital on innovation, while non-significant moderating effects in terms of environmental hostility and dynamism are noted for these relationships

On a practical level, to increase levels of innovation, SME owner-managers need to secure stronger investments into their social infrastructure by developing (both physical and digital) alliance and reputational capitals

By segregating various forms of social capital, an original understanding is attained in terms of how entrepreneurs actively leverage alliance and reputational forms of social capitals to increase their levels of innovation. The theoretical and empirical understanding of the social capital-innovation link is enhanced, and the study constructs now have broader application as their psychometric properties have been established in an under-researched African market context.

This paper aims to explore how family culture can contribute to support the development of corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives in a Korean immigrant enterprise in Vietnam.

This research highlighted a critical case, in which entrepreneurs and most of the organisational members share a common family culture and the culture support management capability of an entrepreneur, during the introduction of a new organisation initiative. In addition, Bourdieu’s tripartite analytical framework of field, capitals and habitus was adopted to facilitate the case analysis.

Firstly, the motivation behind the development of CSR came from the intention to gain access to the local capital market. Secondly, family culture plays an important role in maintaining the support of organisational actors to support the decision of the entrepreneur.

This research contributes to the emerging literature about CSR and immigrant entrepreneurship. This study sheds light on how family culture can aid the leadership of CSR initiatives and CSR practices in the context of the immigrant organisation.

This study identifies processes that immigrant entrepreneurs can use to inspire organisational members to engage in a new initiative in which organisational culture and norms can help to overcome challenges to enable engagement with a novel initiative.

This paper explains how family culture supports the leading role of an entrepreneur, in which the absolute pressures inherited from family values and traditions in the place of origin help an organisation to overcome existing barriers such as lack of time and financial support towards a new initiative.