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The rapid globalization of modern business and the multicultural nature of its workforce pose major challenges for leadership and human resource management in 1990s. One important area that is yet to be fully explored is the managing of conflict in a multicultural organization where values, orientations, preferences, and attitudes differ significantly among the members. This paper explores the implications of cultural differences for managerial intervention in conflicts between subordinates in organizations using Hofstede's four‐dimensional framework.

Using Hofstede’s cultural value model, the purpose of this paper is to investigate how Chinese employees’ cultural values differ according to firm ownership type such as state-, privately, and US-owned firms.

Data were collected from 367 Chinese employees working at firms located in Beijing.

Results showed that while Chinese employees in state-owned firms scored the highest in collectivism, those working at privately and US-owned firms scored higher for individualism. The score for long-term orientation was also higher in state-owned firms than in privately and US-owned firms. However, contrary to the expectation, the scores for Chinese employees for power distance in state-owned firms were lower than in the others, while the scores for masculinity in state-owned firms were higher than for the others. Chinese employees in all three types of firms showed lower scores than reported in previous studies for uncertainty avoidance.

This study contributes to a deepened understanding of how the cultural values of Chinese employees differ depending on firms’ ownership types, with significant implications for managers, who do business in China as they seek to establish management practices more closely aligned with the cultural values of Chinese employees.

This study may be the first attempt to examine how Chinese cultural values differ according to various ownership types. It suggests that Chinese employees at privately and US-owned firms have different cultural values from employees at state-owned firms, even though all three groups of employees are Chinese.

This paper investigates how to embrace an “either/and” logic, borrowed from the Yin-Yang epistemological system, to provide a different perspective to the entrepreneurial orientation (EO) research and reframe its paradoxes and dilemmas.

The study adopts the duality map for paradox management, a tool designed to recognize and measure the threshold as a range within which opposite elements can be properly balanced for a healthy tension, to show that the apparently contradictory poles of the EO construct can co-exist within the same organization depending on specific situations, contexts and time.

By using duality maps as working models, the study shows that, in real life, the apparently contradictory poles of the EO construct co-exist in a healthy tension within the same organization and are managed in a constant process of dynamic balancing over time.

The present paper contributes to the EO research by providing a different perspective to the EO concept, thus filling the gap on how to go beyond the traditional polarized (“either/or”) paradigm that has dominated the EO literature since its origins.

EO is dominated by a polarized view that sees opposites as sharp dichotomies. However, the complexity and variability of today’s interconnected world are pushing scholars to move from this hegemonic Western perspective by adopting different cultural and philosophical approaches able to balance the inherent duality of the EO concept.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the incentive effects of existing compensation mechanisms in case of the bankruptcy of a financial institution.

The paper uses insights of law and economics to predict the effects of compensation mechanisms on the incentives of depositors, financial institutions, financial regulators and government.

The paper shows that the current compensation system in The Netherlands will not provide sufficient incentives for all stakeholders to prevent the failure of a financial institution. Adjustments to this system are necessary to improve these incentives.

The paper examines for the first time the impact of different compensation mechanisms on the incentives of multiple stakeholders. It also shows how these mechanisms influence each other regarding their incentive generating capability. These findings offer important insights for policy makers.

This paper offers a general survey of accounting literature in the French language area of the first half of the 20th century: After a general Introduction, referring mainly to renowned French authors of past centuries, it deals first with historical accounting research (Dupont, de Roover, Gomberg, Vlaemminck, etc). Then come publications in financial accounting theory and its application (Faure, Dumarchey, Delaporte, Penglaou, de Fages de Latour, etc.), followed by a section on cost accounting and managerial control (Julhiet, de Fage de Latour, Detoeuf, Satet, Bournisien, Brunei, Sauvegrai, etc.). Alarger Section is devoted to inflationary problems (Delavelle, Raffegeau and Lacout, Bayard, Léger, Faure, Thomas, Bisson, Dumarchey, Durand, Beaupère, Ratier, etc.). Another large section refers to charts of accounts and public supervision (Otlet, Faure, Blairon, Detoeuf, Caujolle, Fourastié, Gabriel, Chardonnet, Gamier, etc.). The paper closes with a concise general conclusion about this period of transition from a mainly traditional agricultural to an industrial society with its costing problems, its organizational control, and its greater service orientation.

Utilizing a paradox perspective, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the leadership-followership dynamic in foreign firms in China, specifically, the extent to which Yin-Yang leadership behaviors of Japanese expatriates and cosmopolitanism of Chinese employees influence employee commitment.

Data were collected through an online survey of Chinese employees who directly report to a Japanese supervisor in a Japanese subsidiary in China. Based on responses from 97 Chinese employees in three Japanese subsidiaries in China, the authors test if their cosmopolitan orientation and perceived Yin-Yang leadership behaviors of Japanese supervisors are related to employee commitment.

Yin-Yang leadership and cosmopolitan followership have a positive effect on employee commitment. Further, cosmopolitanism moderates the link between Yin-Yang leadership and employee commitment such that the follower’s cosmopolitanism compensates for lower levels of Yin-Yang leadership, especially a relative lack of Yin leadership behaviors.

Results suggest that Yin-Yang leadership and cosmopolitan followership work together as a two-way street of cultural adaptability to build employee commitment, highlighting the interplay between leadership and followership in multinational enterprises. Future research should attempt to further refine the Yin-Yang leadership construct, and to gain a larger sample representing multiple expatriate nationalities to corroborate the relationships found in this study.

The study applies a context-based approach to developing culturally relevant leadership, through analyzing both the emic and etic concepts of culture in China. In doing so, the authors extend the application of paradox theories to the cross-cultural leadership literature utilizing the Yin-Yang principle, which is particularly relevant in societal contexts where rapid and dramatic change brings to the fore competing values, needs and employee preferences.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a contextualized view of participants’ accounts of self-gift consumer behaviour (SGCB) throughout the consumption cycle, from the motivations to the emotions that follow.

This paper uses an interpretive approach, focused on participants’ constructions of meanings, using 99 critical incident technique interviews, which followed 16 in-depth interviews.

This paper identifies the following self-gift motivations: To Reward Myself (and Others); To celebrate; To remember or get closer; To forget or part; To feel loved or cheered up; and To enjoy life. It also uncovers a compensatory/therapeutic dimension in most self-gifts. The authors identify changes in emotional responses to SGCB over time, and suggest a relationship between these emotions and the contexts that drive self-gifts. Self-gifts are conceptualized as pleasure-oriented, symbolic and special consumption experiences, which are self-directed, or both self- and others-directed; perceived by the consumer to be justified by the contexts in which they occur; and driven and followed by context-dependent emotions.

This manuscript offers novel insights into participants’ uses of both SGCB and the act of labelling purchases “self-gifts”. It uncovers how consumers are concerned with accounting for indulgent spending and how this problematizes the concept of “self-gift”. It challenges the idea of a single context for SGCB, showing how interacting motivations explain it. It also introduces a temporal dimension to self-gift theory by considering emotional responses at different times. Finally, it offers a new conceptualization of and theoretical framework for SGCB.

Urban consolidation centre (UCC) is a popular initiative targeting the challenge of negative environmental and social impacts from freight transports in cities. Despite this, UCC often fails in practice, which indicates a knowledge gap. Furthermore, research within the field can be described as fragmented, transdisciplinary and fast growing. The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the field by describing dominant categories and themes within the area, identify gaps in order to propose a future research agenda, and provide insights into the needs of practitioners.

A systematic literature review (SLR) targeting journal articles based on UCCs has been constructed with a supplementary snowball approach. A content analysis was performed to categorise themes in the research on UCCs and to identify research gaps, both within and outside the categories identified.

Despite substantial research on UCC, very little research ends up in academic journals. In all, 56 articles address UCC. The most common topics were the role of stakeholders, design of distribution structures and transport resources, environmental and social consideration, and economic considerations. Much focus is directed towards finding “optimal” solutions and designs for potential initiatives with very little, if any, consideration to financial viability or the management of the UCC initiative.

This research points out existing gaps in the literature and proposes a future research agenda with UCCs as the focus. For example, although environmental and social arguments are often applied to justify the implementation of UCCs, few studies measure or evaluate their impact. Another important research gap is the economical consideration, both how to generate revenue and how to consider economies of scale.

The practical contribution of most studies is directed towards municipalities. Few findings are presented in a way to support companies. Additionally, by bridging the gaps related to how stakeholders can collaborate and describe what is happening in a UCC, practitioners can use such information as guidelines.

The results provide a research agenda for the fragmented research targeting UCCs, supporting the viability of future initiatives.

The recommendations of the King II Report on corporate governance regarding employee‐related disclosures by listed companies were identified. The annual reports of the Top 100 industrial companies as well as of the mining companies listed on the Johannesburg Securities Exchange were furthermore analysed to establish the percentage of companies that comply with the King II recommendations. It transpired that few of them comply fully with these recommendations.

In the theory on the usefulness of criminal sanctions several reasons are advanced why environmental pollution should be criminalised. One of the arguments is that the severe sanctions offered by the criminal law are also used to protect classic interests such as property, health and honour. These were the values that were protected by the criminal law in most of the penal codes that were enacted in the last century. The argument can indeed be made that given the deteriorating state of the environment in many industrialised countries, a clean environment is nowadays at least as important as the other just‐mentioned values that were previously protected by the criminal law. Hence, if the criminal law is used to protect these classic individual values it should also be used to protect environmental interests. Indeed, most of these individual values (such as health and property) cannot even be enjoyed if the basic requirements concerning a clean environment have not been met.