Search results

Female entrepreneurs often face significant conflicts in allocating time and resources to the various roles demanded of them by their communities. This has been identified as a potential obstacle to their performance as entrepreneurs. This paper aims to examine the question: How do women cope with role conflict?

The authors tackled the question by conducting a survey that involved 307 female business owners in Ethiopia. The survey result was supported by 20 in-depth interviews.

The commonest coping strategies identified were negotiation, committing to the entrepreneurial role, committing to social roles, pleasing all, seeking social support and hiring outside support. A multivariate analysis of variance revealed that these coping strategies differed across the various stages of business growth. Meanwhile, structural equation modeling established that female business owners with high levels of personal resources (such as optimism, self-efficacy and resilience) committed more to their entrepreneurial roles than to their social roles.

This research contributes knowledge on coping strategies among female entrepreneurs in sub-Saharan Africa, where family structure and orientation, the economy and social development differ from those in developed countries. The research also integrates the lines of empirical research on coping strategies with the process-based view of entrepreneurship.

The purpose of this paper is to develop items for measuring the role conflict between social role expectations (SREs) and entrepreneurial role demands (ERDs) among women entrepreneurs in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA).

This paper uses 20 interviews and literature from SSA to develop items, a survey of 408 to conduct factor analysis and a survey of 307 to conduct criterion validity analysis.

Statistical analysis shows that the scales used adequately captured two dimensions of SRE and ERD conflict: SRE-to-ERD conflict and ERD-to-SRE conflict. It was found that the SRE-to-ERD-conflict scale is reliable and valid with the five dimensions of entrepreneurial success and that women entrepreneur’s experience significant role conflict between SREs and ERDs.

The implication is that standard scales measuring work and family conflict, which tend to focus solely on the work and family context, cannot adequately account for role conflict among women entrepreneurs.

The practical implications of these findings are discussed.

New scale items form measuring the conflict between SREs and ERDs were developed.

Over the past years, unprecedented attention has been paid to alliance management in the academic and management literature. However, failure rates of alliances have remained very high. Nonetheless, research efforts have shown that alliance management can be significantly enhanced by prior alliance experience. Consequently, it has become important for firms to understand how to make use of their alliance experience and how to develop alliance capabilities. On the basis of a global survey among alliance managers, this study aims to reveal recent trends in alliance capability building and tries to uncover novel ways in which firms try to enhance their alliance performance.

The purpose of this study is to examine specific use of strategic alliances and acquisitions for Chinese firms to catch‐up technologically and to enhance their internationalization competence.

The paper offers a conceptual analysis of internationalization through either FDI or strategic alliances. This is a novel approach, as most of the extant literature tends to view internationalization solely through the prism of FDI. The empirical evidence presented in the paper is twofold. First, it analyses empirical data on strategic alliances and acquisitions retrieved from Thomson SDC database, a premium business directory. Second, it also approaches the topic qualitatively, by offering a case study of Chery Automobile Co. Ltd, a Chinese company that has relied heavily on strategic alliances in its internationalization strategy.

First, the study finds statistical evidence of a rising trend of formation of outward strategic alliances by Chinese firms. Second, the authors demonstrate the specific benefit of strategic alliances for Chinese firms to technically catch up and enhance internationalization competence. It is found that strategic alliances give Chinese firms opportunities to learn from front‐runners in terms of gaining technological capabilities, and there are advantages in tagging developing and advanced markets. The main findings suggest that the internationalization of Chinese firms is in a process in which they gradually integrate technology and marketing/logistics alliances. This approach allows for sufficient time to learn and absorb new skills and technology. Moreover, Chery's case indicates that a series of successful international strategic alliances could also generate tremendous bargaining power for Chinese firms when undertaking subsequent international activities.

This paper contributes to the small but growing body of literature on the internationalization of Chinese companies, their technological catching‐up activities. Unlike previous studies that mainly focus on state‐owned Chinese firms' internationalisation through outward FDI (such as M&A), the paper particularly contributes to the exploration of strategic alliances' effectiveness for private and latecomer firms' internationalization. Empirically, the data analysis and case study reflects the benefits for Chinese firms to enter into strategic alliances with European firms in order to enter into European market and to acquire technological capabilities.

Management of subsidiaries of multinational companies and subsidiary evolution have emerged as important topics in the international business literature. This strand of literature on multinational subsidiaries has provided the necessary analytical models and research tools to study the phenomenon. Nonetheless, while many studies exist on the roles, strategies and evolutions of subsidiaries, and despite its high importance, this area of academic research is still lacking critical mass. Moreover, the extant studies have been conducted in the context of advanced economies, and yet it has been under-researched in the context of emerging economies, and particularly the economies of Eastern Europe, the so-called new EU member states. The study of the phenomenon of subsidiary evolution is the main aim of this paper.

The paper makes use of a proprietary dataset, collected in a self-administered web-based survey conducted among foreign-owned companies in Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland. To test the interrelations between different variables, the paper uses the structural equitation modelling, an advanced technique that allows to account for multiple interdependencies in a model. This approach enables the authors to escape the rigid division between dependent and independent variables, inherent to most conventional econometric models. In the paper, three analytical structural equation modelling (SEM) models were developed, tested and compared.

The empirical analyses show a strong positive relation between the main drivers of subsidiary evolution and the key outcomes of this process. It shows that the tenets of the theory originally developed to describe strategic behaviour of subsidiaries in advanced Western countries, broadly holds for emerging economies too. Moreover, the paper shows that subsidiaries operating in dynamic environments and led by pro-active subsidiary management achieve better results.

The study has its limitations. It is of quantitative nature, whereby the most common feature and characteristics of the research object are studied. Despite the convincing results, the phenomenon of subsidiary evolution can be further investigated in a number of case studies in a dynamic perspective, where specific details may come under the spotlight. On the other hand, such results cannot be easily generalised.

This study contributes to the extant body of academic literature on subsidiary evolution. The main contribution comes from investigation of this complex phenomenon in the context of emerging economies of new EU member states. Their transitionary dynamics and transformative change have had a profound impact on the functioning of economic agents and foreign subsidiaries in particular. The paper finds important particularities of this context.

This study aims to present a timely description of the experience and intentions of EU firms regarding patent licensing and/or selling to China in a new era, where EU firms are taking a more open approach toward innovation and the Chinese institutional environment has been recently changed.

The timing of this study provides opportunities to observe up‐to‐date perceptions of EU firms regarding their intentions and concerns about patent transactions to China right after the new Chinese Patent Law took effect in 2009. Firms from 12 European countries in various industries were surveyed through an online questionnaire.

The paper finds that large and small EU firms are different regarding the openness of innovation measured by patent transactions; for those EU firms that are not interested in licensing or selling patents, most of them are not employing an open innovation model and IP infringement is still the primary concern. EU firms are most interested in selling obsolete technologies and licensing state‐of‐art technologies to China.

Owing to the small sample size, it is difficult to identify the differences in strategies and concerns across industries in the EU and to observe and statistically present the relationships between variables.

This study renders practical guidance for both EU and Chinese firms that are already engaged in or will be interested in patent trade in the future.

The timing of the research and the uniqueness of data ensure the originality of this paper, which contributes to the open innovation literature by addressing several important issues in international technology transfer to China.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss and reflect upon some of the major (quality) issues concerning supply chain management (SCM) for Chinese companies.

The authors draw upon the literature, especially the theoretical perspectives of service orientation and dynamic capabilities, develop a macro‐analysis of SCM issues within a conceptual framework and posit ideas for further research. Discussion and reflection of interview findings is interwoven with the literature and on‐going case study analysis.

In conjunction with the conceptual framework, the influence of government, improving relationships through Guanxi and developing overall logistics capacity are identified as important dynamic capabilities for Chinese companies. Specific SCM issues such as: the role of distributors; regional supply networks; and information sharing are also identified and discussed. The authors suggest ideas for further research based on the discussion presented.

Given the relatively small number of qualitative SCM studies in recent years concerning China, an exploratory discussion and reflection of key issues from a macro‐analytical perspective is important. However, no empirical findings, propositions, or hypotheses were developed as part of the current thought‐piece. Nevertheless, the insight gained from the conceptual framework and ideas posited are useful for developing a future research agenda.

The paper has been written in response to calls for a wider understanding and reflection of the quality issues associated with the development of SCM in China.