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This study aims to explore the relationship between geographic search and business model innovation and proposed a contingent framework to focus on how governmental networking and environment turbulence are interdependent moderate the relationship between geographic search and business model innovation.

A large-scale questionnaire survey was carried out among the firms in three high-tech parks of the Pearl River Delta, with a total of 287 firms as empirical samples. Hypotheses are tested using ordinary least squares analyzes on hierarchical multiple regression to find out how geographic search can drive business model innovation generations.

The empirical results showed that the more frequent geographic search is, the more favorable it is for firms to generate innovative business models, and firms may be more effective in geographic searching and business model innovation with better governmental networking. However, the above relationship may be weakened if the environment turbulence in emerging markets is further considered. It was argued that firms must take into account both the positive effects of governmental networking and the negative effects of environmental turbulence in conducting a geographic search for external knowledge resources to generate innovative business models. The study results showed how and why governmental networking can be a key catalyst for firms to generate innovative business models.

This study contributes to the business model innovation literature by documenting the large-scale survey evidence that confirms the practicality of geographic search in the business model innovation generations. The findings advance previous studies in the business model innovation by identifying the moderating roles of governmental network and environment turbulence that predict business model innovation behaviors in the emerging market.

The results indicate that the geographic search can be easily operationalized for external resources acquisitions by managers in generating business model innovation. This has applications for external resource acquisitions on the basis of business model innovation in the emerging China market. In addition, to facilitate the business model innovation generations, the focus should be on critical contingency factors; on the one hand, to promote the continued use of external resources, the focus should be on enhancing benefits such as governmental networking.

The findings extend existing theory in three ways as the original value. First, the results show that geographic search is an important driver of business model innovation generations in an emerging market context. Second, this study is the first to take organizational learning and open innovation perspective to examine geographic search as a boundary-spanning search of external resources in business model innovation generations. Third, this study also explores the moderator role of governmental network and environmental turbulence on how to strengthen or impair the geographic search and business model innovation generations.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the current approach that the Thai Government has employed to manage “wicked problems,” using the case of opium in northern Thailand, and analyzing how the network governance approach can contribute to sustainable upland community development.

A case study was employed for this research. The data collection was based upon a qualitative research approach, namely in-depth interviews, participatory observation and document research, were all conducted.

The study found that the strategy of the Thai Government to manage the opium problem in the upland periphery has changed over time. The recent approach could be illustrated as a form of network governance albeit solely within the governmental realm, which was found to be different from the network governance stratagem currently defined in the dominant literature. This paper suggests that in order to achieve a sustainable solution for upland community development, the mode of network governance should shift toward self-governing networks. In other words, non-state stakeholders should be actively engaged in the network and empowered to manage their problems for sustainable upland community development.

This paper contributes to the current corpus of network governance literature by introducing an empirical case study from Thailand. In terms of policy implication, this paper provides policy suggestions for governments, especially in Asia, who are actively seeking to resolve “wicked problems” and achieving sustainable community development.

This article identifies contemporary society as a network society made possible by new information and communication technologies which are both a necessary condition for, and inextractable dimension of that society, and pose complex results and challenges. The prevalence of networks means that we have entered a new technological paradigm and new form of organizational structure having shifted from vertical to more flexible and adaptable networking forms of activity in economy, society, politics and culture. Historical problems of networks are overcome by the new network technologies. In the network society, the integration of the core of global financial activities works through causal interactions and the ability to assess and change the value of any security in the global market. This is only made possible via telecommunications and powerful information systems which assess risks and provide alternatives. Characteristics and consequences of the new economy are outlined as are patterns of governmental power. Current processes of globalization have diminished the capacity of the nation state to control the processes of cultural, economic, political and social dimensions and the network state is emerging in a world of different kinds of networks of which governmental networks is one. The main conclusion is that the network society of the contemporary, or post‐industrial, age is centrally organized around new information communication technologies which have enabled, rather than technologically determined, extraordinary changes in the social structure.

The purpose of this paper is to present an approach to support understanding of inter‐organisational systems.

The approach combines two types of graphical snapshots of relevant properties of each organisation, based on concrete data. The first type of snapshot provides a bird's eye view of the network that enables matching partners to form groups based on similarity. The second type of snapshot can be used to compare and contrast the information technology (IT) portfolio of partners to assess the extent to which each portfolio is ready to meet the needs of the inter‐organisational system. The approach has been applied in a case study that analysed E‐CUSTOMS, a large distributed system that connects the customs organisations of a number of member states of the European Union. The approach has been validated by showing the results to experts in the E‐CUSTOMS project, who confirmed the findings.

An approach based on quantifiable and non‐quantifiable data that combines two visualisation techniques was used. The graphical snapshots obtained by applying this approach showed similarities and differences between countries that indicate opportunities and challenges in IT integration.

The approach provides a semi‐automatic method to understand inter‐organisational systems. If in need of successful co‐operation in groups within an inter‐organisational network, this approach will help the expert to ask the right questions.

An understanding of inter‐organisational systems is necessary, as co‐operation in inter‐organisational networks usually requires considerable up‐front investments in IT specific for this co‐operation.

In the era of financial capitalism, how to manage and hold global corporations accountable has become too multifarious a topic for a solitary focus of one theme, to sufficiently outline the whole gamut and implications of their activities. Capitalism is characterized by several well-organized antinomies and contrasts, with reflections of critical dualities that bear a resemblance to the primeval paradoxes of Hellenic philosophy. The challenge of governance of capitalism to be effectual entails breaking out of the entrenched precincts of habitual academic silos. Various standpoints while reasonably informative falls short to explain fully the complex interlinkages between the concept of global governance and the state’s capacity to put into effect its will on corporate power.

Spotlighting on assessing the praxis of political economy at global and national level and the corporate reality, this chapter aims to provide a renewed thrust for the focused recalibration of global regulatory regime. In this chapter, the inquiries take the regulation as the main explanandum for elucidation of the shifting governance framework.

This paper aims to generalize emic studies of culture and thus provide indigenous view nuanced particularly for emerging markets.

The authors review four local business frameworks and deconstruct each into three different constructs. The authors systematically evaluate culture specific studies, particularities of jaan pehchaan (India), guanxi (China), sviazi (Russia) and wasta (Arab countries).

Building on social networking theory, the authors synthesize an emic model for four types of large emerging markets cultures – China, Russia, India and Arab countries – and divide them according to their affective, conative and cognitive elements.

By knowing the impact of the constructs and how to leverage it, managers can successfully penetrate and manage these complex markets.

Current models of culture, such as the ones proposed by Hofstede and GLOBE, are etic in their orientation, attempting to find variations in common dimensions across different cultures. Emic approaches to studying culture are more bottom-up and are idiosyncratic to the culture.

This paper aims to propose a legal characterisation of the recent proliferation, across the broad range of global environmental good governance initiatives and practices, of a diverse mix of regulatory environmental standards, many of which are informal in origin insofar as they are neither State-driven nor State-centred. It examines the novel conception of legal order posited by Twinning and Walker, to determine whether it encompasses the myriad rules and standards emerging in the field of environmental governance.

Surveying the rapidly developing montage of formal and informal rules and standards associated with global environmental governance, this paper uses the analytical framework provided by scholars of “global administrative law” to reconcile the complementary roles of formal and informal sources of legal rules, and to explain their increasing convergence around a set of good governance principles and standards commonly used in national administrative law systems.

The paper concludes that the emerging regulatory framework for global environmental governance comprises an almost endless variety of forms of novel transnational regulatory activity, many succeeding in having a profound impact on environmental outcomes. Yet all appear to be founded upon and guided by a discrete set of good governance standards and principles of an administrative law character – including transparency, participation, legality, rationality, proportionality, reviewability and accountability – which serve to enhance the credibility and legitimacy of each regulatory mechanism.

It appears that new and informal forms of environmental regulatory activity enjoy a complex symbiotic relationship with formal systems of environmental law. In addition to filling lacunae and addressing deficiencies in such systems, owing, for example, to the transnational character of much of today’s trade, informal regulatory systems are increasingly influencing the evolution of formal legal frameworks and, in so doing, are improving the responsiveness, flexibility and accessibility of this new environmental “legal order”.

At a practical level, viewing the wide range of new forms of environmental regulatory activity through the prism of global administrative law (or global environmental law) brings unity to this diverse field and, in so doing, makes available to all the actors involved in this “community of practice” a wealth of established practice and principle which can help to inform the elaboration and interpretation of rules and standards of environmental governance through a process of cross fertilisation of ideas and approaches.

Recognition of the legal character and significant role of the wide range of novel forms of environmental regulatory activity lends further credibility and legitimacy to such mechanisms, which often comprise the only truly relevant and applicable environmental controls or truly accessible mode of redress and accountability. The challenges of realising sustainability are immense and, as one leading commentator has noted, “all normative means are useful to this end”.

This paper attempts to characterise the legal nature of the range of novel forms of environmental regulation which (can) play such an important role in modifying the behaviour of many of the key environmental actors globally – actors who have largely been unaffected by more formal legal frameworks. For this reason, it seeks to encourage a fundamental shift in the way we think about environmental law and legal authority.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the main contributions of the new institutional economics to the international business (IB) arena. It also intends to show how the NIE is being incorporated to both eclectic paradigm and Uppsala school’s view, and how it is modifying them.

A range of IB articles, which contained an institutional view and also discussed the eclectic paradigm or the Uppsala school, provides the background to build a framework.

This paper proposes a framework showing the impact of the institutional variables on the internationalization of firms, by addressing both the OLI paradigm and Uppsala school. It also concludes that the institutional theory has been a point of intersection between the OLI paradigm and Uppsala school, since both have been renewed to understand the transaction costs borne by the firms in their international learning process and in the search for less asymmetrical information.

This paper provided a brief discussion about the institutional components.

This study is a useful source of information for those who want to discuss the institutional impact in the IB arena and emerging markets.

This paper summarizes how the OLI paradigm and Uppsala school encompassed the institutional variables. It also presents a framework that allows new study possibilities since the understanding of the influence of institutional variables on the international movements of firms is still cloudy.

This paper aims at providing a profile of female managers in Egypt, determining their positions in hotel departments, and investigating the challenges preventing them from reaching the top management positions.

A sample of female managers in five star hotels was randomly selected, followed by an in‐depth interview conducted with 56 female managers. This sample represented 37.6 percent of the total population.

The results of the study depicted that the majority of female managers were not in situations that would lead them to the positions of general managers. The study detected several factors preventing female managers from reaching the glass ceiling. The stepwise multiple regression showed that 35.5 percent of the variance in the existence of challenges could be explained by four factors; gender discrimination, relationships at work, mentor support and lack of network access.

This study might be considered as a first step in understanding the situation of females in the hospitality industry in the Middle East region. Future studies concerned with different female issues in the industry should be diagnosed.

It is hoped that the results of the study would help alleviate the challenges that female managers face by increasing awareness, and illustrating the predominance of several factors prohibiting females’ advancement within the hospitality industry. It is prospected that the study findings will not only be of academic concern, but will also be beneficial for industry leaders and practitioners in practical application.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of the intermediary in delivering public services from government departments to different stakeholders (business and citizens) and to highlight the challenges that face the development of e‐government services in the context of Madinah City, in Saudi Arabia.

The paper uses a broad literature review to identify significant factors that contribute to e‐government adoption and diffusion success. These factors are then used as a basis for analyzing the findings from a case study that focuses on the concept of intermediaries for e‐government service delivery in Saudi Arabia. To investigate a less‐recognized phenomenon, such as the use of intermediaries in e‐government contexts, the authors adopt a qualitative case study approach to gain further understating. This method allowed examining the phenomenon in its natural settings through employing multiple methods of data collection. Further, it gave the researchers enough room to get a closer look at the reasons behind introducing the intermediary concept in the e‐government context and provided considerable flexibility during interviews and observations.

The results of this paper indicate that digital divide and poor infrastructure to conduct payments (secure transactions) for e‐government services was hindering citizens' adoption of e‐services in Saudi Arabia. Thus, the intermediary concept was facilitating citizens' access to e‐government services and helping to reduce the digital divide in Saudi Arabia. The findings also show that intermediaries helped in increasing the availability of e‐government services. Additionally, this paper finds that trust between the service provider (government) and service requester (citizens and businesses) is an important factor that influences not only e‐government adoption and diffusion, but also the role of electronic intermediary (e‐offices) in facilitating this adoption.

The authors take into account the most salient adoption factors when introducing e‐government systems. Electronic intermediaries may help to enhance the understating and analysis of those adoption factors in government settings and facilitate government departments in realizing the importance of intermediaries' role in e‐government contexts. Furthermore, this paper significantly contributes to the knowledge and practice of e‐government adoption and diffusion and provides sufficient support to decision makers in expediting e‐government adoption and diffusion.