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This paper explores the potential competitive advantages from the development of an internal network of subsidiaries and external network of alliances. Given the broad scope and lack of systematic investigation in prior research, clinical field research was conducted in eleven Japanese subsidiaries in China. Our in‐depth interviews revealed that there are benefits and costs associated with the development of both subsidiary networks and alliance networks. While there are exploitation and exploration benefits from subsidiary network development, internationalizing firms (especially smaller firms) are subject to the liability of foreignness. Alliance network development is an effective way to mitigate this liability if internationalizing firms choose the right alliance strategy.

This study focuses on home country institutions as sources of variation in the level of foreign investment into India. Our findings support the idea that institutional voids found in India are less of a deterrent to investments from home countries with high levels of institutional development than from home countries with similar institutional voids. Overall, foreign investments in India are found to be significantly related to the strength of institutions within home countries. The levels of both approved and realized foreign direct investment (FDI) are strongly influenced by economic factors and home country regulative institutions, and weakly influenced by home country cognitive institutions. When considered separately, the cognitive institutions and regulative institutions within a given home country each significantly influence the level of approved/realized FDI into India. However, when considered jointly, only the strength of regulative institutions is predictive of FDI inflows.

The previous decade has been characterized by emerging market firms expanding into international markets. This trend has led to scholars in the IB arena to grapple with the new phenomenon of emerging multinational enterprises (EMNEs), specifically the relationship between internationalization and performance of the EMNEs. This paper seeks to add to the literature by capturing the impact of firm resources on the internationalization‐performance relationship. Empirical analysis on a sample of 787 Indian manufacturing firms indicates that there is a non‐linear relationship between internationalization and performance. Findings also indicate that a firm’s capabilities in cost efficiency and marketing have a moderating impact on this relationship.

Based on the linkage-leverage-learning (LLL) framework developed by Mathews (2006), the purpose of this paper is to examine how linking, leveraging and learning capabilities influence the choice of foreign-entry mode, and the way such influences are contingent on context factors in the emerging markets.

Contrary to a prior literature applying the LLL framework, which mainly used case studies, this paper adopts a quantitative approach and is based on a sample of 321 Chinese listed companies to test the hypotheses.

The results show that multinational firms from emerging markets (EMFs) with stronger LLL capabilities are more likely to choose the wholly owned mode in foreign entries. In addition, the relationship between linking capability and wholly owned entry mode choice is weaker at higher levels of cultural distance between home and host country. At the same time, the relationship between learning capability and wholly owned entry mode choice is weaker at higher levels of cultural distance between home and host country, and of institutional distance between prior entries and the focal entry.

An entry mode strategy for firms without ownership advantages and the identification of boundary conditions for applying different LLL capabilities are recommended. The generalizability of the findings from a single-country setting still needs further validation with other emerging economies.

This paper treats internationalization of firms from emerging countries with a different perspective. The underlying idea in this study is that internationalization is not only a process for EMFs to utilize externally accessible assets abroad, but also a process of simultaneously combining internationalization with experiential learning and capability utilization in overseas markets. In addition, the authors also contribute to the literature by providing strong empirical evidence for validating the LLL model and extending the existing entry mode studies.

The aim of this article is to summarise the available evidence from systematic reviews about the effectiveness of interventions to prevent or treat child physical abuse and neglect. A computerised search was undertaken of major electronic databases up to December 2005 using key search terms. Only systematic reviews were included in which the primary studies evaluated the effectiveness of targeted or indicated interventions for child physical abuse or neglect. A total of 31 systematic reviews were identified and 15 met all the inclusion criteria. They covered a range of interventions/services, including home visiting, parenting programmes, multi‐component interventions, intensive family preservation services, family‐focused casework and multi‐systemic family therapy. There was limited evidence of the effectiveness of services in improving objective measures of abuse and neglect, due in part to methodological issues involved in their measurement, but good evidence of modest benefits in improving a range of outcomes that are associated with physical abuse and neglect, including parental and family functioning and child development. The results also showed some interventions (eg. media‐based and perinatal coaching) to be ineffective with high‐risk families. The evidence provided by these reviews has clear implications for children's services in the UK and other western developed countries.

The purpose of this paper is to reveal influential information used in vegetable purchasing decisions of household primary food shoppers in China and in Taiwan.

Two in-person surveys were administrated separately in Shanghai, China and in Taipei, Taiwan, the two most populous metropolitan areas in China and in Taiwan, respectively.

Results reveal that about 32 per cent of respondents in Taipei purchase vegetables once in every two to three days. The majority of respondents in Shanghai (81 per cent) purchase vegetables on a daily basis. Results of factor analysis reveal the four dimensions, origin labelling, promotion, selection, and quality, influence purchasing decisions of respondents in Taipei and in Shanghai. For household primary food shoppers in Taipei, origin labelling and selection help food shoppers in Taipei in vegetable purchasing decisions, but not promotion. For those food shoppers in Shanghai who purchase large volume of vegetables, quality is the most important factor in purchasing decisions.

This study provides new insights into vegetable purchasing decisions in two populous cities in China and Taiwan. The contributions of this study are to provide valuable information in vegetable purchasing decisions for effective information communication in retailing; and to fill in the gap of research in vegetable purchasing decisions in consumer behaviour studies in Chinese societies.

The purpose of this paper is to reveal generic skills improvement from participation in overseas working programs using Taiwanese young adults taking an Australian working holiday program as an example.

In this study, respondents needed to be those who had participated in an Australian working holiday program and had stayed in Australia for at least six months so that their experiences would be extensive enough to enable answering questions in the questionnaire. There were a total of 122 respondents. After eliminating incomplete observations, there were a total of 95 valid observations.

The average number of jobs held per person was 2.77, and farm and factory jobs seemed to be popular. Thinking skills and learning skills were significantly improved, especially for highly motivated respondents. An unfamiliar working environment in foreign countries reinforces personal characteristics. Students who participate in overseas working programs need to interact with local people to improve communication skills, especially for those who are less motivated. Although the natural environment is the main attraction for students who participate in overseas working programs, improvement in generic skills is actually the core factor for students to benefit from the experiences.

The results of this study would be useful for working holiday participants to understand what they can expect to experience in improving generic skills and further to form a baseline for future studies as well as guidelines for promoting Australian working holiday programs.

Presents a special issue, enlisting the help of the author’s students and colleagues, focusing on age, sex, colour and disability discrimination in America. Breaks the evidence down into manageable chunks, covering: age discrimination in the workplace; discrimination against African‐Americans; sex discrimination in the workplace; same sex sexual harassment; how to investigate and prove disability discrimination; sexual harassment in the military; when the main US job‐discrimination law applies to small companies; how to investigate and prove racial discrimination; developments concerning race discrimination in the workplace; developments concerning the Equal Pay Act; developments concerning discrimination against workers with HIV or AIDS; developments concerning discrimination based on refusal of family care leave; developments concerning discrimination against gay or lesbian employees; developments concerning discrimination based on colour; how to investigate and prove discrimination concerning based on colour; developments concerning the Equal Pay Act; using statistics in employment discrimination cases; race discrimination in the workplace; developments concerning gender discrimination in the workplace; discrimination in Japanese organizations in America; discrimination in the entertainment industry; discrimination in the utility industry; understanding and effectively managing national origin discrimination; how to investigate and prove hiring discrimination based on colour; and, finally, how to investigate sexual harassment in the workplace.

This article draws on longitudinal research into the establishment of co‐principalships. It discusses this innovative approach to school management in relation to women’s negotiations of their motivations, aspirations and strategies for career advancement and work/life balance. Longitudinal case studies of three primary school co‐principal initiatives were carried out between 1995 and 2000. Repeat interviews and observations with co‐principals, board chairpersons and school staff were conducted. Interviews were also undertaken with parents; students; and representatives of state education agencies, national governing boards, principals’ associations and teacher unions, alongside analysis of school and state policy documents. The resulting case study narratives described how each co‐principalship was initiated and either established or dis‐established. A discourse analysis of these narratives then examined how links between discourse, knowledge and power were being negotiated and challenged, as the new subject position of “co‐principal” was being constructed in New Zealand. This article analyses the significance of the similarities and differences in the women’s career backgrounds, motivations and strategies for moving into management positions. As they initiated their co‐principalships, the women variously went “against the grain” and/or co‐opted elements of the new public management corporate executive model for school leadership, which was introduced within the radical state restructuring during the late 1980s and early 90s in New Zealand.

Artificial neural networks (ANN) are appearing as alternatives to traditional statistical modeling techniques in many scientific disciplines. However, the inherent drawbacks of neural networks such as topology specification, undue training expense, local minima and training unpredictability will overlay their merits in engineering applications, especially. In this paper, adaptive radial basis function (ARBF) network and improved support vector machine (SVM) are presented in atmospheric sciences. The principle component analysis (PCA) technique is employed to the ARBF network as well, namely, ARBF/PCA network for the convenience of expression and comparison, so as to fasten the learning process. Comparing with traditional neural network models, the proposed models can automatically determine the size of network and parameters, fasten the learning process and achieve good generalization performances in prediction of pollutant level. The simulation results based on a real‐world data set demonstrate the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed methods.