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The extant literature on emerging market multinationals (EMNEs) suggest that they derive their advantages from factors such as economies of scale, and that they internationalise, in large measure, to access technology. However, support for this framework typically comes from analysis of static data, comparing EMNEs and OECD MNEs at a point in time. Little attention is paid to their development paths in a dynamic setting. We examine these propositions directly using an approach that enables us to decompose productivity growth of firms into its components, namely, changes in scale economies, technological progress and technical efficiency. We compare Chinese MNEs with their non-MNE domestic counterparts and developed country MNEs that have operations in China. We demonstrate that Chinese MNEs continue to derive much of their productivity growth from changes in scale economies, while developed country MNEs continue to have an advantage with respect to technical progress. Both these types of MNEs have a significant advantage over Chinese non-MNE domestic firms.

Purpose: Pandemics lead to a sudden decline in the level of economic activities. Lending institutions reduce credit supply to businesses due to fears of rising bad debts during a pandemic. This chapter highlights some approach to financial regulation and bank supervision during a pandemic such as the SARS and COVID-19 pandemic.

Methodology: This chapter uses discourse analysis based on the literature on banking regulation and supervision.

Findings: The author shows that financial regulation during a pandemic can be enhanced by diversifying the financial system, maintaining adequate liquidity in the financial system, stimulating financial institutions to provide more credit, delaying the recognition of significant increase in credit risk, lowering the reference interest rate to encourage more lending, and providing stimulus packages to financial institutions in the economy. The author also suggest measures to improve bank supervision during a pandemic which include adopting a flexible supervisory framework, modifying bank supervisory examinations, using ad hoc stress tests, releasing the countercyclical capital buffer to banks, and increase the use of regulatory forbearance.

Implications: The implication of these approaches to coping with a pandemic is that these measures can help to ensure the survival of small and large businesses and financial institutions. It can also help to preserve jobs and help to reduce the long-term damage to the economy caused by the pandemic.

Originality: Prior studies have not examined the effect of COVID-19 pandemic on bank supervision and financial regulation.

It is evident that while new technologies are shifting the current dynamics of the marketplace, technological innovations and Industry 4.0 are influencing the marketing activities along with our perceptions and expectations. The effects of globalization, digitalization, and Internet on marketing activities and consumers are indisputable. Almost every person, society, organization, and even the government has experienced some sense of transformation as a result of the increased connectivity and interaction. Discussion of the current concepts, theories, the way they are used in understanding the technology adoption behavior, and their role in the transformation of the consumers in the digital age is necessary in order to understand the aforementioned changes happening in the marketplace. It is also essential to focus on the transformation of marketing applications caused by Industry 4.0 in order to better understand the consumer expectations, reactions, and behavior. Hence, this study aims to investigate how Industry 4.0 affected and transformed marketing and consumer behavior, by examining the recent technological innovations. In this chapter, the basic concepts related to technology and innovation adoption are explained, and the relationship between marketing and Industry 4.0 is discussed. After reviewing the recent technological innovations and their relation to consumer behavior, a general discussion is given.

This chapter examines China’s corporate governance and accounting environment that shapes the adoption of internationally acceptable principles and standards. Specifically, it examines international influences, including supranational organizations; foreign investors and international accounting firms; domestic institutional influences, including the political system, economic system, legal system, and cultural system; and accounting infrastructure. China’s convergence is driven by desired efficiency of the corporate sector and legitimacy of participating in the global market. Influenced heavily by international forces in the context of globalization, corporate governance and accounting practices are increasingly becoming in line with internationally acceptable standards and codes. While convergence assists China in obtaining legitimacy, improving efficiency is likely to be adversely affected given that corporate governance and accounting in China operate in an environment that differs considerably from those of Anglo-American countries. An examination of the corporate governance and accounting environment in China suggests heavy government involvement within underdeveloped institutions. While the Chinese government has made impressive progress in developing the corporate governance and accounting environment for the market economy, China’s unique institutional setting is likely to affect how the imported concepts are interpreted and implemented.

With numerous and ambiguous sets of information and often conflicting requirements, construction management is a complex process involving much uncertainty. Decision makers may be challenged with satisfying multiple criteria using vague information. Fuzzy multi-criteria decision-making (FMCDM) provides an innovative approach for addressing complex problems featuring diverse decision makers’ interests, conflicting objectives and numerous but uncertain bits of information. FMCDM has therefore been widely applied in construction management. With the increase in information complexity, extensions of fuzzy set (FS) theory have been generated and adopted to improve its capacity to address this complexity. Examples include hesitant FSs (HFSs), intuitionistic FSs (IFSs) and type-2 FSs (T2FSs). This chapter introduces commonly used FMCDM methods, examines their applications in construction management and discusses trends in future research and application. The chapter first introduces the MCDM process as well as FS theory and its three main extensions, namely, HFSs, IFSs and T2FSs. The chapter then explores the linkage between FS theory and its extensions and MCDM approaches. In total, 17 FMCDM methods are reviewed and two FMCDM methods (i.e. T2FS-TOPSIS and T2FS-PROMETHEE) are further improved based on the literature. These 19 FMCDM methods with their corresponding applications in construction management are discussed in a systematic manner. This review and development of FS theory and its extensions should help both researchers and practitioners better understand and handle information uncertainty in complex decision problems.

The goal of this chapter is to respond to the theoretical inquiries by scholars who are interested in how the public–private partnership (PPP) models adapt to China’s context where political power dictates economic strategies. We also want to provide suggestions to policy designers who aim to promote a sustainable investment environment for domestic and international investors. We review the literature that explains the upside and downside of PPP projects in contemporary China. (1) We classify the trajectory of PPP evolution into four phases, i.e., emergence, growth, recession and revival. (2) We note that private companies take a disadvantageous position in the partnership compared with governments and state-owned enterprises because of a lack of specialized legislation, unequal competition between private companies and state-owned enterprises and the opposition from the civic society. (3) We identify political risks as the most influential risks. Political risks also lead to the misallocation of other risks between public and private parties that contributes to the high failure rate of China’s PPP projects. Based on these findings, we recommend governments to draft specialized legislation, stabilize the political environment and provide favourable subsidies to local governments to limit the risks involved in PPP projects. We also advise private enterprises and state-owned enterprises to focus on negotiating over task and risk division with governments when they make decisions to participate in PPP projects. This full review of studies on PPP development in China provides reliable recommendations to scholars, governments and enterprises.