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This paper aims to investigate the relationship between ownership structure and performance for a comprehensive sample of Chinese listed firms for the years 2000‐2004. In particular, the paper seeks to explore the effect of the dominance of state and private blockholders and control on firm performance. It aims to use a more differentiated approach than previous research on the subject, which has mainly focused on the effects of the pervasive state ownership on firm values. Accordingly, the main theme of the paper intends to relate to the analysis of the effects of private blockholders on firm value.

The paper tests the ownership‐performance relationship for the state and for sub‐samples with predominantly private shareholders. The paper uses both an ordinary least squares and a two‐stage least squares analysis, which treats ownership concentration as endogenous.

The paper finds evidence that large private blockholdings are to the benefit of firm value for the full sample. Conversely, for smaller samples of companies without or with very low shareholdings by the various state players, there is some evidence that large private block shareholdings might be to the detriment of firm value.

The study contributes to the literature by presenting a more comprehensive treatment of the ownership‐performance relationship of listed firms in China. The main theme of the paper relates to ownership concentration and the effects of private blockholders on the performance of firms, in addition to the endogeneity of ownership. It also contributes by utilising the alternative ownership classification system developed by the National University of Singapore.

This paper examines how ASB Bank, a New Zealand‐based retail bank, made use of cost income ratio benchmarking when reviewing its operational efficiency. In particular, it shows the difficulties associated with the benchmarking process in the sector and details the practical steps taken to obtain meaningful comparative information. It is interesting that, while the cost income ratio was the principal metric used in this benchmarking exercise, it sought to identify best practice not in terms of minimizing this ratio but rather in terms of identifying typical ratios and cost structures among successful banking institutions.

This study aims to explore the relationship between the degree of state-owned enterprises’ (SOEs) mixed reform and the environmental response of enterprises, against the background of actively promoting the reform of mixed ownership in China.

The study is conducted on a sample of A-share listed manufacturing companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen of China, investigated for the period 2015 to 2020. The baseline regression results are robust to a series of robustness and endogeneity tests. To deal with the issue of endogeneity, the technique of instrumental variable method has been applied.

The study confirms the U-shaped effect of the depth and restriction of mixed ownership on SOEs’ environmentally responsive behaviour in the manufacturing industry, especially for lower environmental regulation and higher level of risk-taking firms. The findings indicate that the government, shareholders and other stakeholders of enterprises should not simply consider that the mixed reform is directly promoting or reducing the environmental response behaviour of enterprises.

SOEs should improve their shareholding structures to undermine performance enhancement at the expense of the environment and increase environmentally beneficial behaviours. Regulators and governments should improve the institutional mechanism of environmental regulation and make efforts to promote corporate awareness of the environment.

Although the adoption and implementation of environmentally friendly policies are costly, improved environmental response and other social responsibilities are helpful to corporate long-term growth and reputation and obtain more capital market attention. Therefore, firms would benefit from improving their environmental response to protect nature, as well as to enjoy the economic and social benefits of a better environmental response.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, there is a lack of studies focussing on the environmental behaviour of SOEs of mixed reform. As the mixed reform in China has come to a climax phase in recent several years, SOEs of mixed reform is an ideal environment for research. The study focusses on manufacturing firms as these firms are more susceptible to contribute to environmental pollution, exploitation of natural resources and labour concerns.

This paper aims to examine the joint effect of the focal customer’s gender and fellow customer’s gender in influencing voice complaint intentions and intention to convey negative word of mouth (NWOM).

Participants were randomly assigned to one of the two dining conditions (same-gender fellow customer vs opposite-gender fellow customer). Their intention to voice a complaint and to spread NWOM were measured after reading a scenario describing a service failure. A 2 (focal customer gender: male vs female) × 2 (fellow customer: same gender vs opposite gender) between-subjects quasi-experimental design was conducted to test the hypotheses.

The results demonstrate that female customers’ voice complaint intentions were significantly higher when a fellow customer’s gender was female rather than male. In contrast, regardless of the fellow customer’s gender, no significant differences in voice complaint intentions were found among male customers. The results further indicate that voice complaint intentions mediate the impact of a fellow customer’s gender on intention to spread NWOM among female customers. However, both female and male participants show equally high levels of voice complaint intentions in the context of fine-dining restaurant.

This study broadens the understanding of customer complaining behavior and also provides insights to practitioners on how to manage customers who are in same- and mixed-gender situations.

This research extends the literature on agency–communal theory and complaining behaviors by examining the role of a fellow customer’s gender influencing the focal customer’s intentions to voice complaints and to spread NWOM.

Although there has been considerable growth in the higher education systems of Turkey and China in about the last two decades, there is still a room for development in enabling equity in all regions, increasing opportunities and resources regardless of socio-economic status or gender differences. Students coming from disadvantaged backgrounds do not have enough tools to change their fate for the better due to the accumulated barriers they face. Given this background, the chapter discusses how the barriers to equitable HE admissions relate to each other and which one has a greater negative impact over the Accumulated Conversion Barriers Modal we propose defined by personal, discriminatory, institutional, and geographical barriers. The perspectives of Turkish and Chinese HE stakeholders were examined through 21 in-depth interviews that were subjected to content analysis and interpreted in a comparative style using the lens of Capabilities Approach of Sen. We also offer policy suggestions to increase students’ conversion capacities for better outcomes to serve both the national and the international educational contexts owing to the adaptable nature of our modal to other countries experiencing similar issues in their higher education systems.

Consumption is a way of communication whereby consumers express, position or/and differentiate themselves within their society or affiliated groups. A great part of consumers’ lives are spent on various purchase activities, and many would be eager to understand the factors underlying those behaviours.

This chapter primarily deals with the cultural, social, psychological and personal factors that affect consumer behaviour. Each of these factors in relation to consumer behaviour is discussed in detail. The types of consumer buying behaviours and the consumer decision-making processes then provide the fundamentals of the topic along with their relevance to Turkish consumers.

The purpose of this paper is to conceptualise how future changes in corporate social disclosure (CSD), aimed at improving accountability for corporate performance to key stakeholder groups, might be brought about.

Drawing on the work of the Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises with respect to human (and organisational) action and the work of Leon Festinger and Kurt Lewin with respect to human (and organisational) change, the paper examines how academics and other corporate stakeholders might effect changes in CSD.

Managers act in a way which maximises their formal happiness (from von Mises) and change occurs following the creation of cognitive dissonance (Festinger) which leads to “unfreezing” (Lewin). Stakeholders can effect change by creating cognitive dissonance. With specific reference to Anglo‐American limited liability and publicly traded corporations, such cognitive dissonance and unfreezing normally involves a perceived threat to profitability.

Research and theorising in corporate social disclosure patterns should take as given: that the managers of Anglo‐American limited liability and publicly traded corporations continue to be strongly encouraged, via both legal and remunerative means, to maximize shareholder wealth; and that this state of affairs significantly influences the information which management choose to disclose. Future research might instead examine and consider means of creating sources of dissonance significant enough to result in managerial concern for change within the constraints imposed on managers of Anglo‐American corporations. Such research might be conducted by engaging with organisations and their stakeholders.

The findings have implications for the manner in which corporate stakeholders act and interrelate with others in order to effect change towards more complete and credible sustainability reports which demonstrate accountability for material impacts to key stakeholder groups.

The paper focuses on how change in corporate behaviour might be brought about given the personal motivations and institutional constraints imposed on the behaviour of corporate actors.

Introduction: Studies on the insurance sector/companies have, in recent years, taken their place in literature at an increasing rate. Especially after the 2008 global financial crisis, the need for people to ensure their assets has structurally changed both the transaction volume and the yield structure of insurance sector. The increase in demand for insurance has also increased the appetite of investors to make an investment on this sector. The transaction volume of the insurance sector has increased year by year coupled with the number of insurance companies traded on the stock exchanges has started to increase in the same direction.

Aim: This chapter aims to determine the return structure of the Borsa Istanbul Insurance Index (XSGRT) based on daily closing values.

Method: Markedly with similar studies in the literature review, the authors determined that the Markov Regime Switching (MRS) model is the best-suited model for the current research. It was applied for the data set of XSGRT Index from 1997 to 2020.

Results: The result shows that XSGRT has three regimes named as expansion regime, normal regime and recession regime. Subsequently, it has been determined that the index generally attends to transition from the recession regime to the expansion regime and normal regime. This outcome is statistically significant at a 5% significance level and confirmed by backtesting results. Likewise, the duration of the recession regime is longer than the normal and expansion regime.

Conclusion: Despite the fact that the XSGRT has not yet completed its development compared to other main and sectoral indices, it is one of the indices that offer attractive earnings for investors. To put it differently, the desire of insurance companies to stay longer totally in the normal and expansion period and their immediate exit from the recession period provides them with a significant competitive advantage in contrast to other indices.

Originality/Value: This research contributes to the literature by providing additional evidence for existing studies using the longer duration of data set and applying the MRS model for Insurance Index. Best of our knowledge, it is the first study that examines the return structure of XSGRT based on its daily closing values from 1997 to 2020. In essence, investors can use the result of this study and compare it with other stock indices to make the accurate investment decision to maximise their welfare and return on their equity investments. The authors suggest that not only the return but also the regime structures of the invested shares (indices) should be taken into account for investment decisions.

Pervasive computing envisions seamless support for user tasks through cooperating devices that are present in an environment. Fluctuating availability of devices, induced by mobility and failures, requires mechanisms and algorithms that allow applications to adapt to their ever‐changing execution environments without user intervention. To ease the development of adaptive applications, Becker et al. (3) have proposed the peer‐based component system PCOM. This system provides fundamental mechanisms to support the automated composition of applications at runtime. In this article, we discuss the requirements on algorithms that enable automatic configuration of pervasive applications. Furthermore, we show how finding a configuration can be interpreted as Distributed Constraint Satisfaction Problem. Based on this, we present an algorithm that is capable of finding an application configuration in the presence of strictly limited resources. To show the feasibility of this algorithm, we present an evaluation based on simulations and real‐world measurements and we compare the results with a simple greedy approximation.

The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between the participation in commercially- and socially-oriented Academics' Societal Engagement (ASE) activities, partnership choices, and funding preferences of academics working in public and private universities from Chile and Turkey. Chile represents a private-dominant higher education system (HES), while Turkey is public-dominant. This article presents the results of an international survey, the Academic Profession in Knowledge-based Society (APIKS), applied to academics from over 20 countries, including Chile and Turkey.

Through a quantitative analysis the authors analyse how the dominant institutional type influences ASE activities, partnership choices, and funding preferences.

Results from the analysis show that being part of a public or private university does not solely explain the activity type that academics engage with. Moreover, the rate of Chilean academics participating in ASE activities is more than twice that of Turkish academics regardless of the public-private distinction.

Further research about the academic life and ASE activities using a qualitative approach can complement this study. Applying further in-depth interviews to obtain more information from external partners can provide different perspectives and help to better understand the ASE activities. Additional analysis could compare external activities by higher education institution (HEI) type regarding vocational/technical centres since the Chilean and Turkish private HEIs included in this study received a mix of public-private funds and are considered not-for-profit, so extending this research to include for-profit private HEIs may be worthwhile for additional comparison.

More support and funding for the development of commercially-oriented ASE activities is recommended for Chile and Turkey's HES. In Turkey, a law-update in 2017 facilitates the establishment of technology transfer offices (TTOs) as companies within universities (Author, 2019). Though it is too early to know its effects, a positive contribution is anticipated. Centred Chile's private dominant HES, it would be appropriate for this type of system to also create different support structures to incentivise socially-oriented external activities and partnership opportunities. As done in other universities, the establishment of a community engagement office may provide professional guidance for partnership creations. Regardless of a country's HE public/private dominance, diverse sources of funding and support mechanisms can also be created to strengthen organisational and financial autonomy facilitating academics' participation in ASE activities. For example, universities can develop institutional policies to support academic establishment, lead or join in administration of non-governmental organisations, or form institutional media to deliver academics' viewpoints of social issues to the larger and non-academic audience. University managers should also empower the connection between academics and industry and business sector through different organisational structures such as Research Office, Science Park Incubators, Career Centre, while guiding and financially supporting academics' research commercialisation by their TTO experience and sources.

The literature has studied the public-private higher education distinction in vast aspects, however, no empirical studies have explored it concerning ASE. Chile and Turkey propose interesting cases since they represent opposite ends considering the public-private predominance of higher education systems. Turkey exhibits a heavy public predominance, whereas Chile has a significantly strong private system.