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The purpose of this paper is to comprehensively examine the influence of formal and informal institutional differences on enterprise investment margin, mode and result.

This paper is based on 2,440 micro samples of large-scale outbound investment from 609 Chinese enterprises from the years 2005 to 2016.

The study has found that formal institutional differences have little impact on investment scale, but significantly affect investment diversification. In order to avoid the management risks brought by formal institutional differences, enterprises tend to a full ownership structure. However, the choice between greenfield investment and cross-border mergers and acquisitions is not affected by formal institutional differences. In contrast, the impact of informal institutional differences is more extensive. Both formal and informal institutional differences significantly increase the probability of investment failure. Further research found that the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) bridges the formal institutional differences.

The study concludes that developing the BRI, especially cultural exchanges with countries alongside the Belt and Road, will help enterprises to “go global” faster and better.

In an attempt to satisfy the desire to become a global economic leader, China is working on a series of ambitious deals with several countries. As a major country in a region considered as an emerging market, the immense infrastructure gap that is curtailing trade and accessibility for economic growth has led to major changes in economic policy. The past few decades have seen China invest billions of dollars not only in the developing countries of Africa and Asia but also in other world economic giants of Europe and the USA. China has embarked on a rigorous global effort to close the infrastructure gap through the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in partnership with multilateral development banks. China’s BRI brings together several countries in East Asia and the Eurasian mainland into close proximity with China, thereby promoting inland trade between the countries. The investments in this project are estimated to reach US$1tn over a span of ten years. However, the volume of outward foreign direct investments (OFDI) from China to the host countries is determined by several factors. Several previous researchers have studied various issues affecting the business activities of China and the given countries. First, the cultural organization, policy approaches and objectives of China as a country create trade barriers with countries involved in the BRI plan. This paper aims to provide a comparative overview of how the institutional distance of the Belt and Road countries from China affects their sustainable development.

Data on the nature, success and challenges of the BRI (such as the volume of bilateral trade and OFDIs and its financial implications) were extracted from various published studies. The impact of cultural distance and internationalization of the BRI enterprise was analyzed through a comparative research methodology.

A significant relationship exists between institutional distance and sustainable development of the Belt and Road countries. However, the barriers – for example, inhospitable culture and regulations for organizations in participating countries – could become pillars of success once resolved.

Previous studies lacked a standard framework to investigate how institutional distance is related to China’s outbound trade with the Belt and Road countries. The comparative analysis methodology adopted in this study fills this gap.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the major determinants of China’s outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) in the economies along the “Belt & Road” Initiative (BRI afterward). China works on to advance the agenda of the BRI both at home and abroad. The BRI is set up to promote connectivity in five key areas: policy coordination, infrastructure connectivity, trade facilitation, financial cooperation and people-to-people contacts.

The existing literature is inconclusive with regards to the motives, patterns and determinants of the Chinese OFDI. The authors are, therefore, motivated to undertake this study to shed some new light on the influencing factors of the Chinese OFDI. The authors have made a unique data set that consists of China and its 64 partnering countries of the BRI over a time period of 12 years spanning from 2004 to 2015. This time period is chosen on the chief consideration of data availability. The authors have a balanced panel, and applied the gravity model in line with the theoretical arguments and econometric developments.

The paper assumes that China’s OFDI along the BRI was a function of gross domestic product (GDP), income per capita, distance and WTO. The findings showed that GDP, per capita income and distance were the key determinants of the OFDI. China’s entry into the WTO did not strongly affect the OFDI. China maintained a tradition of historical relationships along the BRI economies. After all, China is relocating its investment resources in line with the consideration of its partnering countries’ economic size, cross-border distance and per capita income.

This study is the first of its kinds to analyze the determinants of OFDI by means of gravity model. The authors have covered all the countries along the BRI. Hence, this paper aims to make a substantial contribution to the literature, both from a scientific and a policy perspective.

Large supermarkets, chain stores and enterprises with large-scale warehousing put forward higher standards and requirements for the automation and informatization of warehouses. As one of the fast-growing commercial supermarkets in China, the traditional warehouse management mode has restricted the rapid development of Yonghui Superstores to a certain extent. The purpose of this paper is to find out how the existing warehouse mode can be changed and to solve the existing problems of warehouse management of Yonghui Superstores.

This research puts forward construction of warehouse center, which is based on radio frequency identification (RFID) and sensor technology, then designs the model for receiving, storage, operations management, distribution and outbound to solve the existing problems of warehouse management of Yonghui Superstores.

What technologies should be adopted to meet storage requirements? How to monitor the storage environment in real time and improve the operation and management level of the warehouse? This study found that building a warehouse center based on RFID and sensor technology was a good solution.

The Yonghui Superstores warehouse center model lacks corresponding simulation experiments, and the investment and income are difficult to estimate quantitatively.

This paper has designed and discussed the warehouse center model based on RFID and sensor technology, which provides a few references for the actual investment and construction of a warehouse center. In addition, the warehouse center model has strong generalized applicability and could be widely used in various enterprises.

The warehouse center could improve the warehouse management level of Yonghui Superstores and change the traditional warehouse management mode. To some extent, it improves the enterprise flexibility of the market, which will be of great significance to improve business efficiency and enhance brand image and competitiveness.

This study takes Yonghui Superstores as a case to analyze the problems of warehousing management in detail and then designs a warehouse center based on RFID and sensor technology. The study discusses the location and distribution, software and hardware selection, benefits evaluation, significances and return on investment, which makes the warehouse center model versatile, technically feasible and economically applicable.

This paper aim to argue for Cambodia to take internationalization of higher education seriously and strategically to position it for higher education development, and this starts with enhancing its buy-in among the key stakeholders, fine-tuning its conceptualization and contextualization and a government-funded comprehensive policy and investment program.

This paper explores policies and practices of internationalization in Cambodia, using Knight's (2004, 2007) conceptualization of internationalization and Wan's (2018) list of six dimensions, by which the authors track and measure internationalization.

Systematic policy implementation to position internationalization to achieve national and institutional goals is little. Given utilitarianism of internationalization, policy statement has geared more toward employing internationalization to achieve institutional building, in order of significance: mobility, research collaboration, policy formulation and quality control, and much less on networking and aligning with international instruments. Subtle differences among the four universities under investigation exist. While all focus on student and faculty mobility and exchange, some aim at research collaboration and networks; some at indigenous “international” and language programs, and some at joint degree programs. But, internationalization is not a key priority nor is it strategically positioned to achieve institutional aspirations.

Without comprehensive, strategic policy guidance and implementation from the government, internationalization has taken its own course, and such is not healthy for higher education development.

There are few studies on internationalization in Cambodia. Clayton and Yuok (1997), Clayton (2002) and Pit and Ford (2004) examine politics or its politicization and higher education development after the end of the Eastern Bloc's support (Tek and Leng, 2017). Recent studies (Leng, 2015; Leng, 2016; Yun, 2014) underline institutional case studies to illustrate status, issues and challenges in internationalization. This article attempts to provide an overarching map of internationalization to inform policies and practices toward higher education and national development.

The purpose of this paper is to present a novel version of Dunning’s eclectic paradigm of internationalisation (OLI framework) to explain both inbound and outbound Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in multinational contracting.

The OLI factors and hypothesis are significantly developed to address a weakness in the OLI framework in its application to settings, such as multinational contracting, with extreme heterogeneity arising from extreme location specificity.

These developments advance Dunning’s seminal contribution and bring this to life in construction research that has barely applied the framework and, when doing so, has focused only on outbound FDI by multinational contractors (MCs).

The power of the OLI framework is increased on explaining and predicting FDI in contexts that exhibit extreme heterogeneity associated with extreme location specificity. Furthermore, the operationalisation of key theories representing the framework’s OLI factors is made far more precise.

Engineering, construction and architectural managers, can now more reliably apply the OLI framework both in MCs’ outbound FDI decisions and in governments’ decisions to attract new MCs – or inbound FDI.

A significant advance is made in the OLI framework in settings with extreme location specificity, along with the operationalisation of key theories associated with the OLI factors, including the first steps to operationalise Coase’s Nobel prize-winning transaction cost thesis.

This study provides a comprehensive framework of adaptation in triadic business relationship settings in the service sector. The framework is based on the industrial network approach (see, e.g., Axelsson & Easton, 1992; Håkansson & Snehota, 1995a). The study describes how adaptations initiate, how they progress, and what the outcomes of these adaptations are. Furthermore, the framework takes into account how adaptations spread in triadic relationship settings. The empirical context is corporate travel management, which is a chain of activities where an industrial enterprise, and its preferred travel agency and service supplier partners combine their resources. The scientific philosophy, on which the knowledge creation is based, is realist ontology. Epistemologically, the study relies on constructionist processes and interpretation. Case studies with in-depth interviews are the main source of data.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the recurrences in the empirical evidences that link open innovation (OI) actions and innovation performance in European countries. It provides managers with useful strategic suggestions, emphasizes the limitations of the state of the art, and recommends future directions of research.

The authors systematically reviewed empirical articles linking OI actions and innovation performance in European countries, published on peer reviewed journals from January 2003 until May 2013. The authors organized the evidences according to a novel taxonomy grounded in the literature.

The paper shows an increasing interest in the research of empirical evidence regarding OI and innovation performance. Nonetheless, evidence of the role played by outbound OI activities are extremely rare. The authors found that process innovations are more likely to benefit from coupled OI activities rather than inbound activities. Moreover, the effect of coupled depth actions on both product and process innovation performance was always positive in the reviewed articles. The authors also discuss how scholars measure innovation performance, pointing out the criticalities.

The paper allows analysing the empirical evidences found in the literature, emphasizing the limitations of the state of the art and recommending future directions of research.

The systematization of the empirical evidences found in the European literature provides managers with useful strategic suggestions to improve their organizations’ innovation performances.

The paper contains a complete and extensive analysis of empirical OI literature with respect to European countries. The articles and their findings are organized according to a novel taxonomy useful to identify evidences and recurrences in a synoptic manner.