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A distinctive feature of mortgages as assets is the existence of prepayment risk, typically viewed as a borrower’s call option to pay the outstanding mortgage balance at any time during the term. While previous research identified important causes for prepayment, these studies are mostly based on fixed‐rate mortgages, with little work on variable‐rate or floating‐rate mortgages and even less work on prepayment in countries other than the USA. This paper presents an analysis of prepayment based on the historical aggregate pre‐payment experience of a sample of variable rate mortgages in Hong Kong, which func‐tions under a Currency Board Mechanism that determines exogenously the level and term structure of interest rates. With variable rate mortgages, it is expected that there will not be a prepayment incentive with decreases in interest rates, unlike the case with fixed‐rate mortgages. However, we argue that observed interest rate movements remain a key factor that affects prepayment decisions, because current interest changes influence expected future interest rates. Furthermore, drawing on quasi‐rational and behavioral economics concepts, we expect the effect on prepayment of expected upward movement in interest rates to be stronger than that of expected downward movements. Empirical evidence from the adjustable rate residential mortgage sample from Hong Kong supports these expected relationships.

This paper aims to present an empirically informed model of the underlying factors that enable effective cross‐cultural leadership. It also outlines procedures for using the model to assist expatriate managers to develop the capacities that underlie effective cross‐cultural leadership. The model encompasses the complexity of cross‐cultural leadership issues in China, the importance of having some theoretical knowledge on the topic, and the need to be flexible and pragmatic in applying this knowledge.

A conceptual framework of the factors that interact to produce effective cross‐cultural leadership was developed from the literature. Semi‐structured in‐depth interviews were conducted with 32 Western expatriate managers and 19 local Chinese managers working in Australian businesses operating in Shanghai and Beijing. Within each interview, respondents were asked what they believe are the keys to successful leadership in Australian‐Chinese cross‐cultural workplaces.

The interviews revealed a core series of cross‐cultural leadership competencies that call upon all three of transformational leadership, emotional intelligence, and cultural intelligence.

The findings and perspectives presented here should assist organizations in their selection and development of expatriate leaders. The paper argues that organizations should focus less upon skills and more upon underlying attitudinal and cognitive enablers.

Whilst most cross‐cultural leadership studies to date have focused on examining and explaining cultural differences and their influence on leadership effectiveness, this paper focuses on individual orientation and capacities.

This paper aims to examine the potential moderating effect of knowledge management on the influence of corporate social responsibility (CSR) on organizational performance.

Questionnaire data were collected from 170 distinct companies in Taiwan.

The results confirm the positive influence of CSR on organizational performance. There are also some interesting moderating effects of knowledge management in the CSR–performance relationship.

A major contribution of this study is its confirmation of the context-dependence nature of CSR and the potential moderating effect of knowledge management between CSR and organizational performance.

Foreign direct investment in the infrastructure (FDII) of developing countries has a history of at least four decades. Bullish demand for foreign infrastructure services in developing countries, in combination with unstable political environments, has buoyed attention in political risk management (PRM). Even so, research into PRM of FDII remains fragmented and unmapped. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to identify the current body of knowledge in this area, uncover deficiencies and lay the foundation for further practical PRM research in FDII.

This paper offers a bibliometric-qualitative review of current literature on political risk in foreign infrastructure in developing countries. A 36-year period is identified, from 1983 to 2018. Publication year, area of focus, author(s), institution and country are classified and analyzed through the medium of social network analysis. The tools used are VOSviewer, CiteSpace and Gephi to analyze citation networks of 345 published papers. Out of 345 papers, 94 highly related studies were selected for further content analysis.

The study identified the research trends in related areas of PRM in infrastructure (e.g. PRM in international construction and foreign direct investment) by bibliometric analysis, which includes scattered researcher collaboration, wide-ranging and unfocused journal selection, unsystematic and discontinuous research themes. The specific research weakness in PRM in FDII is recognized by qualitative analysis from the perspective of PRM process, which reveals a lack of understanding of the impact of political risk factors, subjective risk estimations, lacking application of mature political risk database in FDII, combined with a shortage of complete and effective strategies for PRM in FDII in developing countries.

This paper is the first of its kind, providing a comprehensive benchmark survey of the research to date in PRM in foreign infrastructure investment in developing countries. It proposes a framework of future research agenda on PRM in FDII, including special issues on this topic, identification and assessment of political risk factors with objective methods, proposition of PRM strategies on FDII with proactive and active approaches, completing strategies of PRM with reactive strategies from the perspectives of whole life cycle of infrastructure projects, political risk factors and stakeholders. It also addressed the need to investigate the suitable literature databases for researching in this area.

Political risk has been identified as a major impediment to the success of foreign invested projects, in developing countries. Infrastructure projects are especially sensitive to host-country political climates. Governance in emerging economies can be unstable, which adversely impacts infrastructure projects, given their high capital-intensity, long operational periods and high asset specificity. While the detrimental impact of political risk is well documented, the mitigation of such impacts on infrastructure projects remains largely unexamined. This study, therefore, addresses this by exploring the available identified political risk management (PRM) strategies based on resilience theory and evaluating their effectiveness.

A mixed-method approach was employed to identify PRM strategies. Firstly, a comprehensive literature review identified 40 potential PRM strategies. However, the applicability of those 40 strategies was uncertain due to the scarcity of PRM studies. Thus, expert interviews, drawing on the insights of Chinese infrastructure industry professionals with experience in FII, were applied to review the identified strategies. This process reduced the pool of applicable strategies to 34. Subsequently, 356 questionnaires were sent out to investors from China, Australia and Singapore, with 218 valid responses returned. Based on the data collected from the surveys, statistical analysis was used to evaluate and classify applicable PRM strategies.

Results reveal the most effective top five strategies for offsetting the detrimental effects of political risk on foreign infrastructure investment to be: (1) selection of suitable markets and projects; (2) maintaining good relationship with government; (3) purchasing political insurance; (4) utilizing capable contractors from both host country and home country; and (5) adopting an appropriate entry mode. The 34 strategies were further consolidated into four meta-strategies through factor analysis, resulting in the formulation of a strategy selection matrix.

The findings of this study offer a rational means by which infrastructure investment practitioners considering projects in developing countries, may arrive at an optimal political risk mitigation strategy. The findings also offer government of host countries directives to improving the political environment in order to attract foreign investment flows into local infrastructure projects.

The purposes of this paper is twofold: first, to assess the risks associated with the international construction joint ventures (ICJVs) between Singapore and developing countries and second, to investigate the risk allocation preferences in these ICJVs.

A questionnaire survey was conducted and responses were received from 38 firms that had participated in ICJVs with developing countries. A risk criticality (RC) index was adopted to evaluate the criticality of each risk.

The survey results reported “political instability” as the most critical risk and market-level risks were less critical than country and project-level risks. Additionally, the results showed agreement on the risk ranking between building and infrastructure ICJVs, despite significant differences in the criticalities of five risks. Furthermore, five risks were preferably allocated to host and foreign partners, respectively, while 13 risks could be shared among partners.

First, due to the sample size, one should be cautious when interpreting and generalizing the results. Second, the RC index proposed in this study was subjective as it was influenced by the individual experience and risk attitude of the respondents. Also, the RC values were calculated without considering the weights of the respondents. Lastly, the questionnaire survey, which has been widely used in identifying risk allocation preferences, may not identify the insights of practitioners into the risk allocation practices.

This study provides a clear understanding of the risks associated with forming ICJVs with developing countries and the preferred risk allocation. Although, this study is focused on the risks faced by the Singapore-developing country ICJVs, the identification of the potential risks allows companies from other countries to customize their risk profile and assess the risks before they form ICJVs with developing countries.

As few studies have explored the risk allocation preferences in ICJVs, this study expands the literature and provides practitioners with important information for preparing joint venture contracts or agreements. Thus, this study can contribute to the literature relating to ICJVs.

A number of previous studies have investigated international construction project risks and have proposed risk mitigation measures without examining their interdependence. The purpose of the current study is to identify the influence of various risk mitigation measures on macro-level risk factors in the international marketplace.

The authors initially identified 26 risk variables and nine risk mitigation measures through a literature review, which were then verified for their pertinence to international projects by three experts. Subsequently, 105 questionnaire survey responses were collected and analysed using factor analysis and structural equation modelling to test the interrelations between the risk variables and mitigation measures.

The findings suggest that joint ventures with local partners is emerged as the most critical risk mitigation measure that influences the international projects, which are exposed to political, project and firm-specific risk factors. Further, it is worth noting that among the recognised risk mitigation measures in international projects, offering more local employment is the least critical mitigation measure in the international projects.

The findings of this study are based on the macro-risk factors encountered by Indian construction firms in international projects, mostly from specific Asian and African regions. Thus, the opinions of construction firms from the developed countries might be different.

The main contribution of this study to existing knowledge is empirical evidence of the interrelationships between risk mitigation measures and risk factors that are portrayed as latent variables of different manifest risk variables. The generated model can assist construction firms in emphasising several risk mitigation methods, in order to reduce risk and enhance performance in international construction projects.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a secure mobile group-buying system for application on spontaneous group-buying websites.

The proposed mechanism uses the Schnorr digital signature technique.

The proposed scheme is able to satisfy many security requirements. The computation costs of each phase and party were also analyzed, and the communication cost of each phase was calculated.

The results indicate that the proposed scheme is suitable for real-world application.