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Interfirm contracts are a ubiquitous economic institution in market economies. In this study, we examine the determinants of one important aspect of interfirm contracts – contract duration. We begin with Joskow's (1987) study that demonstrated that contract duration is governed by mechanisms that economize transaction costs. Our study extends Joskow's study in several ways: First, while Joskow's study focuses on one particular area of extreme resource dependence, between the coal mine and the power company, we examine patterns of contract duration and their determinants across broader economic sectors, thereby providing a more general test of the key ideas in transaction cost economics. Second, we investigate the role of social institutions as a distinct mechanism underlying the design of contract duration, especially in terms of mitigating risks and transaction costs. Finally, by situating our study in China, we extend the research context beyond industrialized market societies to a transitional economy where interfirm contracts are an emerging economic institution. The empirical study is based on the analyses of information on 877 contracts from 620 firms collected in two Chinese cities, Beijing and Guangzhou, in 2000.

This chapter discusses methodological challenges that may be faced by researchers interested in financial markets in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic. In particular, we focus on the behaviour of investors and consider three aspects that affect their investment decision process, namely comovement, cross-sectional asset pricing, and out-of-sample forecasting. We argue that, in relation to the pandemic, relevant financial time series such as asset returns exhibit nonlinear dynamics, which should be suitably incorporated within appropriate methodological tools. We discuss possible existing approaches that ensure that those nonlinearities are properly accounted for. Finally, possible areas of future research are touched upon.

Internet + and Electronic Business in China is a comprehensive resource that provides insight and analysis into E-commerce in China and how it has revolutionized and continues to revolutionize business and society. Split into four distinct sections, the book first lays out the theoretical foundations and fundamental concepts of E-Business before moving on to look at internet+ innovation models and their applications in different industries such as agriculture, finance and commerce. The book then provides a comprehensive analysis of E-business platforms and their applications in China before finishing with four comprehensive case studies of major E-business projects, providing readers with successful examples of implementing E-Business entrepreneurship projects.

Internet + and Electronic Business in China is a comprehensive resource that provides insights and analysis into how E-commerce has revolutionized and continues to revolutionize business and society in China.

Creativity and innovation have been buzzwords of managerial discourse over the last few decades as they contribute to the long-term survival and competitiveness of firms. Given the non-linear, causally ambiguous, and intangible nature of all innovation-related phenomena, management scholars have been trying to uncover factors that contribute to creativity and innovation from multiple lenses ranging from organizational behavior at the micro-level to strategic management at the macro-level. Along with important and insightful developments in these research streams that evolved independently from one another, human resource management (HRM) research – especially from a strategic perspective – has only recently started to contribute to a better understanding of both creativity and innovation. The goal of this chapter is to review the contributions of strategic HRM research to an improved understanding of creativity at the individual-level and innovation at the firm-level. In organizing this review, the authors rely on the open innovation funnel as a metaphor to review research on both HRM practices and HRM systems that contribute to creativity and innovation. In the last section, the authors focus on more recent developments in HRM research that focus on ambidexterity – as a way for HRM to simultaneously facilitate exploration and exploitation. This chapter concludes with a discussion of future research directions.

This chapter investigates the ways in which transnational practices of Chinese migrants can contribute to our understanding of how migration and entrepreneurship operate in superdiverse urban settings. ‘Superdiversity’, as outlined by Vertovec (2007), draws attention to the new and complex social formations, characterised by a dynamic integration of variables (e.g. race, ethnicity and social class) in European cosmopolitan cities. Increased diversity has created a complex range of under-explored challenges to immigrant entrepreneurs, who work within and, most importantly, for such communities. Importantly, for migrant groups in the current climate of austerity, enterprise may be a way of promoting employment and local development, while also kick-starting broader business regeneration. The focus of the chapter is based on the transnational practices of immigrant enterprises through the intersectionality of gender and ethnicity. The study focusses on Chinese entrepreneurial owners of small transnational enterprises (STEs) living in Birmingham, UK. Despite the fact that the Chinese STEs have been documented elsewhere including Canada (e.g. Wong & Ng, 2002), the USA (e.g. Sequeira, Carr, & Rasheed, 2009; You & Zhou, 2018), Australia (Wang & Warn, 2018) and some South-east Asian countries including China (Tan, 2006; Weng, 2014), very little empirical research has been conducted in the UK to document and explore the existence and characteristics of the Chinese STEs. Timely empirical studies are called for which illuminate the contemporary development and dynamics of the businesses run by the new Chinese immigrants in the west Midlands UK.

The US Department of Agriculture (USDA), Soil Conservation Services (SCS) rainfall-runoff model has been applied worldwide since 1954 and adopted by Malaysian government agencies. Malaysia does not have regional specific curve numbers (CN) available for the use in rainfall-runoff modelling, and therefore a SCS-CN practitioner has no option but to adopt its guideline and handbook values which are specific to the US region. The selection of CN to represent a watershed becomes subjective and even inconsistent to represent similar land cover area. In recent decades, hydrologists argue about the accuracy of the predicted runoff results from the model and challenge the validity of the key parameter, initial abstraction ratio coefficient (λ) and the use of CN. Unlike the conventional SCS-CN technique, the proposed calibration methodology in this chapter discarded the use of CN as input to the SCS model and derived statistically significant CN value of a specific region through rainfall-runoff events directly under the guide of inferential statistics. Between July and October of 2004, the derived λ was 0.015, while λ = 0.20 was rejected at alpha = 0.01 level at Melana watershed in Johor, Malaysia. Optimum CN of 88.9 was derived from the 99% confidence interval range from 87.4 to 96.6 at Melana watershed. Residual sum of square (RSS) was reduced by 79% while the runoff model of Nash–Sutcliffe was improved by 233%. The SCS rainfall-runoff model can be calibrated quickly to address urban runoff prediction challenge under rapid land use and land cover changes.

This chapter draws from a three-year ethnographic study focused on the educational and community interactions among working- and middle-class ethnic Chinese immigrants in a mid-western town in the United States. Aihwa Ong (1999) argues that “Chineseness” is a fluid, cultural practice manifested within the Chinese diaspora in particular ways that relate to globalization in late modernity, immigrants’ cultural background, their place in the social structure in their home society, and their new social class status in the context they enter. The study extends research focused on the complexities of social reproduction within larger global flows of Chinese immigrants. First, we describe how Chinese immigrants’ social status in their countries of origin in part shapes middle and working-class group’s access to cultural capital and positions in the social structure of their post-migration context. Second, we trace groups’ negotiation of their relational race and class positioning in the new context (Ong, 1999) that is often invisible in the processes of social reproduction. Third, we describe how both groups must negotiate national, community, and schooling conceptions of the model minority concept (Lee, 1996) that shapes Asian-American’s lived realities in the United States; yet the continuing salience of their immigrant experience, home culture, and access to cultural capital (Bourdieu, 2007) means that they enact the “model minority” concept differently. The findings suggest the complexity of Chinese immigrants’ accommodation of and resistance to normative ideologies and local structures that cumulatively contribute to social reproduction on the basis of class.