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Firms may suffer differently from the patent thickets in a particular technology field. This paper explores how patent thickets affect the financial performance of firms with different patent propensities and technological leadership.

From the perspective of patent strategy, the authors study how patent propensity, the possibility that a firm applies for patents, affects the patent thickets and financial performance. Additionally, this paper uses patent stock to measure technological leadership, the degree to which a firm can develop, maintain and enhance technology and product innovation, to study the impact of patent propensity on firms. A three-way interaction model is used to explore the relationship among patent thickets, patent propensity, technological leadership and financial performance based on an unbalanced panel of 69 Chinese telecommunication equipment firms from 2008 to 2019.

The authors find that patent propensity positively moderates patent thickets and financial performance. Notably, technological leadership negatively moderates the moderating effect of patent propensity.

This paper enriches the heterogeneous literature of patent thickets and financial performance. It sheds light on the fact that firms with different technological leadership may use different patent strategies to cut through patent thickets.

The purpose of the study is to propose a new perspective to explain how China's rapid growth in patenting is partially driven by corporate strategic patenting to influence local governments. The authors highlight the role of strategic patenting and local government-business relations in creating the gap between the patent boom and underlying technological progress in China.

The authors investigate the relationship between local government-business relations and corporate strategic patenting behaviors, measured as a higher ratio of patent filings to patent awards, by collecting data from three successive NADS surveys of government-business relations in 292 Chinese municipalities, paired with detailed patenting and subsidy data of 3,756 publicly listed corporations obtained through text mining.

The authors find that, while R&D investment and patent subsidies do drive corporate patenting, firms in jurisdictions with lower-quality government-business relations are more likely to engage in strategic patenting. Moreover, the negative impact of government-business relations on strategic patenting is moderated by political connections, as the strategic patenting of firms without political connections is more sensitive to government-business relations. The authors further show that firms obtain significant benefits from patenting in the form of additional subsidies from local innovation and industrial policies in the years following.

Rolling back patent subsidies will reduce strategic patenting to a limited extent. The local governments in emerging markets need to increase the capacity to implement industrial policy and provide market-based opportunities for firms to access innovation inputs.

The authors provide an updated and fresh perspective to understand the phenomenon of China's patent boom by showing that patenting can be driven by corporate strategies to adapt to local institutions and influence government policy. The authors extend the analysis of strategic patenting to emerging markets.

This paper aims to study whether international niche market leaders (INMLs) gained their leading position as early mover or diligent follower, and assess whether they leveraged hard or soft forms of technological, supply pre-emption and customer lock-in advantage mechanisms.

Empirical material stems from qualitative and quantitative data on a sample of 20 niche companies from the Basque Country (Spain) that operate in business to business markets.

The sample predominantly followed an early entrant strategy and applied soft measures to reach niche market leadership.

Findings imply that early entering fosters conquering leadership in niche markets, that pioneer advantage is easier to sustain in niches than in mainstream markets, and that soft measures are more effective in niche markets than in larger markets. A limitation to our findings is that they follow from explorative research on a sample of firms from a reduced geographic setting.

Hidden champions and INMLs can be important sources of technological progress and economic value for the localities that host them. Therefore, despite their traditional low profile and the fact that they are not always the largest firms around, policymakers may want to pay more attention to this type of companies.

Tot he best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper to research entry timing and its outcome for market leadership with regard to niche players or hidden champions-type of firms. It introduces an original taxonomy to operationalize and distinguish between hard and soft measures to leverage advantage mechanisms related to market entry timing.

COVID-19 pandemic has exposed that even the best of the developed nations have surrendered to the devastations imposed on the global supply chains. The purpose of this study is to explore how COVID-19 has exaggerated the supply chain of production and distribution of Taiwan-based face masks and also investigate the conscientious factors and subfactors for it.

In this study, an analytical hierarchy processes (AHP)-based approach has been used to assign the criterion weights and to prioritize the responsible factors. Initially, based on 26 decision-makers, successful factors were categorized into five main categories, and then main categories and their subcategories factors were prioritized through individual and group decision-maker’s contexts by using the AHP approach.

The results of this AHP model suggest that “Safety” is the most important and top-ranked factor, followed by production, price, work environment and distribution. The key informers in this study are stakeholders which consist of managers, volunteers, associations and non-governmental organizations. The results showed that good behavior of the employees under the “Safety” category is the top positioned responsible factor for successful production and distribution of face masks to the other countries with the highest global percentage of 15.7% and using sanitizers to protect health is the second most successful factor with the global percentage of 11.7%.

The limitations faced in this study were limited to only Taiwan-based mask manufacturing companies, and it was dependent on the decisions of the limited company’s decision-makers.

The novelty of this study is that the empirical analysis of this study has been based on a successful Taiwan masks manufacturing company and evaluates the responsible factors for the production and distribution of Taiwan masks to other countries during COVID-19.

This study aims to examine how veganism is “seen” by young adult non-vegan consumers and how prevailing attitudes reinforce or challenge stigmas around veganism.

Photovoice methodology was used to explore young non-vegan consumers’ attitudes and beliefs towards veganism. Data was collected from students studying advertising at a major university in Australia, who produced images and narratives reflective of their own attitudes towards veganism. Polytextual thematic analysis of the resulting visual data was then undertaken to reveal the dominant themes underpinning participants’ attitudes. Participant narratives were then reviewed to confirm whether the ascribed meaning aligned with participants’ intended meaning.

Participant images were reflective of first, how they saw their world and their place within it, which showed the interplay and interconnectedness between humans, animals and nature, and second, how they saw vegans within this world, with both positive and negative attitudes expressed. Interestingly, vegans were simultaneously admired and condemned. By situating these attitudes along a spectrum of moral evaluation, bounded by stigmatisation and moral legitimacy, participants saw vegans as being either Radicals, Pretenders, Virtuous or Pragmatists. For veganism to become more widely accepted by non-vegans, there is an important role to be played by each vegan type.

This study offers a more nuanced understanding of how and why dissociative groups, such as vegans, become stigmatised, which has implications for messaging and marketing practices around veganism and associated products/services. Future research could use a similar methodology to understand why other minority groups in society are stereotyped and stigmatised, which has broader social implications.

The purpose of this paper is to explore an under-researched topic of supply chain followership (SCF) in the context of recycling chains.

Following a multiple case study approach, the authors conducted interviews with Tetra Pak senior managers and recyclers who recycle used beverage cartons (UBCs) in China.

Based on the dimensions of critical thinking and active engagement, the authors classify SCF into four types. Focal companies could evaluate their suppliers’ behaviours and followership types to initiate corresponding strategies to better manage their relationships. In addition, the authors found SCF to be a dynamic concept, which can be constantly evaluated.

This study is one of the earliest efforts to empirically explore the concept of SCF. The paper extends the followership concept from an individual level to an organizational level in the recycling chain context and presents a useful concept of followership for companies seeking to manage their supply chain relationships.

Using institutional theory, this study aims to understand how the management control systems (MCSs) designed by top managers influence the micro-level process practices of organization members during product innovation.

This paper reports on a case study carried out at NZMed to examine the design and use of MCSs and their product innovation practices. Simons’ levers of control was used to understand the ways in which MCSs were designed and used in a product innovation setting.

The findings indicate that the everyday micro-level processes of organization members encoded MCS when their espoused values aligned with those of top managers. However, when the perspectives within the organization differed, variations to the micro-level processes of organization members emerged. The authors show how this resulted in an increase in innovation capabilities necessary to meet organizational goals.

The misalignment between espoused values and enacted values had a positive effect as it helped the organization maintain their innovation culture, and build long-term trusting relationships with suppliers which enabled the achievement of organizational goals.

By focusing on the relationship between MCS and the micro-level processes of organization members in product innovation, the paper shows how the lack of alignment between the espoused values of top management and the enacted values of project managers explained the variations between the MCS used by top managers and the practices of project teams at our case study company.

The present research identifies a total of nine factors influencing tax avoidance under the international taxation regime of the developing countries and establishes a hierarchical relationship through modeling of the identified factors using modified-total interpretive structural modeling (M-TISM).

Due to “scale without mass” properties of the digital economy, businesses reduce their physical presence in the countries of economic activities. Aided with digital features, multinational enterprises (MNEs) avoid, abolish, or adopt flexible tax burden in the developing nations through by-passing the permanent establishment condition for company taxes or the income characterization prerequisite for royalty taxation. The present research endeavors to identify the drivers of tax avoidance in the developing countries, especially exacerbated due to digital technologies (economy). In addition, the authors also examine the hierarchical relation between the extracted drivers of tax avoidance.

This research presents a considerable driving force of elements like historical foundation of tax-treaties, dominance of the developed countries, influence of trade bodies in policy matters and finally information and communications technologies (ICTs).

Identified elements drive the actors like professional enablers, tax havens, international organizations, and intangible assets in the form of intellectual properties (IPs) which act upon tax arbitrage situations both under the domestic and treaty regulations, finally culminating into profit shifting, tax manipulations or avoidance.

This paper aims to investigate three promotional publications produced by the Postum Cereal Company – A Trip Through Postumville (1920), How I Make Postum (1924) and The Wonderful Lunch Boxes (1925) – with the aim of understanding how language and other semiotic resources are used to promote its products as good and healthy choices.

The three publications were collected from the HathiTrust Digital Library and University of South Florida Tampa Special Collections. They were subjected to multimodal critical discourse analysis to tease out their subtle characteristics and how a combination of language, image, colour, typography and composition are used to represent certain ideas and values related to health and well-being.

The publications subscribe to three distinct genres – “inside the factory”, “friendly spokesperson” and “fictional world” – each of which are aimed at different target audiences. The first seeks to promote Postum as an open and transparent company; the second to promote Postum as a company that cares about its consumers; and the third to promote the health benefits of Postum in a fun and accessible manner. Nonetheless, they are united in their overall objective to link the regular consumption of Postum as essential for good health.

To date, few studies have been conducted on the Postum Cereal Company, while the limited research conducted on promotional publications has tended to overlook discourses of health and well-being. The three genres outlined in this study, thus, have the potential to foster a reappraisal of promotional publications and showcase their ability to offer new understandings on historical approaches to marketing, particularly the link with health and science.