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A fundamental change in the planning and delivery of new housing projects has taken place in the last years, with the focus shifting towards adding value to projects based on a better understanding of housing preferences. This issue becomes even more critical when it is intended to the provision of affordable houses for low and middle income groups. This paper describes a model designed to help developers and housing users to achieve their expectations regarding quality, affordability and including also reasonable profits. Developed through a “methodological pluralism”, this study identifies people-oriented variables and assumptions. The model was developed based on a case study in the city of Guayaquil-Ecuador, and information obtained from field work research was used to test it. The study examines implications and limitations of the model for inclusion of housing preferences considering local conditions and cultural values. The different parts of the model along with data requirements for each part are described. The paper concludes with findings regarding the identification of most preferred attributes by housing users and the use of alternatives methods to incorporate additional value into projects, translated into more appealing profits for developers and the provision of better and more affordable houses for users.

This study purports to examine the effects of a joint reward system (JRS) under a new product development (NPD) setting by identifying four neglected aspects of JRS that contains a procedural view (participation of reward decision and reward contingent on NPD phases) and a monetary view (risk‐free to participate and over‐reward incentive) in a conceptual model, and then to empirically test their effects on knowledge sharing and NPD performance.

Using regression analysis, the proposed model was tested on 233 valid respondents (112 in R&D, 50 in marketing, and 71 in manufacturing), including 92 from electronics firms, 87 from semiconductor firms, 29 from biotechnology firms, and 25 from pharmaceutical firms in Taiwan.

The results indicated that risk‐free to NPD project members is the most salient aspect of JRS on knowledge sharing and NPD performance. Joint determination of reward allocation was found to be a favorable JRS for only marketing and NPD performance. Rewards contingent on NPD phases have shown conflicting results between R&D and marketing. No relationship was found for over‐reward incentive on knowledge sharing and NPD performance. Despite the mixed effects of JRS, knowledge sharing is a strong predictor of NPD performance.

This study extends understanding of the complexities of rewards on knowledge sharing and NPD success by decomposing and testing four unique aspects of JRS, which sheds a new light on NPD researches.

Drawing on the concept of fit, this paper aims to propose a knowledge management (KM) fit model within which KM strategy, IT strategy, and HRM strategy are coaligned and to empirically test this model with empirical data.

Data for hypotheses testing are collected from top‐ranked companies in Taiwan; yielding 161 valid samples. Performance implications of fit are examined using multiple perspectives with covariation and matching approaches.

The findings show that the holistic perspective of fit as covariation supports the fit relationships on business performance. In addition, with the reductionistic perspective of fit as matching, the findings also show their bivariate relationships have significant impacts on business performance.

A successful KM project must take various attributes into account, to ensure a positive outcome. In such a context, organization, process, human resources, and IT are thought to be the key elements and enablers for best KM practices. Thus, cogitating and integrating various factors related to the KM area are considered by researchers to be the most important tasks. However, fit mechanism is a dynamic process. The authors suggest that future research should adopt a longitudinal view to deal with the dynamic changes that may occur in fit operations.

There has been little attempt to explore KM issues by using multiple perspectives to examine the performance implications of fit on business performance. Thus, the authors posit that performance measuring in growth and profitability are affected by fit among these three KM‐related strategies.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate sports participants’ choice behaviour and draw useful conclusions about the ideal features of small-scale sporting events that maximize attractiveness and desirability among potential competitors to attend and compete.

Conjoint analysis was used to determine how participants value different elements and features of two small-scale cycling events, one in Taiwan and the other in Greece. A questionnaire was developed and distributed to 195 cyclists during the event in Kaohsiung, Taiwan and to 169 competitors of a similar competition in Sfendami, Greece. It consisted of two basic parts. The first presented 19 alternative scenarios that have been associated with such sporting events while the second assessed the socio-economic and demographic characteristics of participant’s in order to provide an average profile of the participants in each location. The conjoint data collected was analysed using the SPSS “Conjoint Module” at the aggregate level (i.e. pooled data).

Based on the preferences of these amateur cyclists the most important factors for Taiwanese events are “preferred season to organizing the event”, “registration cost”, and “preferred time period”, while those participating in the Greek event emphasized “registration cost” and “scenery”. Overall, the analysis highlights five differences and five similarities that exist between these two countries.

The study is small-scale and although sample sizes are sufficient to be representative of the participants in each event there are limitations in generalizing these results to larger sports meetings and other countries.

The findings of this study provide event coordinators and sport marketers practical insights into small-scale event planning and the development of effective marketing strategies designed to appeal to a greater range of participants. Furthermore, the comparative nature of the study can facilitate a transfer of know-how which can be used for development of sport events in Mediterranean area, whose sport events’ organizers can, in the future, more effectively approach potential East Asian participants.

This is the first study to use a combination of seven parameters in conjoint analysis to examine amateur cyclists’ preferences and is one on the few studies to examine the differences between Asian and European participants.

This paper is a study of the current trends and conditions of electronic resources for Chinese studies, based on a recent survey on the Internet of 29 Chinese libraries in North America and eight Chinese libraries in China, Taiwan and Hong Kong. The survey discussed current electronic resources for Chinese studies, with a union list of major Chinese language databases currently used in libraries in Asia and the US. Current views on the use and development of electronic resources for Chinese studies were summarised.

The Communist revolution in China has led to the appearance in this country of increasing numbers of Chinese books in Russian translation. The Chinese names in Cyrillic transcription have presented many librarians and students with a new problem, that of identifying the Cyrillic form of a name with the customary Wade‐Giles transcription. The average cataloguer, the first to meet the problem, has two obvious lines of action, and neither is satisfactory. He can save up the names until he has a chance to consult an expert in Chinese. Apart altogether from the delay, the expert, confronted with a few isolated names, might simply reply that he could do nothing without the Chinese characters, and it is only rarely that Soviet books supply them. Alternatively, he can transliterate the Cyrillic letters according to the system in use in his library and leave the matter there for fear of making bad worse. As long as the writers are not well known, he may feel only faintly uneasy; but the appearance of Chzhou Ėn‐lai (or Čžou En‐laj) upsets his equanimity. Obviously this must be entered under Chou; and we must have Mao Tse‐tung and not Mao Tsze‐dun, Ch'en Po‐ta and not Chėn' Bo‐da. But what happens when we have another . . . We can hardly write Ch'en unless we know how to represent the remaining elements in the name; yet we are loth to write Ch'en in one name and Chėn' in another.

Based on a review of the Chinese ethic of bao (reciprocity), this paper aims to study the issue of reciprocity of trust at firm level by analyzing multiple-source data while controlling for the effects of several contextual variables.

The authors collected data from the supplier–buyer partnerships in China’s automotive industry. Hierarchical linear regression approach is adopted to test the hypotheses.

The data show that reciprocity of trust between parties involved has a significantly positive effect on the stability of the supplier–buyer partnership, and that this reciprocity also moderates the relationship between trust itself and stability. In addition, several contextual variables, i.e. the suppliers’ sensitiveness to their buyer’s need, personal contact of top managers, motivation to develop symbiotic partnership and firm location, can also have significant and positive effects on the stability of the supplier–buyer partnership.

This study presents empirical evidence on how the Chinese ethic of bao may influence the stability of the supplier–buyer partnerships, suggesting that examining this Chinese cultural element is a useful exercise. Related to this issue, the data show that the level of trust between the parties in business transactions differs, and that this difference influences the stability of the partnership. In addition, the study suggests that several other factors have significant and positive effects on the stability of the partnership. Interestingly, the data suggest that these effects are more likely to be observed when the reciprocity of trust or bao between the partners is taken into account. By demonstrating empirically the significant direct and moderating effect of bao or reciprocal trust, this study makes an important contribution to the literature on trust and the stability of the supplier–buyer partnership.

This paper draws on social exchange theory to theorise supplier motivation to share knowledge. It examines the effects of supplier anticipated future dependence on their motivation to share knowledge with a buyer, mediated by economic, relational and learning motives. It also examines the conditional effects imposed by the current embeddedness of the relationship.

The study tested the proposed moderated mediation model using a scenario-based experimental method.

The results show that supplier anticipated future dependence increases their motivation to share knowledge, mediated by relational and learning motives. The results also show that current embeddedness has negative moderation effects on economic and learning but not relational motives.

The study deepens our understanding of supplier motivation to share knowledge as social exchange and offers insights on buyer-supplier relationship embeddedness.