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1 – 10 of 210Linhao Ouyang, Zijian Zhang, Xiaoling Huang and Shi Xie
The purpose of this study is to restore the spatial distribution of overseas remittance businesses in Shantou during the 1940s. It explores various socioeconomic factors that…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to restore the spatial distribution of overseas remittance businesses in Shantou during the 1940s. It explores various socioeconomic factors that influenced the concentration of local remittance business investment in real estate. By reconstructing the spatial distribution of remittance business activities in Shantou, this study hopes to lay a foundation for further analysis of the business strategies of Chaoshan merchants.
Design/methodology/approach
This research draws on information from the published Swatow Guide, archival sources and cadastral maps to identify the location of remittance enterprises and the native place and overseas networks of property owners.
Finding
This study reveals that the spatial distribution of the remittance enterprises was determined by the native place origins of local property owners, and that the inflow of overseas Chinese capital contributed to real estate development in Shantou.
Research limitations/implications
Despite the limited access to Chinese official archives, this paper manages to identify several building blocks and neighbors in Shantou for spatial analysis.
Practical implications
This study is the first attempt to use the geographical information system (GIS) method in Chinese urban history research and hopes to establish a larger historical database of Shantou as a sample for comparison.
Originality/value
This investigation advances the spatial study of urban history and overseas Chinese remittances in the maritime society of South China.
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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the survival capability of Chaoshan people in the maritime world of the South China Sea amidst the changing monetary systems of the…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the survival capability of Chaoshan people in the maritime world of the South China Sea amidst the changing monetary systems of the rival empires and political regimes from 1939 to 1945. It particularly focuses on overseas Chinese remittance business in Shantou under the Japanese rule. Local societies in coastal China and overseas Chinese communities in Southeast Asia experienced severe hardships due to the Sino-Japanese War, the Pacific War and the Chinese Civil War. As fighting among the rival empires and regimes intensified, Chinese migrant communities straddling between Southeast Asia and South China had to negotiate and adapt to survive these crises, regardless of whether they were government-affiliated or local autonomous subjects.
Design/methodology/approach
This research draws on archival materials to investigate the reactions of Chinese migrant communities in Chaoshan region in times of war and regime change. How did local maritime societies and overseas Chinese adapt to the harsh realities of the wartime? How did the Japanese Empire use Wang Jingwei’s puppet government in Nanjing to control the Chaoshan remittance network? How did the remittance network shift its operational structure in face of a wartime crisis?
Findings
Faced with the wartime crisis and the Japanese occupation, Chaoshan communities used a variety of survival strategies to protect and maintain the overseas Chinese remittance business. In dealing with remittances from Singapore, British Malay and Indonesia, they cooperated with the Japanese military authority and its puppet government to maximize the autonomy of their business operation in the Japanese-controlled East Asian Co-prosperity Sphere. On the other hand, to secure the flow of remittances from French Indochina and Thailand, the indirectly controlled territories in the Japanese Empire, Chaoshan merchants sought an alternative path of delivering remittances, known as the Dongxing route, to bypass the Japanese ban on private remittances from these two regions.
Research limitations/implications
It would be a better research if more resources, including remittance receipts and documents during the Japanese occupation, could be found and used to show more detailed features of Chaoshan local society.
Originality/value
This research is the first one to investigate the contradictory features of local Chaoshan society during the Japanese occupation, an under-explored subject in the Chinese historiography.
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This scholarly work aims to investigate the business career of Alfred J. Kohlberg, an American importer of hand-embroidered handkerchiefs in 1922-1957.
Abstract
Purpose
This scholarly work aims to investigate the business career of Alfred J. Kohlberg, an American importer of hand-embroidered handkerchiefs in 1922-1957.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper uses archival resources from the National Archives, the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library, the Hoover Institution Archives, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Custom Courts records, Japanese Government records and other government documents.
Findings
Scholars have focused on how Kohlberg’s political activities paved the way for McCarthyism. The sources of his vast wealth have not received attention. Kohlberg parlayed a 1922 trip to Asia into a highly lucrative importing business specializing in Chinese napery. By 1930, he mostly imported hand-embroidered handkerchiefs for sale in upscale American department stores. He employed as many 12,000 people in his Shantou godown and contracted for the employment of at least 100,000 embroiderers and perhaps many hundreds of thousands more. Despite American Government policy and the wishes of other importers, Japanese occupation authority documents show that Kohlberg negotiated a bribe to keep the port open. This paper concludes that Kohlberg’s business reflected traditional Chinese business organization. While he stressed his patriotic activities during the Second World War, Kohlberg promoted his business interest over the national interest. Finally, the Chaoshan Region prospered by providing the modern world with traditional hand-produced goods.
Research limitations/implications
This work explains how the Chaoshan Region functioned in the global economy. It calls for a deeper examination of this entire industry in China and around the world.
Originality/value
This work uses documents from multiple archives, including Japan and the USA. It also includes declassified documents from the Federal Bureau Investigation. This work constitutes a template for international business history.
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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of cultural beliefs on governance in a business network without a legal institutional framework. Particular emphasis is…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of cultural beliefs on governance in a business network without a legal institutional framework. Particular emphasis is placed on the cross-country remittance mail operating network in Chaoshan, China, during the period 1860-1949. This investigation builds on Greif’s business governance theory and develops an analytical framework that considers cultural beliefs, agency relationships and multilateral punishment mechanisms. Furthermore, it uses the institutional analysis method to identify the institutional factors that sustained the remittance mail operating networks and their underlying mechanisms.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper adopts the qualitative research method. First, it investigates the history of the remittance mail operating network and agency relationships by searching through the contents of the relevant historical documents preserved in the official archives and information found in other records. Thereafter, it summarizes and demonstrates the cultural beliefs inferred from that research. The archival materials permit analysis of the interactions between cultural beliefs, agency relationships and multilateral punishment mechanisms by the institutional analysis method.
Findings
Due to the lack of legal institutions in China during the period under review, cultural beliefs played a central institutional role in cross-country business relations. Network governance was coupled with clan cultural beliefs in the remittance mail operating network. This relationship was the key to sustain the efficient operation of the remittance mail network.
Originality/value
In the West, corporate governance has been influenced by and has become an integral feature of Western culture and values. This is not necessarily so for the corporate governance in terms of Chinese culture and values. Thus, instead of mimicking the modes of developed countries, it is important for Chinese enterprises to seek a mode of corporate governance that is in accord with their local cultures. This may be an important focus for enterprise development.
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Fan‐qi Zeng, Xiang‐zhi Bu and Li Su
The purpose of this paper is to find the characteristic of entrepreneurial process for the student in free enterprise (SIFE) team in China, and to provide theoretical guidance for…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to find the characteristic of entrepreneurial process for the student in free enterprise (SIFE) team in China, and to provide theoretical guidance for the entrepreneurial process of SIFE student team through a new Timmons model.
Design/methodology/approach
Taking an entrepreneurial project of Shantou University SIFE team as example, a Timmons model was proposed describing the SIFE student team entrepreneurial process based on the famous entrepreneurial process model established by Jeffry A. Timmons. The application value of the new Timmons model was proved by case analysis.
Findings
The paper summarized the main characteristics of the entrepreneurial model for the SIFE student team as: the nature of creation free enterprises, the excellent entrepreneurship networks, and the spirit of social entrepreneurship orientation. By case study, the paper proved the practical value of the new Timmons model by analysis of the key factors such as business opportunities, resources and entrepreneurial team, and their dynamic balance process.
Practical implications
The new model proposed in the paper will have theoretical value to provide a direction for student entrepreneurial practice, the analysis of the characteristics of the new model will also enrich the research on entrepreneurship theory.
Originality/value
This paper is the first research on SIFE student entrepreneurial process in China. In the past two years, the authors observed dozens of successful worldwide SIFE students' practical projects, but few of them appeared in the literature. It is hoped that this paper can offer some constructive advice to the entrepreneurial process of the SIFE student team and enrich the theory of general entrepreneurial education.
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Zongling Xu, Jiali Lin and Danming Lin
This paper aims to investigate structural characteristics of a business network comprising small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs), and to explore the relationships between such…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to investigate structural characteristics of a business network comprising small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs), and to explore the relationships between such network characteristics and innovative capabilities of the participating firms.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper adopts a survey approach and conducts empirical analysis by drawing data from 92 firms operating in the packaging and printing industry in Shantou City, Guangdong Province.
Findings
In relation to the participating firms' innovative capabilities, density, reciprocity and multiplicity of the business network are figured out as factors with positive association, while hypotheses concerning intensity, non‐redundancy and betweenness of the network are not supported.
Research limitations/implications
The authors only conducted a survey in a single industry in one location. Thus the extent to which the results of this study can be generalized remains to be further investigated.
Practical implications
Small and medium‐sized enterprises can enhance their innovative capability by understanding and leveraging the structure of the business network in which they participate.
Originality/value
This paper sheds additional insights to the relationship between a business network and firms' innovative capabilities in a Chinese context.
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Minfen Shen, Jialiang Chen and Bin Li
The purpose of this paper is to present a novel algorithm for image inpainting, which has been widely used for removing unwanted objects from images or reconstructing damaged…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to present a novel algorithm for image inpainting, which has been widely used for removing unwanted objects from images or reconstructing damaged photographs.
Design/methodology/approach
An image piecewise inpainting technique based on radial basis function (RBF) is used to transform the 2D image inpainting problem into 3D implicit surface reconstruction problem. And a RBF center reduction method is proposed. By RBF resampling, the algorithm can nicely fix the damaged image or remove specific objects.
Findings
Experimental results show that the proposed algorithms can prevent the edge blur caused by the isotropic character of RBF, and effectively reduce the RBF centers without a loss in accuracy.
Originality/value
The proposed inpainting approach is interesting for its combination of RBF method and region segmentation that can handle the restoring of high‐variation areas.
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Yi Wang, Yuan Liu, Yeyuan Dai and Danming Lin
– The purpose of this paper is to elicit the rich implications of IT business value for small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) from the perspective of IT leaders.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to elicit the rich implications of IT business value for small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) from the perspective of IT leaders.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper uses case study and the repertory grid technique to explore cognition of IT business value of the IT leader in Guangdong CHJ Industry Co., Ltd (CHJ), a fast-growing jewelry company in China. The paper further examines this cognitive structure of IT business value by using cluster analysis technique.
Findings
This paper develops a six-category framework of IT business value from IT leaders' perspective, which provides insights for future research of IT applications in SMEs.
Originality/value
This study contributes to IT business value research by providing empirically grounded insight from perspectives of IT leaders in SMEs. The identified IT business value framework can also serve as a practical tool to help managers comprehensively assess and evaluate IT applications in SMEs.
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Anita M.M. Liu, Zhang Shuibo and Leung Meiyung
In recent years, China is exerting effort to improve the performance effectiveness of its construction industry. This paper aims to report a preliminary study on organisational…
Abstract
Purpose
In recent years, China is exerting effort to improve the performance effectiveness of its construction industry. This paper aims to report a preliminary study on organisational culture of five selected construction enterprises from different geographical locations in China and to discuss a framework for developing effectiveness measurement criteria for Chinese construction enterprises.
Design/methodology/approach
The research approach focuses on the culture profiles of the selected enterprises which have similar size, number of employees, general reputation (in terms of quality of construction), business type (building works) and tax bracket. The measuring instrument of organisational culture is adopted from previous tested research.
Findings
It is found that the hierarchy culture is dominant in four cases; Shantou in the Special Economic Zone is the exception. The Shantou enterprise has a market culture and Shantou was one of the first regions to embark on economic reform. Further analysis is required of the spread of the culture profiles in terms of geopraphcial regions and developmental stages of the construction enterprises in China.
Originality/value
The result of the five case studies is indicative of the presence of the dichotomy in hierarchy – market culture dominance. Evaluation of operational effectiveness of such organisations must depend on their developmental stages in line with their stated objectives, and a framework for effectiveness measurement is proposed.
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Xiaoning Li, Xinbo Liao, Qingwen Zhong, Kai Zheng, Shaoxing Chen, Xiao-Jun Chen, Jin-Xiu Zhu and Hongyuan Yang
The purpose of this paper is to analyze the influencing factors of patients’ financial burden through a case study of hospital on public‒private partnerships (PPP) model (Chaonan…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to analyze the influencing factors of patients’ financial burden through a case study of hospital on public‒private partnerships (PPP) model (Chaonan Minsheng Hospital of Guangdong Province) and provide some useful information to policymakers for better development of hospitals on PPP model.
Design/methodology/approach
There are total six indicators that are defined as patients’ financial burden, basing on the policy of “indicators of medical quality management and control on the third level large general hospital (2011 edition),” issued by Chinese Government. In total, 23 potentially influencing factors of patients’ financial burden for hospital on PPP model were chosen from the above policy. The five-year (2007‒2011) data for the above 29 indicators come from statistic department of hospital on PPP model. Grey relational analysis (GRA) was applied to analyze the influencing factors of patients’ financial burden for hospital on PPP model.
Findings
A clear rank of influencing factors of patients’ financial burden is obtained and suggestions are provided from results of GRA, which provide reference for policymakers of hospital on PPP model. The five main influencing factors of patients’ financial burden for hospital on PPP model, in sequence, are rescuing critical ill patients on emergency, rescuing critical ill inpatients, inpatient bed occupancy rate, working days per bed and medical building area.
Originality/value
The study on the influencing factors of patients’ financial burden for hospital on PPP model not only provides decision-making for policymaker of hospital and controlling of medical expenditure but also contributes to release patients’ financial burden for hospitals on PPP model.
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