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This study has two objectives:(1) to examine impacts of environmental activity, relational marketing, and corporate green image on firm’s competitive performance; and (2) to determine whether relational marketing and corporate green image mediate relationships between environmental activity and firm’s competitive performance. They were data from 375 small and medium enterprises (SMEs) of the food processing industry in Bangkok, Thailand. This study also investigates the relationships between environmental activity, green corporate image, relational marketing, and influences of these factors on firm’s competitive performance. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to analyze data. Results reveal significant and positive relationships between environmental activity, green corporate image, relational marketing, and firm’s competitive performance. Moreover, environmental activity, an antecedent variable, indirectly affects a firm’s competitive performance mediated by green corporate image and relational marketing. Therefore, green corporate image and relational marketing can act as mediators between environmental activity and firm’s competitive performance. Findings suggested that firms should focus on improving green corporate image and relational marketing with an appropriate environmental activity strategy to enhance the firm’s competitive performance. Moreover, this study’s result is related to the economics of the environment in terms of cost and benefit. It provides firm’s decision on environmental activity.

Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are expected to be more creative and innovative to survive in the business competition and to make their businesses environmentally friendly, to develop global supply chain strategies, and to make innovations in products and business processes to become indispensable. This study discusses the effect of green supply chain integration (GSCI) and environmental uncertainty on performance through the moderation of green innovation. Structural equation modeling and maximum likelihood estimation were used to analyze a sample of 130 SMEs in East Java, Indonesia. The result shows that GSCI and environmental uncertainty significantly affect performance, and green innovation significantly moderates the effect. This research found that SME’s performance is influenced by GSCI concept and green innovation application as well as SME’s understanding about recent and future environmental uncertainties; this fits the market demand.

Green entrepreneurship is gaining more attention as the interest in sustainability is growing. This is mainly because consumer awareness is rising and thus many regulations have been implied and several research are proving positive relationship from the use of green entrepreneurship. Using enterprise data for the Republic of Albania (ALB), this study examines the effects of green entrepreneurship on firm performance. Our findings when we investigate the determinants of firm performance, the green entrepreneurship, certification, innovation activities, foreign ownership, and monitoring energy appear to have a positive impact on firm performance, while the effect of direct export is negative.

Employment law recognised the value of whistleblowing with the enactment of the Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998, protecting a ‘worker’ against dismissal and victimisation. Whistleblowers are particularly vulnerable in the gig economy as they may fall outside the statutory definition of ‘worker’ for the purposes of the whistleblowing legislation. This makes a study of whistleblowing in the gig economy pertinent. This chapter explores the statutory definition of ‘worker’ with regard to the current whistleblowing provisions and considers the barriers it presents for gig workers. Judicial interpretation of the definition is examined through an analysis of recent case law that shows much inconsistency and a conflict of judicial approach. The resulting blurred boundaries of the legal term leave a gig worker uncertain as to the level of their protection for blowing the whistle. The need for reform to protect individuals in a wide range of working relationships is clear. It is argued that the new EU Whistleblowing Directive, in protecting ‘work-related activity’, provides better protection for all whistleblowers. The role of human rights in extending the status of work is also advanced. Finally, the implications of developments in this area for key stakeholders in the gig economy are considered highlighting the importance of creative new approaches to give voice to all workers.

Decisions about strategies to be implemented and organization design are important in having competitive advantage for companies. Although this statement widely takes place in management literature, very little research has been done on this subject in Turkey. The aim of this study is to examine the mediating role of competitive strategies in the impact of organizational flexibility on competitive advantage in order to extend about empirical literature of the structure-strategy-competitive advantage paradigm based on the resource-based view (RBV). In this context, the data were collected from the top 500 industrial enterprises in Turkey. The data were tested via structural equation model. The findings of our research show that the direct effect of organizational flexibility on competitive superiority was marginally significant and when three different competitive strategies were included between these two variables in the model, the marginally significant effect of organizational flexibility on the competitive advantage disappeared. In other words, the full mediating role of applied competition strategies in the effect of organizational flexibility on competitive advantage has been identified. Our findings are similar to the findings of other studies that consider organizational structure as a valuable resource and examine the relationship between the structure and the strategy according to the RBV.

Using a 10,709 firm-year sample covering the 1998–2007 period, we investigate the determinants of capital structure among 1,491 ASEAN-4 (Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Thailand) emerging market firms. Building on the work of previous authors, we apply the two-step generalized method of moments (Arellano & Bond, 1991) to develop country-specific dynamic models of target leverage decisions. The right-hand variables incorporate a lagged leverage term that controls for the firms' target adjustment process and the following four explanatory variables: firm size, profitability, tangibility, and nondebt tax shields. The sign and significance of each coefficient provides evidence regarding whether the impact of the associated variable is consistent with the trade-off or pecking order theories. We find that size is negatively associated with leverage among Malaysian, Philippine, and Thai firms but positively associated among Indonesian firms. Profitability is negatively associated with leverage among Indonesian and Malaysian firms but positively associated among Philippine firms. Tangibility is negatively associated with leverage among Malaysian firms but positively associated among Philippine firms. While the impacts of size and profitability are consistent with pecking order theory, the impact of tangibility is not supportive of a specific theory. Of the four variables, size is consistently influential, while nondebt tax shields have no significant impact among firms in any country.

The objective of this chapter is to provide a first assessment on the evolution of spatial distribution of foreign firms in China.

We examine the overall changes in the location of foreign firms in China over the period 1999–2009. Then, we distinguish two time periods, 1998–2001 and 2002–2009 so as to analyze whether foreign firms’ agglomeration across regions has changed significantly after the China’s entry into the WTO (2001) and the first launch of the Chinese government policies to develop western internal areas.

Our analysis suggests that foreign-invested enterprises (FIEs) with higher foreign capital shares are more geographically clustered in coastal regions than other enterprises with lower foreign capital shares. This group with the highest intensity of foreign involvement in firm capital also experienced the most relevant changes over the decade of our analysis becoming more localized between the core-periphery divide (coastal provinces and the rest of mainland China).

The main limitation refers to poor data availability, data matching problems, and measurement errors in the database used, as highlighted by Nie, Jiang, and Yang (2012).

A general analysis of location patterns and the role of public policies may inform foreign companies in their entry strategy in the Chinese market.

Very few studies have explored location patterns with detailed geographical data and, at the same time, with data disaggregated by foreign ownership shares.

Rivers flowing through the land are a source of life. They have different importance and functions such as for drinking, sailing, irrigating crops, generating electricity, sightseeing, fishing, and so on. In addition, animals like amphibians, birds, and mammals also live and propagate near the river environment. Therefore, rivers are ecosystems for some animals and plants that are special, rare, or on the brink of extinction (Water Resources Agency, Ministry of Economic Affairs, 2006).

In the platform era the informal employment in China is tremendously huge in quantities. This paper sets out the changes of traditional regulatory rules status, the new web of rules and, with a particular focus on, the impacts of main actors’ interacts, from an industrial relations ‘web of rule’ perspective. The subjects involved in this paper are multiple, including labour law, collective labour relations institution, enterprise human resources management, CSRs and NGOs in production supply chains. It argues the inappropriate impacts on the perseverance of right and interests of workers are consequences of the current national labour law and collective labour relations institutions. It witnesses the emerging innovative methods, employment relations system in a self-dependent economic transaction, the rule of production supply chain in a multi-stake-holder context and the new intervening method of NGOs. It is in scrutiny of the commence of such a transformation in China, nevertheless, transforming from the authoritarian regime to a more fair market establishing via the intervention of multiple social forces, and consequently the transformation from informal employments to formal ones in a comprehensively complex domestic and global context.