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Many organizations around the world currently are facing board diversity issues and challenges. Hence, this empirical paper investigates the relationship between board diversity and firm’s financial performance. We use a sample of 35 companies from five countries in Southeast Europe (Macedonia, Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Greece) for the period between 2008 and 2012 to find that, on average, companies with well-educated board members are more profitable and overvalued on the market. When running the regression again to test the levels of heterogeneity, we also find that the companies with more women on board tend to be overvalued on the market, while those with more foreigners on board are subject of undervaluation. The paper mostly contributes to the literature on corporate governance and board diversity. First, we postulate the impact of each of the board diversity variables on the financial performance and then show the extent of this impact and its economic interpretation. Our findings have important practitioners’ implications for corporate regulators and policy-makers since the demonstrated positive impact of the well-educated board members on firm’s financial performance gives a new impetus in building a corporate strategy that will intend to engage more people holding PhD on board.

This chapter focuses on pedagogies of working with diversity centers on West-East reciprocal learning through a Reciprocal Learning Program in preservice teacher education between a Canadian university and a Chinese university. By presenting our initial analysis of fieldwork with our Teacher Education Reciprocal Learning Program participants through excerpts from newsletters, surveys, and interviews, we explore how participants from both China and Canada made sense of their learning from the other cultural and educational system through the Reciprocal Learning Program within broad educational, social, and cultural contexts. We argue that both global and multicultural dimensions are cultivated in reciprocal learning that infused the lived experiences of both Canadian and Chinese preservice teacher candidates. We discuss the pedagogic implications for working with diversity and believe that reciprocal learning can take place while working with people from different cultures with an attitude of mutual respect and appreciation and an appetite for learning in our increasingly interconnected world.

The goal of this chapter is to respond to the theoretical inquiries by scholars who are interested in how the public–private partnership (PPP) models adapt to China’s context where political power dictates economic strategies. We also want to provide suggestions to policy designers who aim to promote a sustainable investment environment for domestic and international investors. We review the literature that explains the upside and downside of PPP projects in contemporary China. (1) We classify the trajectory of PPP evolution into four phases, i.e., emergence, growth, recession and revival. (2) We note that private companies take a disadvantageous position in the partnership compared with governments and state-owned enterprises because of a lack of specialized legislation, unequal competition between private companies and state-owned enterprises and the opposition from the civic society. (3) We identify political risks as the most influential risks. Political risks also lead to the misallocation of other risks between public and private parties that contributes to the high failure rate of China’s PPP projects. Based on these findings, we recommend governments to draft specialized legislation, stabilize the political environment and provide favourable subsidies to local governments to limit the risks involved in PPP projects. We also advise private enterprises and state-owned enterprises to focus on negotiating over task and risk division with governments when they make decisions to participate in PPP projects. This full review of studies on PPP development in China provides reliable recommendations to scholars, governments and enterprises.

This study aims to identify blockchain-related innovation trends that can improve trust networks in a smart city's transport and supply chain networks. Trust networks are crucial in building and maintaining the trust of citizens in smart cities. By promoting transparency and accountability, facilitating collaboration and innovation, enhancing citizen participation and protecting privacy and security, trust networks can help to ensure that smart cities are developed and implemented in a responsible and sustainable way. A systematic literature review identifies 60 conceptual and empirical studies. This research focuses on the current problems and developing procurement and supply chain strategy and the potential benefits of using blockchain in these areas. It suggests ways for the smart city's transport and supply chain networks to utilise blockchain to improve operations and supply chain strategy and identifies innovation trends related to blockchain. The study also includes a systematic literature review and Blockchain Transformation and Influence model as the basis to enhance trust networks in the supply chain.

We study the informational content of factor structures in discrete triangular systems. Factor structures have been employed in a variety of settings in cross-sectional and panel data models, and in this chapter we formally quantify their identifying power in a bivariate system often employed in the treatment effects literature. Our main findings are that imposing a factor structure yields point-identification of parameters of interest, such as the coefficient associated with the endogenous regressor in the outcome equation, under weaker assumptions than usually required in these models. In particular, we show that a “non-standard” exclusion restriction that requires an explanatory variable in the outcome equation to be excluded from the treatment equation is no longer necessary for identification, even in cases where all of the regressors from the outcome equation are discrete. We also establish identification of the coefficient of the endogenous regressor in models with more general factor structures, in situations where one has access to at least two continuous measurements of the common factor.

We build on the resource-based view and extend entry mode research by focusing on firms’ intention to transfer different resources from the parent firm to its overseas subsidiary. In line with our hypotheses, we find that parent firms that plan to transfer high levels of intangible resources to their foreign subsidiaries tend to choose wholly owned subsidiaries, while firms that intend to transfer high levels of tangible resources tend to choose international joint ventures. Moreover, we find that these relationships are moderated by institutional distance. We test our hypotheses using unique primary data from a sample of 128 foreign subsidiaries in the People’s Republic of China. Our results have important theoretical implications for international business strategy research as they develop further existing entry-mode theories.

This research seeks to understand how shareholder constituencies including controlling family, nonfamily insiders, as well as domestic and foreign institutions in the corporate governance system of emerging economy firms perceive institutional risks in terms of regulative, normative, and cognitive institutions and influence strategic choices in the internationalization of their invested firms.

The sample data are Taiwanese publicly listed companies in the electronics and computer industry. Panel data of the parent firms and their overseas affiliates are available from the annual report and Taiwan Economic Journal database. Country-level data are available from the World Investment Report and the IMD World Competitiveness Report. Statistical regression models including tobit and logistic regression are used to analyze the data.

Controlling family and nonfamily insider shareholders tend to influence their invested firms to enter in institutionally smaller host countries through a shared ownership. Domestic institutional shareholders tend to influence their invested firms to adopt a shared ownership and enter in host countries with larger and smaller institutional distances in terms of regulative and normative institution, respectively. Foreign institutional shareholders tend to influence their invested firms to enter in institutionally smaller host countries through a whole ownership.

The strategic choices of foreign market entry made by emerging economy firms are significantly shaped by the different risk perceptions of shareholder constituencies in their corporate governance system toward the institutional distances between the home and the host country.

Effective interpretation of Australia’s unique landscapes has the potential to contribute to international tourists’ understanding of natural processes, as well as enhance their perceptions and appreciation of this environment. Research indicates that mystery, familiarity, and comprehension all influence how humans view landscapes and that preferences and perceptions are likely to be culturally determined. This chapter explores human perceptions of landscapes and highlights key differences in Western and Chinese approaches to experiencing and interpreting natural environments. It presents results of a study that used photo-elicitation to explore Chinese students’ perceptions of, and preferences for, six Australian landscapes. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the implications and recommendations for interpreting Australian landscapes for Chinese audiences.

Research focuses on factors that affect nascent entrepreneurs’ decision to create a start-up but research in the field of open data contests has not been investigated yet. So, there are no conclusions about the enhancement of entrepreneurship through the hosting of contests. This chapter aims to examine the factors that affect the decision of establishing a start-up by developers who have participated in open data contests. Interviews were conducted with developers who participated in hackathons and they aimed to launch their apps and establish start-ups. The obstacles were the limited support, marketing activities, and the lack of free data.

With the development of tourism industry, online travel agencies (OTA) have gradually become an important channel for tourism product supplies and sales. Some OTAs provide consumers with a platform for tourism guidance and online travel sharing. They not only satisfy some tourists’ desire to share their experiences but also provide reference for more consumers to choose travel products. This process is the process of value co-creation by customers and online travel companies. This study is conducted under DART theory, a theoretical framework of value co-creation composed of four dimensions, namely dialog, access, risk-assessment, and transparency. Brand equity is divided into four aspects: brand loyalty, brand awareness, customer perceived value, and brand image. This study uses the structural equation model to investigate the impact of customer value co-creation behavior on brand equity of online travel enterprises and interprets the process and mechanism of customer value co-creation behaviors for online travel business brand equity, which provides more efficient strategies and methods for platform interaction and value co-creation.