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Since the sixteenth century, Panama has been an important logistic node for communication between South America, North America, and Europe for trade and load transit. Panama ports move more than 700 million tons per year while Panama Canal moves 325,428,407 tons, according the statistics of 2014. Most of the maritime cargo moved through Panama is transit and transshipment cargo. Consequently, and due to the geographical position and future opportunities based on the expansion of the Panama Canal, Panama could be a strategic hub of global trade flows. This is an opportunity to develop value-added logistics services (VALS) in Panama Canal. Thus, this research aims to present a preliminary analysis of VALS industry in Panama, identifying critical variables that could enhance these services. This is a survey-based research, using interviews with the main suppliers of VALS in Panama and some of their customers. The methodology applied to analyze the data is means-end value hierarchy model (MEVHM), which was used to understand VALS industry in Panama and identify what is valuable to customers. Results showed that each VALS provider serves a mean of 20 companies, 22% of them are national clients while 78% are international clients, which recognized the geographical position as their main reason to work with logistics experts from Panama. Furthermore, 92% of them were very satisfied or satisfied with the service received. Main VALS in Panama are labeling, tagging, and packaging. In contrast, areas to be improved are customs procedures, national logistics processes, product’s traceability, competitive prices, and human resources training.

This chapter conceptualises a link between Industrial Revolution 4.0 (IR 4.0), big data, data science and sustainable tourism.

The author adopts a grounded theory and conceptual approach to endeavour in this exploratory research.

The outcome shows a significant rise of big data in the tourism sector under three major dimensions, i.e. business, governance and research. And, some exemplary evidence of institutions promoting the use of big data and data science for sustainable tourism has been discussed.

The conceptualised interlinkage of concepts like IR 4.0, big data, data science and sustainable development provides a valuable knowledge resource to policy-makers, researchers, businesses and students.

Managing diverse talents has become a necessary part of the human resource management of contemporary organizations. The growing diversity of organizations' workforce makes companies reassess their conventional HRM approaches. State-owned enterprises get the increasing attention of talent management scholars since state firms enthusiastically compete for talents. These companies have some particularities that distinguish them from private firms, and there is a need to analyse the existing research on the HRM in state companies which has the potential to add a missing part to the puzzle of managing diverse talents. We study the major topics in the literature on human resource management and talent management in state-owned enterprises, the key findings researchers provide and the gaps in the literature that need to be covered and the resulting research directions for future studies.

The traditional Confucian management system is considered distinctly different from Western-based management. This study draws data from indigenous Taiwanese firms listed on its public stock market and examines the associations among various human resource (HR) systems and organizational performance. First, factor analysis is used to explore a wide range of HR practices. Then, cluster analysis is used to classify indigenous Taiwanese firms with regard to their HR practices. Indigenous Taiwanese firms were found to use various HR systems, ranging from traditional Confucian HR to high-involvement HR practices. Companies that used high-involvement HR systems were found to perform better than those using a traditional Confucian HR system.

Multi-level analysis offers a useful approach to examine social and cultural questions, evolutionary biology, and research methods. Attempts to interlock the three streams of analysis can provide a rich, holistic view of past, current, and possible future research. A clarification of the possible importance of evolutionary biology and the research underpinnings of the original chapter on trustscapes and distrustscapes is attempted here.

This paper seeks to expand the value of multidisciplinary research and research methods that were discussed in the original chapter. First, I attempt to clarify the importance of studying and integrating both social and biological disciplines as they relate to organization trust and distrust issues. Second, I expand the discussion of evolutionary biological issues in ways that clarify their importance to an understanding of the social concepts of trust and distrust. Finally, I argue that multi-level analysis is best served by multi-research methodologies: methodologies that explore the researcher’s and research subject’s basic assumptions, their values, and their operating environments. All three issues are framed within the contexts of Denise Rousseau’s and Jone Pearce’s commentaries on “Trustscapes and Distrustscapes: A Multi-Level Approach for Understanding Stability and Change.”

The overall goal of this chapter is twofold. First, the authors aim to identify indigenous phenomena that influence employee turnover and retention in the Chinese context. Second, the authors link these phenomena to the contextualization of job embeddedness theory. To achieve the goal, the authors begin by introducing three macro-level forces (i.e., political, economic, and cultural forces) in China that help scholars analyze contextual issues in turnover studies. The authors then provide findings in the literature research on employee retention studies published in Chinese academic journals. Next, the authors discuss six indigenous phenomena (i.e., hukou, community in China, migrant workers, state-owned companies, family benefit prioritization, and guanxi) under the three macro-level forces and offer exploratory propositions illustrating how these phenomena contribute to understanding employee retention in China. Finally, the authors offer suggestions on how contextualized turnover studies shall be conducted in China.

We analyze the economic consequence of government intervention on the incidence of accounting fraud and audit fees of both Big 4 and local big auditors on Chinese audit market in the period 2006–2013. In 2009, Chinese government issued favorable polices to local big auditors and required certain Chinese companies to give priority to these auditors. We find that market share of Big 4 auditors is quite stable before and after government intervention, but market share of local big auditors increases at the cost of local small auditors after intervention. Although audit fee premiums of both local big and Big 4 auditors have increased after intervention, the positive effect of local big auditors on audit fee premiums has significantly decreased. Further, both Big 4 and local big auditors are not likely to reduce the incidence of accounting fraud in pre- and post-intervention period. Our results suggest that Chinese government support to local auditors does not significantly enhance these auditors’ competitiveness in terms of audit fee and audit quality.

Generation Z makes up 20% of China’s population, and accounts for the highest share of household spend at 13% (vs. 3% for the United Kingdom and 4% for the United States). To advance marketers’ understanding about this group of consumers and capitalise on China’s booming market, this chapter uses rich statistics and information to show that China’s Generation Z has distinct behaviour patterns, which can be attributed to the unique background in which they grew up: (1) rigidity of social stratification, (2) abundance of materialism, (3) digital era, (4) limited (vs. extended) family, and (5) heavy schoolwork. Growing up in such a background, Generation Z’s lifestyle and consumption-related attitudes and behaviour are distinct from their predecessors. The chapter presents specific actions that marketers can take when targeting this distinct group of consumers in China, along with useful guidelines to HR managers for hiring them.

This study examines the effects of incentive compensation and guanxi, a type of informal personal relationship between people, on the objectivity of Chinese internal auditors. Given that the objectivity of internal auditors is essential for promoting financial reporting quality, it is important to investigate the effectiveness of internal audit functions, especially in emerging markets where the corporate governance mechanisms designed to promote objectivity are less mature.

The research employs a 2 × 2 between participants experiment with 116 graduate accounting student participants.

After controlling for internal auditors’ ethicality, we find that close-guanxi between management and internal auditors and incentive compensation in the form of bonuses based upon meeting earnings targets both have the capacity to impair the objectivity of Chinese internal auditors. Participants were more tolerant of management’s attempts to manage earnings when there was close guanxi or bonus compensation. Further, compensation structure only influenced internal auditors’ support of management when guanxi was distant, but when there was close guanxi between internal auditors and management, internal auditors were unlikely to challenge management regardless of the compensation structure.

This chapter outlines the philosophic underpinnings of the self-management paradigm developed over the past three decades by China’s Haier Group, a global leader in white goods. The successful transformation of Haier from a small resource-poor firm to a dominant global giant is often attributed to the self-management culture established in the company by its legendary leader Zhang Ruimin. This management paradigm is a function of the humbleness displayed by Mr. Zhang Ruimin and rooted in his strong belief in the traditional Chinese philosophy of I-Ching and Daoism. We show how the hexagram of Qian (“qian”: humbleness, modesty) from I-Ching is linked to Mr. Zhang’s humble approach and analyze how the six parts of the hexagram of Qian are related to the six development stages of the Haier Group. These insights are used to give some thoughts to the leadership challenge associated with the creation of a dynamic and responsive global organization.