Dissertations

In today’s fast-changing world, firm resilience becomes an important force for firms to survive and develop. This dissertation aims to investigate the relationship between CEO humility and firm resilience, and further tackle the underlying mechanism behind the relationship. Based on upper echelons theory, this dissertation proposes that CEO humility promotes firm resilience, and the positive influence is mediated by stakeholder relationship capability. Moreover, competitive uncertainty and CEO work experience variety positively moderate the connection between CEO humility and stakeholder relationship capability. Using survey data from 119 CEOs in China, this dissertation tests the theoretical hypotheses and offers several implications for firms to enhance their resilience, which contributes to extending the micro-foundation of firm resilience, enriching studies on CEO humility.

This paper includes three studies on divestitures. The first study explores the popular divestiture tool of spin-off in recent years. The study aims to investigate the determining factors of corporate spin-offs and reveal the motives behind this strategic decision. This paper uses a multidimensional dataset of US-listed companies that have spun off between2000 and 2022 and employs a probit regression model to examine five hypotheses: performance, incomplete contract, managerial efficiency, financial constraint, and regulatory requirement. This study provides a more systematic analysis of the factors influencing spin-off decisions and contributes to existing literature on corporate spin-offs.
The second study conducts a preliminary exploration of the motives for divestitures in Chinese companies using three case studies of Chinese enterprises (a state-owned company, a private company, and a listed high-tech company).
The third study explores divestiture tools such as spin-off, equity carve-out, and sell-off. This study analyzes how a company's listing status and whether the enterprise is state- owned affect the choice of divestiture tools. The study collected data from 53,629 Asian companies (including 16,225 Chinesecompanies) that underwent strategic divestitures between 1992 and 2022. The study found that listed companies and privately held non- listed companies are less likely to sell off divested units. Non-listed companies, especially non-listed state-owned enterprises, are more likely to use equity carve-out rather than spin- off as divestiture tools. Listed companies and privately held non-listed companies are more likely to allow management to hold shares after divestiture. In the sub-sample test of listed companies, we found that the shareholder concentration in the parent company has no significant impact on whether the management holds shares after divestitures. We found that the percentage of fund ownership has a significant impact on whether the management holds shares.
Keywords: divestitures, divestitures tools, ownership concentration

In the global environment of tobacco control, along with the increasing concern for health, electronic companies around the world have focused on the research and production of "non-combustible alternatives to cigarettes" to meet the psychology of consumers to quit smoking and the pursuit of fashion, and the most popular products are "Electronic Cigarette” (E-cig) and its similar products. In recent years, domestic E-cig-related products have gradually known by the public, with increasing exposure in the news media and rapid growth in sales. Among them, HnB E-cig has smoking taste closer to the characteristics of traditional cigarettes and therefore is gradually accepted by the market. HnB Tobacco Products, filled in their mouths with tobacco flakes, will heat tobacco via the temperature control technology by the electric heat core, so that the tobacco just releases aromatic substances and nicotine and therefore generate smoke. Therefore, this smoking method involves no combustion, while low-temperature heating of tobacco products can significantly reduce the release of harmful substances, which can both provide smoking satisfaction and reduce coke and harm at the same time. Because E-cig and HnB Tobacco Products have stylish designs, low harm to humans, and numerous product flavors, they have quickly dominated the market among alternatives of traditional cigarettes.

Using least square method and instrumental variables, this dissertation investigates the impact of changes in consumer cognitive ability, attention paid to health, and external factors on the consumption of new e-cigarettes in the E-cig industry to explore the impact of new product changes on changes in Consumer Behavior. By studying this issue, we can effectively get to know the current hotspots and consumption trends in domestic tobacco market, help E-cig companies in developing, designing, and optimizing E-cig products, and facilitate the E-cig players to be more adaptable to the rapidly changing external environment of the industry and promote the healthy development of the E-cig industry.

The first part makes an introduction. It contains the background and significance of the topic selected, the research content, the research method, the framework structure of the research, and the innovation of the dissertation. The second part is mainly divided into two aspects: defining concepts and analyzing the current situation. On the one hand, it is to explain the key terms and concepts, and at the same time systematically compare the advantages and disadvantages of new tobacco and traditional cigarette, to highlight the new product change. On the other hand, it is to make a systematic analysis of the current development status of China's E-cig industry to highlight the importance of this dissertation's research. The third part lists literature review and research hypotheses. This part mainly presents an analysis of three significant factors affecting tobacco, especially E-cig consumption: personal factors such as gender, age and income, health factor and the external factors, such as the cohort effect. Three research hypotheses are proposed based on literature interview: first, age, income and education are closely related to E-cig consumption behavior. Second, lower health risks are an important reason for consumers to choose E-cig over traditional cigarettes. Third, external factors are a key reason for E-cig consumption. The fourth part reveals data, variables, and identification strategies. It mainly introduces the data used, the variables set, and the identification strategy used herein, while also gives the descriptive statistics of the data in this dissertation. The fifth part describes the basic measurement results. This part focuses on the validation of the proposed hypotheses using the data in this dissertation through various methods such as least square regression model, Instrumental Variables Method, principal component analysis, and Shapley decomposition. The sixth part conducts robustness test, specifically by further controlling for county-level fixed effects to demonstrate the robustness of the results of this dissertation. The seventh part gives the research conclusions and policy recommendations. This part summarizes the research of this dissertation, provides policy recommendations on how to further regulate the E-cig industry using changes in Consumer Behavior, and presents the shortcomings of this dissertation and prospects for further research.

In the era of digital transformation, the competition among individual enterprises has evolved into competition of business ecosystems, and the merchants in shopping malls have evolved from atomistic competition to ecological competition. Therefore, merchants must ensure the health of business ecosystems to establish competitive advantages. This study uses the survey data of merchants in five shopping malls in Guangzhou to empirically test the mechanism of the effect of humanized management on the health of business ecosystems in the context of digital transformation.

The empirical results show that: 1. Humanized management of shopping malls helps to build trust and loyalty, promote cooperation between merchants, and thus enhance the health of business ecosystems. 2. Humanized management of shopping malls means that merchants are treated fairly, thus enhancing their sense of fairness. 3. The sense of fairness of merchants plays a mediating role between humanized management and profitability, system connectivity, and relationship predictability, indicating that humanized management creates a good environment for merchants' development after enhancing fairness perception, and also helps to increase the predictability of partners' behavior, thus enhancing the health of business ecosystems. 4. Compared with the merchants in the low digitalization group, the humanized management cognition of merchants in the high digitalization group has a greater effect on enhancing fairness perception, and digitalization positively moderates the indirect relationship between humanized management and profitability, system connectivity, and relationship predictability through fairness perception. The empirical results also show that although the mediating effects of profitability, system connectivity, and relationship predictability and moderating mediating effects are significant, the diversity of partners is not significant, indicating that fairness perception cannot enhance the diversity of partners of merchants.

This study discussed the driver mechanism of business ecosystem health from a micro perspective, and expanded the theory of business ecosystem system. From the perspective of practice, the conclusions of this study are also of great significance for the business practice of shopping malls: first, shopping malls should consider the merchants, monitor their sense of fairness, respect the merchants, and create a atmosphere of mutual trust to enhance their loyalty; second, for merchants, they should increase their investment in digitalization, actively embrace digital transformation, such as interacting with customers online, and publicizing and selling goods; for shopping malls, they can try to establish digital platforms to create an integrated shopping ecosystem beyond serving merchants and customers, in order to enhance competitiveness in the digital era.

Outsourcing of mining services has become a global trend. Classic studies have demonstrated that outsourcing can help enterprises obtain professional services, reducing production costs and improving productivity. As a transitional economy, China has its own unique characteristics when it comes to service outsourcing. Using a case study method and five mining enterprises' interviews and archival data, this study constructs a theory to identify the driving forces and mechanisms behind mining enterprises' outsourcing decisions, and a logic relationship between variables.
The case study results reveal that (1) through outsourcing, mining enterprises can obtain professional personnel, technology and management and further reduce their economic costs to achieve light asset operation, thereby further driving mining enterprises' choice of service outsourcing. (2) The professional services provided by outsourcing providers, including professional personnel, technology and management, can help reduce security risks. In addition, outsourcing can also help transfer the safety production risk of mining enterprises to a certain extent and avoid the political risks of mining enterprises' senior executives, thereby prompting mining enterprises to choose outsourcing services. (3) The choice of service outsourcing by mining enterprises has heterogeneous characteristics in terms of ownership, i.e. private enterprises are more concerned about the cost-reducing effect brought by outsourcing services, while state-owned enterprises are more concerned about avoiding political responsibility.
Now that social responsibility has been incorporated into enterprise strategy, private mining enterprises should pay more attention to long-term interests such as safety production. Furthermore, the principal-agent problem impacts the economic driving force of China's state-owned mining enterprises, and outsourcing may be a channel for senior executives to transfer the political risks they originally owed. Thus, in China's transitional period, mining enterprises' service outsourcing involves complex benefit conversion mechanisms, including converting enterprise management costs into market costs and transferring political risks from executives to outsourcing companies. The study also demonstrates that different types of costs must be converted between internalization and externalization of the production links.
Practically, regulatory authorities should not blame outsourcing services for the safety production accidents at mining enterprises, but rather encourage the development of qualified and capable outsourcing providers. Furthermore, since outsourcing is also a channel for senior executives of mining enterprises to transfer political risks, regulatory authorities should more precisely define the responsibilities of the contracting parties. From the perspective of outsourcing providers, enterprises must improve production efficiency through technological innovation. Meanwhile, they need to perfect incentive mechanisms to improve service flexibility.
 

In recent years, there has been an increase in the number of entrepreneurial projects led by scientists and technologists, and the issue of the probability of success of such ventures has come under scrutiny. Many views suggest that entrepreneurs with technical backgrounds can lead to good firm performance, but this is significantly at odds with the reality of high-tech industries. This study finds an entry point and a theoretical gap area to study the relationship between entrepreneurs' technological background and firm performance in entrepreneurial firms in terms of this contradiction between the theory and the phenomenon.
This study builds an analytical framework, research hypotheses and econometric model between entrepreneurs' technological background and firm performance with the help of theoretical foundations such as high-order laddering theory and attention theory. Primary data on the technical background characteristics of entrepreneurs are hand-collected and organized from public channels such as corporate websites, search engines, and industrial and commercial information websites, and data related to the operation of enterprises are collected and organized from CSMAR databases, annual reports of enterprises, third-party databases such as Oriental Fortune, Flush IFind, etc., and a combination of primary and secondary data is used as the main data source. Considering that the impact of major public health events on the production and operation of enterprises in 2020 leads to data distortion, this study adopts five years of operation data before 2019, and establishes the operation data of New Third Board listed specialized and new enterprises from 2015 to 2019 at the reporting time as the sample database. Using statistical analysis software and fixed-effects regression analysis model for empirical testing, the correlation between entrepreneurs' technical background and enterprise performance is demonstrated. On the basis of empirical research, this study also selects cases of entrepreneurial enterprises with typical significance, and thoroughly analyzes and comparatively researches the influence paths and role mechanisms of founders' technical background on enterprise performance from several dimensions such as founders' professional and technical experience, entrepreneurial experience, enterprise business behavior and enterprise performance.
The study led to three main conclusions:
(1) There are significant differences in the mechanisms by which entrepreneurs' technological background characteristics affect the performance of firms at different life cycle stages: entrepreneurs' technological background significantly affects firms' innovation performance and has a negative impact in developmental and growth stage firms; entrepreneurs' technological background significantly affects firms' market performance and has a negative impact in developmental and growth stage firms.
(2) Technology background entrepreneurs influence firm performance in the early stages of development through two mechanisms. First, the entrepreneur's professional and technical experience affects his or her personality traits and behavioral traits. The scientist mentality, shortcomings in market and customer understanding, and lack of experience in business management of entrepreneurs with technical backgrounds lead to a tendency to make wrong decisions in the areas of technological development, commercialization, and internal management, which, in turn, affects the firm's performance. Second, entrepreneurs tend to have significant control in start-up and growth firms, which has a strong impact on business strategy and, in turn, on firm performance. Under the mutual complementarity and interaction of the two mechanisms, the business management weaknesses of entrepreneurs with technical backgrounds can easily be magnified, which in turn can have a greater negative impact on business operations. 
(3) Science and technology enterprises should focus on the balance between technological innovation and commercialization, and should enhance their ability to sustain innovation by optimizing their corporate governance structure and management team configuration. Commercial success is an important criterion to measure the value of technological innovation, and commercialization and marketization are the primary orientation and driving force for the transformation of scientific and technological achievements and technological innovation. Startups need to focus on the balance between technological innovation and commercialization from the very beginning, and put this balance into practice through the corporate governance structure and management team structure. On the one hand, technology background entrepreneurs need to continuously strengthen their awareness of commercialization and build up their business management capacity, and on the other hand, they also need to take the initiative to make organizational changes and achieve balanced development of technological innovation and commercialization through diversification of the management team with the help of financing or the introduction of business management talents, which is of positive significance in enhancing corporate performance.
 

Since the reform and opening up, with the continuous development of China's economy and society, the demand for enterprises to undertake and fulfill social responsibilities has become increasingly high, and social donations are an important way for enterprises to fulfill their social responsibilities. Through social donations, enterprises can use funds, materials and other resources to support social welfare, education, medical and other fields, help solve social problems, and promote harmonious social development. In addition, social donations can help improve a company's image and brand value, enhance consumer trust and support for the company, promote sustainable development, enhance competitiveness and innovation capabilities, cultivate corporate culture and employee awareness, and enhance employees' sense of belonging and responsibility. In the 1990s, the concept of corporate social responsibility was introduced to China, and social donation behavior with enterprises as the main body has experienced rapid development in China. From the perspective of the impact of enterprise size on social donation behavior, small and medium-sized enterprises have poor risk resistance and limited resources, so they participate less in social donation behavior. At present, there is a slight lack of research in the academic community on social donations by small and medium-sized enterprises. There is little attention paid to the influencing factors and financial performance of social donations by small and medium-sized enterprises. Therefore, this article takes the determining factors and performance effects of donation behavior by small and medium-sized enterprises as the research object to explore and study related issues.
In terms of theoretical research, firstly, this article defines relevant concepts from the perspective of small and medium-sized enterprises and social donation behavior, with a focus on elaborating on the "Standard Regulations for the Classification of Small and Medium sized Enterprises" jointly formulated by four ministries, and briefly analyzing the characteristics of small and medium-sized enterprises and their impact on social donations. Secondly, this article analyzes the relevant theories of social donations by small and medium-sized enterprises, with a focus on elaborating on the theories of external stakeholders and legitimacy. Once again, this article has summarized and organized relevant literature at home and abroad, focusing on the study of corporate donation behavior, influencing factors of corporate donation behavior, performance effects of corporate donation behavior, and donation behavior of small and medium-sized enterprises. Finally, this question elaborates on the relevant research hypotheses from the perspectives of the impact of customer donation level and industry donation level on social donations of small and medium-sized enterprises, and proposes research hypotheses on the relationship between social donations of small and medium-sized enterprises and their financial performance.
Based on the above analysis, this article conducted case studies and empirical research. Firstly, this article selects five listed companies as interviewees and conducts an analysis and research on the social donations made by small and medium-sized enterprises and large enterprises based on the comparison of interview results. Secondly, this article selected small and medium-sized board listed companies as the research object, obtained relevant data from the Guotai An database, and conducted research using panel regression models, moderating effect models, etc. From the results of case analysis and empirical research, the main conclusions are as follows: (1) Customer donation level has a promoting effect on the social donation behavior of small and medium-sized enterprises; (2) The concentration of customers has a positive moderating effect on the impact of customer donations on the social donation behavior of small and medium-sized enterprises; (3) The operating profit margin of enterprises plays a positive moderating role in the process of customer donations affecting the social donation behavior of small and medium-sized enterprises; (4) The level of industry donations has a promoting effect on the donation behavior of small and medium-sized enterprises; (5) The degree of industry competition will have a positive moderating effect on the impact of social donation levels on the social donation behavior of small and medium-sized enterprises in the industry; (6) The degree of positive deviation of performance from peers plays a positive moderating role in the impact of industry social donation levels on the social donation behavior of small and medium-sized enterprises; (7) The negative deviation of performance from peers plays a negative moderating role in the impact of industry social donation levels on the social donation behavior of small and medium-sized enterprises; (8) The donation behavior of small and medium-sized enterprises has a promoting effect on their financial performance. Based on the above research conclusions, this article mainly proposes relevant policy recommendations from the perspectives of the government and enterprises.

Research in dynamic capabilities (Teece 2007) looks at how organizations derive and potentially sustain competitive advantage by dynamically making sense of opportunities, marshalling and manipulating assets and resources in response to these opportunities (Eisenhardt & Martin, 2000; Teece, 2007). The study of dynamic managerial capabilities is concerned with the microfoundations – attendant attributes as it were – that underpin managers’ ability to effectively participate in the dynamic capabilities of sensing, seizing and reconfiguring (Helfat & Martin, 2015b; Helfat & Peteraf, 2015). Apart from the predominant cognitive account of microfoundations, there remains an under-theorized and underresearched gap in the field of strategic management on the dispositional attributes of middle managers as potential microfoundations of dynamic managerial capabilities.

The personality disposition of extraversion followed by conscientiousness are generally regarded as the two strongest personality predictors of leadership effectiveness and emergence in the organizational psychology literature (T. A. Judge, Bono, et al., 2002; Cogliser, Gardner, Gavin, & Broberg, 2012). This study thus hypothesizes that extraversion would similarly show up as a predictor of the sensing, seizing, and reconfiguring aspects of dynamic managerial capabilities; while conscientiousness, on the other hand, would be negatively related to the sensing and reconfiguring aspects of dynamic managerial capability. The study examines non-public archival data on 323 focal managers from a publicly listed Japanese multinational company, a global leader in its mainstay business segment of industrial materials in the advanced manufacturing industry.

The personality disposition of extraversion was found to positively influence managerial performance in the dynamic managerial capabilities of sensing, seizing, and reconfiguring, while that of conscientiousness was found to be negatively related to sensing and reconfiguring. The results on extraversion is not surprising given the behavioral imperative for middle managers to actively scan the internal and external environment for opportunities, engage with multiple stakeholders to develop and deploy strategic initiatives, as well as influence organizational constituents towards a vision for change.

The results on conscientiousness raises an interesting conundrum for practitioners and organizations alike seeking to hire and develop the ‘best’ managers, as the very qualities of conscientiousness that support managerial performance in task and operational effectiveness would appear to also inhibit performance in dynamic capabilities, thus signalling that what's best for organizational structure and stability may not be best for strategic adaptability. The research calls to attention the potentially equivocal and complex issues involved in the selection, retention and deployment of managerial human resources, especially in the middle management rung of an organizational hierarchy, as firms undergoing strategic change consider how best to shore-up and preserve the competitive advantage arising from its human capital.

This thesis explores the logistics costs optimization of a cold chain logistics network with a real estate perspective. This study draws on data and experience of a cold chain player in China. This study seeks to help users who are currently renting large amounts of warehouse space to quantitatively and systematically evaluate if they should construct their own warehouses and then do a sale-and-leaseback to achieve economic benefits. Using a computing optimization model, the study was able to find the optimized parameters of warehouse capacity, warehouse quality to build as well as the recommended existing network warehouses to use, to maximize economic benefits for the user-developer. This study combines operations management and real estate finance to provide a holistic financial perspective of an optimized asset and operations strategy.

This study seeks to revalidate existing research insights on the relationship between internationalization and firm performance and to examine the role of the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) as a potential moderator to this relationship. The research uses a longitudinal database of US-listed manufacturing companies over the period 2000-19. It employs a foreign market penetration-based construct as well as a foreign production-based construct of internationalization and uses a fixed effects linear regression model for the analysis.

The study suggests that the relationship between foreign market penetration-based internationalization and firm performance shows a declining trend over the past two decades. This may not be a negation of the generally accepted relationship (inverted-U or S-shaped) but a reflection of the data set used and the economic conditions of the study period. The trend towards co-movement of global business cycles has eroded the benefits of internationalization while factors like protectionism and political and foreign currency risk continue to create challenges for diversified firms. Foreign Production based internationalization, on the other hand, does not have a significant relationship with firm performance.

Further, the GFC negatively moderated the relationship in the case of Foreign Market Penetration based internationalization. This could be due to heightened protectionism, increased complexity and cost pressures induced by the crisis. The moderation impact of the GFC in the case of Foreign Production was not significant. This can be attributed to the fact that the strong negative effects mentioned above were attenuated by the benefits of strong subsidiary linkages (i.e. financial support as well as internal markets in the case of vertical linkages.)

Finally, and drawing from these points, the study also suggested that the negative moderation impact of the GFC on firm performance was stronger in the case of foreign market penetration-based internationalization than in the case of foreign production -based internationalization.

Financial Quotient (FQ) has become a common topic of concern in the global academic, business and social communities, but at this stage, academic research on FQ and its education are still immature, theoretical depth and empirical support basis are shortage, and influence factors of FQ and the degree of influence of each factor have not been systematically studied. Therefore, there is a large gap between research and practice.

The purpose of this Paper is to construct a set of scientific and reasonable FQ index for individuals, to find factors that can influence or predict personal financial quotient (PFQ), and to design a formula for calculating FQ index, to construct a set of FQ measures and to apply them systematically and universally to the assessment of PFQ. Based on a study of the established literature, as well as research within the financial industry, this Paper finds that Return on Investment (ROI), ability to control risk, sense of security and happiness construct as a proxy indicator of FQ. Meanwhile, based on interviews and research in the industry and referring to researches in the existing literature, the authors of this Paper selected five factors with strong correlations from dozens of influencing factors of FQ as explanatory variables of FQ in an attempt to uncover the relationship between influencing factors and FQ.

The five influencing factors of FQ include: Risk Appetite/Behavior Bias, Social Networking/Information Channel, Consumption Habits/Consumption Concepts, Growth Environment and Financial Literacy. This Paper will elaborate on the theoretical underpinnings of FQ and its impact factors. Based on the China Household Finance Survey Database of the Survey and Research Center for China Household Finance (CHFS), this Paper selects 74 questions from 2,859 questionnaire questions to construct explanatory variables, and selects 18 questions to construct explained variables for empirical tests, then explores the correlation between each impact factor and FQ

This Paper comprehensively sorts out existing research and expounds the theoretical basis of FQ. The empirical part uses the questionnaires and data from CHFS to construct scoring tables for all explanatory variables and explained variables, drawing the following conclusions: There is a significant negative correlation between Risk Appetite/Behavior Bias and FQ index; a significant positive correlation between Social Networking/Information Channel and FQ index; no significant correlation between Consumption Habits/Consumption Concepts and FQ; a significant positive correlation between Growth Environment and FQ index; a significant positive correlation between Financial Literacy and FQ index.

This paper designs the PFQ index, which will be applied to the FQ education and evaluation in the future. The author will also deepen the research on FQ from multiple dimensions at multiple levels. Scholars, businessmen and educators are welcome to be involved in the research and educational promotion of FQ.

Triggered by the ongoing transformation of Singapore's manufacturing industries towards 'smart(er)' manufacturing with a focus on digitising and automating production processes and more competitive business models, this study contributes to the limited Asian management literature about the readiness and impact of 'Industry 4.0' (I4.0) on the business models of Singapore's Small and Medium-sized manufacturing Enterprises (SMEs). I4.0 encompasses adopting opportunities from end-to-end digitalisation with connected computers and increasingly autonomous automation systems equipped with intelligent machine learning algorithms that control robotics with minimal human input. As the traditional manufacturing model is increasingly replaced by advanced, high-value manufacturing technologies such as the Industrial Internet-of-Things (IIoT), cloud computing, real-time data processing and insights etc., adopting the right enabling technologies in a phased manner with proper planning (based on a value-added business cum operating model) is critical for the successful adoption of I4.0 solutions.

To examine the readiness and impact of I4.0 on the business models of Singapore's manufacturing SMEs and associated challenges such as digitalisation and business model innovation, a (grounded theory) qualitative case study research approach was adopted based on A. Osterwalder's Business Model Canvas (BMC) framework and semistructured interviews with experts and owner-managers of local manufacturing SMEs. During phase one of the study, eight key decision-makers across Singapore's I4.0 ecosystem comprising government agencies, Institutes of Higher Learnings (IHLs), suppliers/providers of technology, business associations and the local SME sector were interviewed. During phase two, a multiple case study covered four manufacturing SMEs (medical technology, engineering equipment, machine vision and imaging) via inductively analysed indepth interviews with their owner-managers. The expert interviews helped to identify five key drivers (Government's technology push with funding and training support, labour dependence, productivity and efficiency issues, pressure to innovate business models due to increased competition, impact of Covid-19) and four main barriers (ROI concerns, capability and mindset issues, ecosystem limitations) for adopting and implementing Industry 4.0 approaches. Industry 4.0 technologies like IIoT, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Robotics, Data and Image Analytics, and Big Data were the most preferred technology choices across the four SMEs. The case companies excellently leveraged several BMC related 'building blocks' such as 'Key Partners', 'Key Activities', 'Key Resources', 'Cost Structure' and 'Customer Relationships'. 'Channels' and 'Revenue Streams' turned out to be low impact areas (with 'Value Proposition' and 'Customer Segments' as medium impact areas). A lean manufacturing approach with datadriven decision-making combined with a High-Mix-Low-Volume (HMLV) strategy was the preferred Smart Manufacturing route adopted by the four SMEs.

The case companies (which have benefitted significantly from the ongoing Smart Factory ecosystem expansion led by A*STAR) were moderately advanced on their I4.0 transformation journey. They pursued a (smart) incremental I4.0 adoption strategy via a phased and bite-sized module implementation approach. Challenges ahead include heavy focus on bottom-line metrics, precision engineering skills upgrading and wider use of business models and supply chain innovations such as Product-Service Systems (PSS), Device-as-a- Service (DaaS) or prescriptive AI.

Price stability is not only an important indicator of the healthy and stability of macro-economy, but also one of the goals of macroeconomic policy. There are many factors affecting inflation. Different monetary policy instruments, such as money supply, liquidity and market expectations, have different effects on inflation. Meanwhile, monetary policy goals, such as inflation rate, employment rate and economic growth rate, also affect each other.

This paper provides an empirical study of money supply, inflation and unemployment in the US economy. Based on the existing theoretical and empirical analysis, this paper selects different research models and new data dimensions to study the relationship between money supply, unemployment and inflation from different angles for both theoretical and empirical aspects. This paper analyzes and defines the historical impact based on three-dimensional VAR model. In order to construct a multi-dimensional VAR model for analysis, this paper chooses the money supply in the monetary policy instruments and the unemployment rate in the monetary policy goals as the endogenous variables affecting inflation, and chooses the import price stably related to the growth of money supply as the exogenous variable. This paper uses the consumer price index (CPI) to represent the inflation rate and M1 money supply to represent the monetary aggregate. Finally, through the comparative analysis of inflation between China and the US, the paper puts forward some thoughts and suggestions on the monetary policies. Through the research, it proves that the choice of money supply as an intermediary target is effective, but there is a certain lag in regulating consumption inflation. Meanwhile, it shows that there is a policy contradiction between the employment rate and the inflation rate.

In recent years, the number of distressed enterprises in China has gradually increased due to radical enterprise strategies, excessive expansion, poor management, and a trend of accelerating growth. Unable to adapt to fierce market competition, a large number of “zombie enterprises” disrupt the market order, reduce the use efficiency of social resources, and aggravate market risks. However, some enterprises are
temporarily caught in financial distress due to a deterioration of their financial situation caused by factors such as debt structure or capital liquidity. If such enterprises can be bailed out in time, they can escape their distress, which not only protects the interests of creditors and the returns for investors, but also improves the efficiency of resource allocation in society as a whole. The key to distinguishing between “zombie enterprises” and enterprises with bailout value is to identify the factors that influence the bailout value of distressed enterprises.
After reviewing literature, I find that the existing research focuses mostly on the reasons for the bailout of distressed enterprises and the significance of reorganization and less on how local asset management companies (also known as “local AMCs”) evaluate distressed enterprises. In this thesis, I first analyze the methodology of GOHO Assets Management Co., Ltd. (hereinafter “GOHO Assets”) in the bailout of distressed enterprises, and examine the analytical approach of GOHO Assets to establish a decision-making model for the bailout of distressed enterprises. The model contains control factors, including local government support, the judicial environment, debt status, employee situation, equity structure, and fundamental factors, including macroeconomic industry outlook and other macro-fundamental factors, as well as firm-fundamental factors such as gross margin, total asset turnover ratio, interest ratio,financing rate, equity concentration, corporate structure. Subsequently, I use the decision model to analyze three successful bailout cases of distressed enterprise and two cases without bailout value, and the results show that the decision model has good practical applicability.
In the subsequence large sample empirical analysis, I select listed companies that were subject to a risk warning (ST) or delisting warning (*ST) in the Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges during the four years from January 2014 to the end of January 2018. Using logit model and probit model, I use the gross profit rate, total asset turnover ratio, leverage ratio, financing rate, equity concentration, and enterprise
nature of the listed companies to predict whether the companies could successfully remove their warnings status.
The empirical results show that the model yields better predictions in both time fixed effect and industry fixed effect specifications. Two indicators — gross margin and enterprise nature —are significant, and the other indicators are not significant in predicting whether the companies could successfully remove their warnings status.
Thus, the key factors proposed in my decision model—gross margin and enterprise nature—should be used as key factors in determining whether a distressed enterprise has bailout value. I also conduct a detailed analysis of the motivations and specific behavioral patterns of local government intervention in distressed enterprises, and find that local governments play an important role in the bailout outcomes of both private and state-owned listed enterprises.
Analysis of the indicators that are not significant reveals that their insignificance is mainly due to the fact that distressed enterprises often do not truly disclose their assets, liabilities, or income, leading to distorted indicators. Therefore, when conducting due diligence on the distressed enterprises, it is necessary to make
adjustments to important indicators and use the adjusted indicators as the basis for bail-out decision-making.

How about the innovation performance of enterprises clustered in the industrial parks? This is the core question of this study. Based on the thinking and evolution of the question, this study will focus on the impact of industrial agglomeration on enterprise innovation performance with enterprise relations and informal institution as intermediate variables.

In this study, Shenzhen, as a city of innovation, is selected as the research area where sample parks and enterprises can be investigated to obtain data. This study constructs and measures the strength of informal institution and enterprise innovation performance through grounded theory and fuzzy matter-element method, evaluates the enterprise relationship in the parks through social network analysis(SNA), and then takes cluster enterprises, the operation of industrial park, enterprise relations in the parks and enterprise innovation performance as four variable sets, build models, and use the method of regression analysis to judge the impact of various factors on enterprise innovation performance in the industrial parks.

This study found that the industrial agglomeration has no direct and significant positive impact on the network of clustering enterprises, but significant positive impact on enterprise innovation performance. Network and informal institution also have significant positive impact on enterprise innovation performance, and informal institution has an intermediary effect between industrial cluster and enterprise innovation. Especially in Shenzhen, the informal institutional relationship consisted of blood, geography, industry and learning plays an important role. For industrial parks with a certain scale, due to industrial upgrading and renewal, they pay more attention to the exploration of the potential of innovative enterprises, and even give considerable preferential policies to actively guide them to settle in and promote their innovation performance.

For a long time, industry, financial institutions, PE investment funds, and capital market investors have determined the business performance and market value of a company, usually based on the data of the three audited financial tables provided by the company, and further comprehensive analysis will be carried out the evaluation. Due to the limitations of accounting standards, the three financial tables cannot truly reflect all the business conditions of the enterprise. At the same time, the economic stage with traditional manufacturing as the main body and the economic stage with the digital economy as the main body are concerned with the scope, focus, and focus of financial information. The performance requirements are also very different. More and more listed companies use data that is not accurately defined by accounting standards in their financial reports. At the same time, the issuance review committee and exchanges are also increasingly requiring listed companies and prospective listed companies to further disclose non-listed companies in their audits and inquiries financial data. How to ensure the standardization, consistency, measurability, objectivity, and traceability of these data disclosures has become a more realistic requirement. In 2016, at a seminar held by the Shanghai National Accounting Institute, Deloitte China partners put forward and explained the concept of the company’s fourth report, that is, through non-financial data, with users as the core, establishing a platform that covers users, products and platforms The three-dimensional corporate value evaluation system provides deeper insights for corporate management. We believe that the targeted design and construction of the fourth report in the two dimensions of industry and business model will help to sort out the correlation between business data and financial performance to make the third report in advance. Pre-judge the future performances, discover the potential value enhancement space of the company in advance, to make the correct investment decisions. Through investment case studies and questionnaire surveys, this paper demonstrates in detail the importance of constructing the "fourth report" and its effectiveness in the specific investment process.

2021 will be the final year of the centenary goal of “building a moderately prosperous society in all respects”. Looking back over the past century, China has not only witnessed an increase in national income, but also ushered in abundant changes in social culture and people's spiritual world, and completed the transformation from a traditional single homogeneous cultural society to a flexible and diverse heterogeneous cultural society. In this process, brands become the product of values change and multicultural shock, and consumers shop not only to meet the needs of material functions, but also to express their personal values. To establish an effective relationship with consumers, brands must understand their value demands.

However, traditional brand research rarely focuses on the fact that brands are the product of changing consumer values, and consumer research is mostly limited to the rational level. This leads to the questions: what is the role of consumers' perceptual values for brands? Is there a method to quantify and apply the intangible perceptual values? Is there a way to study and guide the application of intangible perceptual values in a quantitative way?

To solve the above questions, we adopt abductive reasoning method to explore the following points: first, we put forward the core hypothesis -- consumers' perceptual value has a positive impact on brand development, and CVBBM (Customer-values-based Brand Management) is an effective perceptual value research tool.

CVBBM is an original consumer research tool that helps brands identify their core consumer groups and their perceptual value points. Based on the brand management practice of a certain brand, we elaborate on the theoretical basis, operation process, output results and landing guidance of CVBBM. Further, to evaluate the impact of perceptual value on brand development and verify the effectiveness of CVBBM tool, we use fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to explore the impact of perceptual value and other conditions and their combinations on brand performance growth.

Finally, we’ve found that: 1) brand development is not the result of a single point of force, but the product of the interaction of multiple factors, and no single variable can constitute a sufficient and necessary condition for brand performance improvement; 2) there are a variety of success paths for brands, but consumers' perceptual values are the overlap of these success paths and the necessary condition to drive performance improvement; 3) CVBBM can help brands define perceptual value, drive multi-dimensional practice optimization and performance improvement, and is an effective tool for perceptual value research.

The ongoing pandemic provides an invaluable opportunity to observe family businesses under extenuating circumstances, especially the Circuit Breaker which forced all non-essential workplaces to close to curb the spread of COVID-19; this in effect mandated that everyone should work from home. (Ministry of Health Singapore, 2020). This meant that for those working in intergenerational family businesses, they could also be living and working in the same confined space for an extended period. Does the accumulation of these circumstances create a phenomenon that leads to interactions that generate innovation and renew family bonds leading to succession?

Family businesses are known to be motivated and committed to the preservation of socioemotional wealth (Miller & Le Breton-Miller, 2014). This study is keen on understanding the influence of a crisis on any gaps or overlaps in between each’s generations notion of socioemotional wealth and how this gap or overlap affects innovation and succession in family businesses. Past research has shown that the succession period can be a threat to family businesses but also an opportune time for innovation. Transgenerational entrepreneurship is a way for FBs to pursue innovation practices that improve entrepreneurship and to overcome the succession challenge. Building on transgenerational entrepreneurship research, the proposed family transgenerational entrepreneurship theory explains how intergenerational family businesses overcome generational gaps through the lens of socioemotional wealth to achieve succession and innovation before and during a crisis. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with privately owned family business owner/founder and potential successors respectively to investigate the impact of the crisis on innovation and succession in intergenerational family businesses.

The proposed family transgenerational entrepreneurship theory extends our understanding of the implicit succession process within private intergenerational family businesses and the methods deployed to build intergenerational foundations that overcome conflict and promote intergenerational collaboration. This study expects to provide intergenerational family businesses clarity and handles to promote innovation and succession success and researchers a novel way of a examining the interaction and effects of individual intergenerational socioemotional wealth dimensions.

Real estate sales industry in China has long suffered the problem of inefficient matching of customers to projects. Inspired by the design of recommender systems, which have been widely used in the online retail industry, and are shown to facility customer-product matching and improve sales, we apply this system to the real estate sales industry using a novel approach. Instead of recommending products to customers, we suggest the best potential customers to salespeople with whom they will conduct sales with. Using city-wide sales data from the largest real estate sales company in China, we first develop a recommend system based on the predictive model where successful sales are explained by the combined characteristics of customers and real estate projects. We then conduct a field experiment to test the effectiveness of the system. We find that employing such system improves salespeople’s engagement with customers as well as customers’ willingness to visit, key contributors to successful sales.

Given the lack of research on the critical success factors of the whole process of BOT projects, this paper conducts research on the BOT projects in Fujian Meizhou Bay, Guangdong Shajiao, and Guangxi Laibin, which applies the critical success factor (CSF) model analysis, and uses scientific questionnaire scoring evaluation to determine the success or failure of the BOT projects. The research results of the paper are in line with the local governments’ summaries and evaluation of the power plants after the end of the projects. This paper uses a mixed research method combining "expert argument + questionnaire + case analysis" to summarize the critical factors for the success of BOT projects. The critical factors are extracted from five dimensions: "economic development needs”, “social environmental support”, “technology and funding guarantee”, “consideration of all parties’ interests” and “scientific project management". The specific influencing factors, "economic development level and capital demand", "credit guarantee", "technical and business plan and financing plan", "detailed project plan and development", "risk sharing mechanism" play a positive role in promoting and decisive influence on the smooth implementation of the project. This paper takes the Laibin B power factory BOT project as a typical case, combined with the entire process of start-up, construction, operation, and handover, and deeply analyzes the critical factors for the success of the whole process of the project. The important role of the five factors is highly consistent with the criticality of the success of the project.

Institutional investors, the most important consumer of analyst research, consistently rank industry knowledge as the most important attribute of analysts. Despite this, little is known about how investors measure industry knowledge since analyst output which can be evaluated objectively is usually associated with firm-level outcomes such as earnings forecasts or price targets. Comprehensive data are recently available for analyst forecasts of key performance indicators (“KPIs”), firm-performance metrics specific to a particular industry. Whereas reactions to earnings forecasts and other firm-level outputs only inform us about analyst skill in firm-level predictions, stock-price reactions to forecast revisions of industryspecific KPIs can proxy for industry-specific expertise of sell-side analysts. I find that stockprice reactions to KPI forecast revisions are economically meaningful and statistically significant, even when accounting for contemporaneous stock recommendation changes and earnings forecast revisions. These reactions are stronger for KPI forecast revisions that jump over the prior consensus, and for same-store sales forecast revisions on retail stocks.

In case of emergency such as pandemic or earthquake, there are usually surge demands for some necessary products, which are usually far more than available production capacities thus it is necessary to quickly build more production capacities. However, building production capacities is not just building production lines but to constructing whole supply chains, from raw materials and equipment sourcing, manufacturing flow lines to demand management.

To quickly construct a supply chain for fulfilling such emergency demands is very challenging both theoretically and practically. This thesis aims to develop a model of supply chain construction for emergency demand and identify the critical success factors for constructing the supply chain for emergency.

Based on the theoretical framework of supply chain processes and elements, we develop a model for constructing the supply chain for emergency demands. With this theoretical framework, the case of KF company’s facemask project and the construction process of such an emergency supply chain is analyzed, where manufacturing flow, materials and equipment sourcing and supply relationship management are discussed in depth. The construction of KF’s facemask supply chain in Chinese context during COVID-19 pandemic is very successful and several critical success factors are identified, including maintaining good relationship with stakeholders, strong organizational ability and efficient execution of strategic decisions, owning core technology for the products of the supply chain, and responding to demand quickly.

The model for constructing for constructing the supply chain can be employed for dealing with interruptive situations and the critical success factors may be useful in similar scenarios.

This research aims to contribute to the literature on collective social entrepreneurship (CSE) by exploring and examining the organizational factors that facilitate and motivate participation in CSE. Data were collected through an interview with the founder of a cooperative, and a survey, wherein respondents presented their expectations of a collective, their motivation to join, and the resources they deem important.

It was found that organizational factors, initialled as RRSI (relevance, resources, likelihood of success and innovativeness) which if met, have a reasonable chance of attracting participation in organizations pursuing CSE. These organizational factors had different appeal to stakeholders, based on their demographics and hence it was possible to group respondents based on these factors. The time respondents were willing to commit to the organization was also influenced by how relevant the organization was for the respondent and their employment status.

Findings from the research could help organizations orient themselves to develop these factors and attract participation; It could help empower the communities that it serves; it could guide the realignment of public spending and give a new direction to government institutions to strategically help create more dynamic and sustainable entities through CSE.

Changes in technology have shaped how corporate and retail businesses have evolved, and customers’ preferences have rapidly changed along with them. The advent of smart digital devices and social media has shaped how consumers interact and transact with their financial institutions over the past two decades. However, this transformation has just begun.

With the rapid evolution of new technologies and customers' growing preference for digital engagement with financial institutions, organizations need to adapt and align with emerging technologies that support speed, accuracy, efficiency, and security in a user-friendly manner. Today, consumers want hyper-personalized interactions that are more frequent and proactive.

Moreover, there is a growing need for financial institutions to cater to consumers' new demands. Financial institutions, such as banks, continuously adapt to the latest technologies and keep pace with evolving customer behaviors, needs, and experiences. One such emerging technology is artificial intelligence (AI).

Many organizations realize the potential of AI, and they are keen to use its advantages with a human touch. However, a human-centered AI system must be capable of understanding human characteristics and making decisions that are similar to humans. This study aims to help banks to understand the importance of processing customer emotions and minds from the unstructured data captured from various Omni channels in order to develop full-fledged human-centered AI-enabled products and services with AI transparency by practicing a co-development mindset between the key stakeholders (Banks, IT vendors, and Focus Groups). This paper discusses a theoretical model to study the effects of human-centered AI and a framework developed to help financial institutions adapt and build effective AI-enabled products and services with a human touch for a better customer experience and assist in staying competent during their digital transformation journeys.

Advancements in technology are now allowing non-human actors in the form of robot-advisors, driverless cars, medical assistants to perform increasingly complex tasks. While technological change is as old as civilization, these non-human actors can do novel tasks. One such task is that they provide advice which is a credence service (Dulleck, & Kerschbamer, 2006). Using a financial services context this thesis studies the role trust plays in advice acceptance.

Robo-advisors are rapidly replacing human financial advisors as the agent-provider for portfolio investment services. For centuries, it was the banker (human financial advisor) who was responsible for providing his investors with advice on what assets to invest in. However, advice acceptance depends on trust and the global financial crisis of 2008 saw a major dip in trust in financial service providers. Financial Advice acceptance from non-human actors is hypothesised to be based on trustor’s beliefs on technology, risk aversion, and general trust propensity. It is also based on the Trust Worthiness of the Robo-advisor. Trust Intentions translate into Trust Behaviours.

The proposed model is validated using an online survey where the respondents are provided simulated exposure to a Robo-Advisory process. The study is expected to provide practitioners in the fintech world insights on how to increase adoption. It may potentially assist in the creation of a generalizable across industry model for advice-acceptance from non-human actors.

With the booming development of mobile Internet in China, social platforms have unlocked new channels for commodity supply chain and retailing and promoted business model innovation. Online social networking has fundamentally changed the way the entire society communicates. Social networking is no longer constrained by space, social platforms have become a stage for many ordinary people to showcase themselves, and the popularity of mobile payment has made mobile phones the wallets of Chinese residents as well. The innovative contents and interaction styles delivered by social software have triggered a qualitative change in the efficiency of everyone's communication and interaction, making it the main portal of traffic, opening up China's immense markets in lower-tier cities and enabling the evolution from retail business model toward online socialization. Relying on China's efficient supply chain system, the communication capability of social platforms has been commercialized, thus facilitating the development of social new retailing business model.

Social new retailing business model is the object of this research. This paper is structured as follows: Firstly, through theoretical analysis and case analysis, this paper defines social new retail as a new retail business model that realizes diversified and multi-level sales of goods or services through the matrix communication method of social platforms and the innovative application of multi-level direct sales. Secondly, the role of social new retailing in improving the welfare of practitioners is investigated through questionnaire survey and empirical analysis. The results indicate that the extremely low barrier to entry has created employment opportunities for more people with low academic qualification and low income, and that it is beneficial for improving the skills of practitioners, etc. Thirdly, this study focuses on the regulatory pattern applicable to social new retailing. We've found through case analysis, questionnaire, and interviews with social new retailing business owners, legal experts and regulatory experts that the current applicable Chinese regulations are lagging so behind that they are impeding the innovative development of social new retailing business model, which must be adjusted in various aspects, such as legislation and regulatory procedures. Fourthly, corresponding policy recommendations are proposed for the regulators based on the findings of this paper, including revising current regulations and specifying regulatory responsibilities and procedures.

Digitalization has accelerated the growth and creation of new business models. There are more unicorn companies (a non-public company valued at more than US$1B) in the last 10 years than the decades before it. The use of digital technologies presents new opportunities for digitally active firms to capture growth in a new market. This paper studies how digitalization influences the internationalization process of the firm and its mode of entry into a foreign market. Drawing on existing literature on digitalization, this paper creates a novel approach to study the effect of digitalization by classifying firms based on their market business model (B2B, B2B2C and B2C) and its inherent operation characteristics (such as process-oriented vs information-driven business). This creates a finer granular approach to investigate the effect of digitalization and its variation across different industries. This study examines the effect of digitalization on internationalization through the managerial perception of competition based on the Integration-Responsiveness framework. It uses the adoption of technology and diffusion of digital innovation as observable factors to provide the empirical data to study the effect of digitalization and its impact on the choice of mode of entry. The hypotheses on the effect of digitalization on international expansion are tested with technological and digitalization adoption data, in a sample of 535 organizations based in Singapore. The findings show that by not considering the effect of digitalization, the classical Integration – Responsiveness (IR) framework is not sufficient to describe the decision of firms, choosing greenfield venture as its preferred mode of entry, in today digital context. These findings create a new perspective on the Integration – Responsiveness (IR) framework and contribute to management research by identifying the firm-level characteristics, that amplify the effect of digitalization, which can be used to calibrate the expansion strategies for modern enterprises.

With the increasing prevalence of UN SDG (Sustainable Development Goals) and ESG movement, more and more companies have started to include environmental performance as part of their strategic goals. From both risk management and value creation perspectives, not only is the positive environmental performance socially desirable, but it also can affect the economic performance. Companies strive to achieve superior environmental and economic performance (i.e.E2 performance), but few have succeeded.

In this dissertation research, the author proposed that firms are more likely to achieve superior E2 performance by engaging in dual agenda innovation that integrates environmental goal and economic goal in the innovation process. Based on extensive interviews of sixteen large companies in different industries, this study identified common challenges that companies are facing, how these challenges could be overcome by dual-agenda innovation in those companies with successful E2 performance, and what the key capabilities are that can lead to such success. The research also explored the role of digital transformation in the dual agenda innovation to achieve E2 performance.

The in-depth examination of the interview data reveals four themes in the key capabilities that require to be embedded in dual-agenda innovation: Value Identification & Quantification, Stakeholder Management, Cross-boundary Collaboration and Digital Transformation. Based on these findings, the author developed an evaluation scheme to assess the performance of dual-agenda innovation in the sixteen companies. Next, the author applied fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) method to analyze how different combinations of these key capabilities may contribute to the E2 performance of the sample companies. The analysis indicated that not all key capabilities contribute equally to the superior E2 performance, and some combinations of the key capabilities can have a stronger effect on E2 performance than other combinations. Thus, the qualitative and quantitative analysis in this study supported the proposed dual-agenda innovation hypotheses. The dissertation concluded by discussing the theoretical and managerial implications of the empirical findings for companies to find win-win solutions in achieving superior E2 performance.

As secondary stock markets often overestimate corporate value, many Chinese entrepreneurs seek to achieve their wealth targets by going public. However, some companies in China do not want to go public. This paper utilises multi-case research methods to develop theories about which factors lead to corporate reluctance to go public. Case studies show that compared with entrepreneurs with lower shareholdings, entrepreneurs with higher shareholdings have stronger long-term orientations and a greater desire for control and are more reluctant to go public. Industry characteristics affect entrepreneurs’ long-term orientation, desire for control, and early listing experience, thus influencing their listing decision-making. Empirical tests were also performed on data from the Seventh China Private Enterprise Survey, which was conducted in 2006. The results show that there are differences between industries regarding enterprises’ decisions not to list, and that entrepreneurs with higher shareholding ratios are more reluctant to go public than entrepreneurs with lower shareholding ratios. However, the results also show that the current shareholding ratio of entrepreneurs does not have a significant impact on their listing decision. This study expands theory on why entrepreneurs are unwilling to list and has significant practical value. The securities market has the task of discovering high-quality enterprises. However, the entrepreneurs of some excellent enterprises may decide not to go public for fear of losing control or developing a short-term orientation after listing. To this end, China’s securities market policymakers should optimise institutional links, reduce the possibility of short-term behaviour in the securities market, and reduce entrepreneurs’ concerns about listing by reforming the ‘same rights for same shares’ system.

This study analyzes the effect of geographical diversification on global private equity (PE) fund returns. I find that there is a negative correlation between geographical diversification and PE fund returns. To establish the causality between geographical diversification and PE fund returns, I employ an instrument variable analysis where the instrument used is the stock market capitalization value of the host country where the PE fund is based. My results apply to Net IRR, multiple and DPI as dependent variables used to proxy for PE fund returns in the main regression model. A one standard deviation increase in geographical diversification results in a 18.8 percent reduction in PE fund returns from a Net IRR perspective in the main regression model. Fund age and industry diversification helps mitigate the negative correlation between geographical diversification and returns. Evidence indicates that the relationship between geographical diversification and PE fund returns follows an inverted U shape function. Endogeneity treatments further validates the instruments in the model and reinforces study findings.

The AI-based robot industry is a product of AI technology combined with traditional robotics. From the literature review on innovation management and AI-based robots, few scholars have studied the development path and internal mechanism of the AI-based robot industry. Focusing on the current specific micro-enterprises, meso-phenomena, and macro-systems, this paper studies the innovation management paths of enterprises in detail using research methods including literature review, case analysis, and questionnaire interview.

This paper focuses on the TO C/B application product enterprises in the downstream of the industry chain, and the following conclusions are drawn:1) The first principle of innovation management of AI-based robot enterprises is the “effective” transformation from technological innovation to product innovation. 2) To promote "effective" transformation from technological innovation to product innovation is essentially is a set of innovation management combinations focused on technological innovation management, product innovation management, and resource innovation. 3) During the explosive and enthusiastic phases of paradigm innovation, AI-based robot enterprises must follow the three principles of product innovation, namely "pain points", "cross-border", and "standing on the shoulders of giants", and five principles of "pain points" and "rigid demand". 4) The "hard" + "soft" DNA of AI-based robots includes a genetic conflict that must be solved in technological innovation management. 5) The internal technological innovation path of the organization generally shows a trend of “unity-division-combination”, while external technological innovation needs a right window of opportunity which could be modular integration emerging from internal technological innovation or the collaborative stage of technological paradigm innovation when external resource innovation can be selected for external engineering technology innovation. 6) The maturity of the AI-based robots industry is fundamentally marked by the competition of “soft” power. “More intelligent than human” will replace “dominant design” to be a symbol of maturity of AI-based robot industry segmentation, and it is also the ultimate goal of enterprise innovation management. 7) Once AI technology has completed the “breakthrough" transformation from a given industry segment to the public and the answer to the ultimate question that “Do you think robot products/services will replace human in the XX scenario” is yes, the “inflection point” of industrial maturity is realistic.

This research is likely to make the following theoretical contributions: Firstly, it will establish an innovation management research perspective that takes the paradigm innovation cycle framework as the starting point. Secondly, it emphasizes that the first principle of innovation management is the “effectiveness” of transformation to product innovation. Thirdly, it is the first research to propose global thinking in AI-based robot innovation management. Fourthly, it indicates the “inflection point” of technological innovation, product innovation, and even development path of the AI-based robot industry - efficiency.

With the development of African economy and the increasing Chinese MNCs operating in Africa, there is a need to have a better understanding of the trust relationships between Chinese expatriates and African HCNs in the organizational environment. We adopt both qualitative and quantitative approaches to understand the trust relationships between Chinese supervisors, Guinea supervisors and Guinea subordinates in a Chinese MNC’s subsidiary in Guinea, compare the difference within culture and across culture, and examine how the interpersonal trust and the trust in the organization affect employees’ job performance. In study 1, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 19 Chinese supervisors, 20 Guinea supervisors and 19 Guinea subordinates working in the two main sectors of the Chinese MNC. We found that the importance of the various trust antecedents is different for Chinese expatriates and Guinea workers. Chinese expatriates put more weightage on ability and integrity while Guinea workers care more about benevolence. We also compared the interpersonal trust and trust in the organization, and observed different antecedents and outcomes. Drawing on the insights of study 1, we proposed a model of interpersonal trust within and across cultures, trust in the organization and the employees’ performance. In study 2, 182 Guinea subordinates and their direct Chinese/Guinea supervisors completed the survey of interpersonal trust and the trust in the organization to test the model. Regressions and SEM were used to examine the proposed hypothesis. The results showed that Guinea subordinate’s trust in the organization increases their performance; Guinea subordinate’s trust in the organization plays a mediating role between their trust in Guinea supervisors and their performance; Guinea supervisor’s trust in Chinese supervisor positively affects Guinea subordinate’s trust in the organization, and moderates the positive relationship between Guinea subordinate’s trust in the organization and their performance.

The real estate industry is an important aspect of China's social development and plays a pivotal role in economic growth. With the development of urbanization in my country, the supply relationship in the real estate industry has changed, consumer demand has become more rational, and the real estate industry’s financial and investment attributes have been superimposed on the influence of the real estate industry. The competition among small and medium real estate companies with relatively weak resource endowments has become increasingly fierce. Some land expansion models can no longer adapt to the development of the new situation. How to survive and develop under the severe policy and economic situation has become a difficult problem that many small and medium real estate companies have to face. Exploring new growth models and finding new growth engines for enterprise development has become an urgent task for small and medium real estate companies.

Faced with many challenges from changes in policies and market demands, small and medium real estate companies can only get a breakthrough opportunity if they break through the shackles of the original development model and actively develop new businesses and build their own core competitiveness. In order to achieve business innovation and development, small and medium real estate companies have to face the following questions: (1) Can the concept of value co-creation be applicable to the business development and innovation needs of small and medium real estate companies? (2) Under what environmental situation, small and medium real estate companies need to innovate in business development? (3) What successful experience can we learn from the use of value co-creation for business development and innovation? (4) What benefits can be obtained by using value co-creation for business development and innovation?

The value co-creation theory emphasizes that multiple participants can solve problems through resource integration and multi-party interaction. This theory can enhance the participation of consumers, which is consistent with the inherent needs of China's real estate enterprises for business development and innovation. Therefore, this study selects typical successful companies, refines their business development innovation models from the perspective of value co-creation, and answers the above four questions, hoping to provide useful experience for the business innovation of small and medium-sized real estate companies in China. The main research ideas are as follows: First, the second chapter of this article uses the method of reviewing the literature to demonstrate whether the concept of value co-creation can be applied to the development needs of small and medium-sized real estate companies; Conduct an in-depth and systematic analysis of the external and internal environment of the company to clarify the necessity and feasibility of business development and innovation for enterprises; again, Chapter 5 of this article conducts business development and innovation practices using value co-creation from three perspectives Analyze and summarize the typical experience of small and medium-sized real estate companies in business innovation. Finally, Chapter 6 of this article discusses whether the core competitiveness of the company has been established, the effectiveness of corporate brand value enhancement, and customer relationship management. The effect is evaluated.

This study selects Yunnan Strength Group to carry out case studies. Taking the “Dali Small Yard” project as the entry point, it proposes to establish a conceptual model of business innovation in the real estate industry based on the concept of value co-creation, and studies Yunnan Strength’s business innovation practices based on the concept of value co-creation. The reason, process and effect of

(1) Analyze the internal and external environment of Yunnan Strength Group's business innovation. The analysis of the external environment shows that China's real estate industry has shifted from a stage of rapid development to a stage of steady growth. The concentration of China's real estate industry continues to increase, and the living space of small and medium-sized real estate companies is getting smaller and smaller. The internal environment analysis shows that the asset scale and sales of Yunnan Strengthful companies are at the middle level in the industry, and the ability to resist market risks is poor. However, the company focuses on the cultural and tourism real estate sector, deeply cultivates the Yunnan market, and has mature cultural and tourism real estate operating capabilities and brands. Operating capabilities, as well as a variety of supporting cultural and tourism real estate projects. Therefore, China's small and medium-sized real estate companies must focus on a single business to innovate through value co-creation, avoid horizontal diversification, and develop vertical diversification around their core businesses. At the same time, companies also need certain brand management capabilities.

(2) Analyze the specific practice of Yunnan Strength Group's business innovation. Based on the value co-creation of China's real estate industry business innovation conceptual model constructed in this article, from the value co-creation activities between Yunnan Strength and the three major stakeholders of consumers, construction companies and property companies, the concept of value co-creation based on Yunnan Strength Company is refined. The typical experience of business innovation has proved the effectiveness of the company's business innovation activities with the concept of value co-creation. Specifically: First, according to the typical experience of the value co-creation of enterprises and consumers, the most important thing for real estate projects is to accurately locate target customers; to recognize the shortcomings of traditional research methods, and to use various effective methods to understand The real needs of customers; actively respond to customer needs after understanding the needs of customers, and service levels that exceed customer expectations can quickly improve customer satisfaction. Second, according to the typical experience of enterprises and construction companies in value co-creation, we can know that the work of construction companies can be forwarded, the design can be more in line with customer needs and cost-saving; the innovative small-step fast running mode can achieve rapid products Iterative upgrade; choosing like-minded partners is very important. Third, according to the typical experience of enterprises and property companies in value co-creation, it can be seen that providing diversified services can improve customer satisfaction; the market-oriented cooperation between the project development team and the property can help improve the efficiency of community services; and continuously adjust the income The sharing model can maximize the interests of all parties involved.

(3) Analyze the effects of business innovation of Yunnan Strength Group. Research has shown that value co-creation can significantly enhance the core competence, brand value and customer experience of an enterprise. The improvement of corporate core capabilities is mainly manifested in the improvement of marketing capabilities, product innovation capabilities, and internal operation and management capabilities; the improvement of brand value is mainly manifested in the improvement of corporate brand influence and brand management capabilities; corporate customer relationships The performance of the improvement is to drive the growth of overall sales performance, improve the level of corporate customer service, and improve customer satisfaction.

The real estate industry has become the pillar industry of China's national economy and should perform more social responsibilities. Then how to guide enterprises to perform relevant social responsibilities, how to make full use of social responsibilities to enhance enterprise competitiveness, and how to measure the aspects in which corporate social responsibility promotes the development of competitiveness have aroused the discussion and research of the government and relevant academic circles.Therefore, this paper first puts forward a series of assumptions from the perspective of stakeholders.Secondly, establish the evaluation index system of social responsibility and social competitiveness of real estate enterprises through questionnaire survey, and objectively analyze the relationship between social responsibility and corporate competitiveness of Chinese real estate enterprises by using the data of 53 domestic listed companies,Through factor analysis, correlation analysis and regression analysis, this paper verifies how the performance of social responsibility of real estate listed companies affects the competitiveness of enterprises, and then provides effective countermeasures and suggestions for improving the competitiveness of enterprises and perfecting the market economic environment.

This dissertation aims to investigate the relationship between managerial cultural intelligence, marketing agility and innovation capability of foreign subsidiaries. Based on upper echelons theory (UET), I argue that managerial cultural intelligence facilitates marketing agility. Moreover, marketing agility is positively associated with innovation capability of foreign subsidiaries. Using two-wave survey data of 110 foreign subsidiaries in China, this study verified the theoretical model. It is found that managerial cultural intelligence is positively associated with marketing agility, and marketing agility is positively related to innovation capability of foreign subsidiaries. Organizational learning climate, market competition, market turbulence, and market complexity have positive moderating effects on the relationship between managerial cultural intelligence and marketing agility. This dissertation aims to enrich the research on the upper echelons theory, cultural intelligence, marketing agility and innovation capability, and provide references for foreign subsidiaries to improve marketing agility and innovation capability.

In recent years, the global economy has been sluggish, especially affected by the Sino-USA trade war and the COVID-19, the harsh market environment and increased business uncertainty. In addition, China’s manufacturing industry is facing the impact of disappearance of the demographic dividend and strict environmental protection policies, so they are facing tremendous pressure for survival. At the same time, a new generation of science and technology continues to sprout and gradually penetrates in to production and life. Therefore, under these conditions, the innovation activities of manufacturing enterprises are more important and urgent. How to construct systematic innovation activities for manufacturing enterprises is a basic problem that cannot be avoided. Therefore, the research in this dissertation focuses on how core firms build enterprise innovation ecosystems based on technological and non-technological innovation and other multi-dimensional innovation management elements.
Based on the micro perspective of the core firm in the enterprise innovation ecosystem, this dissertation first sorts out the definition of the core enterprise concepts in the enterprise innovation ecosystem. On this basis, from the different dimensions of enterprise innovation management, it carries out an
exploratory single-case study of the corporate innovation ecosystem constructed by the famous domestic enterprise 3nod Group.
Through the coding and analysis of the qualitative materials of realization nodes for the five innovative ecological unit of the unique OPM model of 3nod, this dissertation summarizes as follows: (1) Based on the external macro innovation environment, the core firm takes the user as the core, builds an innovation platform, and uses the technology synergy connection mechanism to establish different levels of cooperation relationship with technical resources parties and build an enterprise technology innovation ecosystem; at the same time, relying on the non-technical innovation peripheral support system with strategic innovation as the blueprint, cultural innovation as the guide, management innovation as the foundation, organizational innovation as the guarantee ,institutional innovation as the driving force and market innovation as the pathway, the core firm and related partners jointly establish an enterprise innovation ecosystem. (2) The core firm must effectively integrate the innovation management elements of technology, strategy, management, culture, organization, system, and market, so as to form a dynamic relationship with each other, and realize the continuous interaction between enterprises and users; and through build an innovation platforming, a fast and effective cooperation mechanism can be built between core enterprises and technical resource parties, the allocation of innovation resources within the system can be optimized , and mutual promotion and co-evolution among members in system can be realized .
The research conclusions of this dissertation supplement and expand the existing theories of enterprise innovation ecosystems, and provide references
for innovation enterprises that are exploring the practice of constructing enterprise innovation ecosystems with themselves as the core.

B2C sharing economy is now a major part of the economic system in China and the essence of it is the value co-creation of the users and platforms. However, the means to effectively stimulate users into value co-creation in B2C sharing economy are not well-understood. While gamification marketing is a low cost means to enhance user participation, empirical research of high granularity is lacking. This dissertation seeks to fill the gap by exploring how gamification narrative quality affects users’ value co-creation behavior in the B2C sharing economy model and the underlying mechanism.

Using the bike sharing industry in China as the setting, this dissertation begins with the quality of gamification narratives and explores how gamification marketing may facilitate the continuous user value co-creation in the B2C sharing economy model. First, I build a model of the mechanism through which gamification narrative quality influences users’ value co-creation behavior based on flow theory, the self-determination theory and the self-construal theory. Secondly, I construct gamification narrative quality (GNQ) scale. Finally, I use the questionnaire method to test the model of mechanism.

The main research findings are as follows: (1) gamification narrative quality consists of five dimensions: sense of reality, resonation, acceptance, fun, and interaction; (2) the gamification narrative quality has a significant positive effect on users’ value co-creation behavior; (3) the gamification narrative quality has a significant positive effect on the flow experience, which in turn has a significant positive effect on users’ value co-creation behavior; (4) the gamification narrative quality has a significant positive effect on perceived autonomy, which in turn has a significant positive effect on users’ value co-creation behavior; (5) self-construal moderates the relationships between gamification narrative quality and both flow experience and perceived autonomy, such that the positive relationship is weaker for interdependent self-construal than independent self-construal.

The role and effectiveness of Board of directors in fostering innovation is an area of keen interest for both academics and professionals. Heterogeneity research suggests that diverse groups consider a broader range of perspectives and hence are able to foster creativity and drive innovation. The focus of most prior research on board diversity has largely been on gender, and the outcomes have been generally inconclusive. In addition, previous research efforts have focused on the RBV (Resource-based view) in terms of the board role and also in explaining the diversity relationship with innovation. This study extends the diversity, governance and innovation literature , beyond generic gender diversity, and beyond the RBV view by examining the relationship of organisational innovation with newly introduced experience based diversity constructs like “Dynamic Capability Diversity”, “Information diversity”, and “Governance diversity” at the board level. The longitudinal study, used a sample of data consisting of 209 unique and global firms, spanning over an eight-year period, and the results demonstrate that the innovation outcomes of an organisation have a curvilinear relationship with Dynamic capability diversity and Information diversity. The study results also indicate support for the “contingency view” by showing that the influence of the diversity elements is contingent upon the firm’s board size. This study also brings forth the importance of understanding the interactions between the different diversities. This study extends the understanding of the challenges around board composition, board diversity and board governance with respect to innovation as we discuss the implications for both practice and academic research.

Companies must be prepared to manage uncontrollable events that will disrupt their supply chain and add uncertainty to their inventory models.

This thesis first studies the effect of different types of supply disruption risks on the ordering performance of profit-maximizing decision makers in a newsvendor setting.

Then, this thesis aims at extending the literature on the newsvendor model in studying the effect of a Decision Support System and the effect of a Secondary Task on the ordering performance of profit-maximizing decision makers who face supply uncertainties in a newsvendor setting.

Finally, implications for scholars and practitioners are discussed.

Digital disruption has impacted every industry and the spending on digital transformation technologies and services worldwide is estimated to reach USD 2.3 trillion by 2023 (Statista, 2021). Reflecting the increasing importance of digital transformation, many firms are entering into strategic alliances that feature traditional industry leaders and digital technology leaders. Little research, however, examines these digital exploration alliances in a systematic way. Accordingly, this dissertation synthesizes extant literature with a theories-in-use approach to conduct depth interviews with 26 managers, with a collective 797 years of experience, to offer a parsimonious definition of digital exploration alliances (DEA) and outlines the similarities and differences with related concepts. In addition, this dissertation articulates DEA performance criteria and develops seven propositions that bring to fore critical ex-ante factors that are likely to determine DEA performance. The dissertation concludes by discussing implications for both theory and practice, and developing directions for future research in this nascent domain.

An environment, in which volatility and deep uncertainty represent the leading paradigm, pressures firms to focus their attention on adapting to disruptive environmental conditions. Although scholarly attention in the firm-level resilience construct has increased over the years, a number of important issues remain underexplored. To advance progress in the field, research is needed on the dimensions of resilient response formulation and enactment, the dimensions of the disruptive environment and situational factors as well as resilience as a latent outcome variable. Based on an in-depth, systematic review of the received literature, this thesis aims to extend the firm-level resilience literature by offering two distinct views of how firms develop, nurture and sustain firm-level resilience: One, the conceptual model of resilience capacity proposes a dynamic capability view of the dimensions and capabilities that underpin resilience capacity, thereby informing the capability literature on the capabilities essential to firm-level resilience. Two, the empirical study yields an inductive-contingency-based model of resilience that informs literature on the processes, dynamics and behaviours that underpin resilience response formulation and enactment contingent upon situational factors as well as characteristics of disruptiveness by detailing the dynamic, recursive and reciprocal nature of the relationships within the inductive model. In combination, these two views may provide useful insights to inform scholarship and managerial practise.

What changes do non-family managers in large family firms such as chaebols (Korean conglomerates) observe in their decision-making authority when their organisations grow? The intuitive expectation is that non-family managers' decision-making authority will grow in conjunction with the successful expansion of the business and growth of the firm.

Based on 45 in-depth semi-structured interviews with non-family managers from a wide range of chaebol firms, this study analyses how non-family managers perceive the change in their decision-making authority and the cause of this change.

The findings indicate that respondents perceive that their decision-making authority does not increase with the growth of the firm due to risk hedging, social acceptance, and socioemotional wealth preservation. As a firm grows and expands its business geographically and within the same or different business domains, top management often needs to delegate decision-making authority, as it becomes increasingly difficult to process all the information and make appropriate decisions at different levels and in various fields. However, the objectives of family-controlled firms usually concern socioemotional wealth; family control and the transfer of management rights within the family are the most important of these objectives. This fact suggests that family-controlled firms may find it challenging to delegate decision-making authority, even as they grow their organisations. Vacant promotion, or promotion without the corresponding authority, is used instead of genuine promotion or monetary rewards, which contributes to job title inflation, decreased decision-making authority, and eventually non-family managers' perception that they all will become field managers. Conversely, respondents perceive family managers' decision-making authority as becoming fortified with the growth of the firm. Even with the misdeeds and unequal practices of family managers, non-family managers prefer family managers over non-family managers because of the benefit of family management's long-term perspective, which enables more stable business practices and job stability.

As world’s second largest economy, China has seen tremendous changes since its 1978 “open door and reform” policy. Different reformations in form of policies were planned and rolled out to release the potential of productivity. At the same time, social development also seen a huge progress. How the reformation been transformed to social development and in what degree? This is the question was answered in this dissertation. I studied four major reformations covering: State-owned Enterprises (SoE), land, financial liberalisation, and science and technology, and their impacts on the social development. At macro level, I identified mediation effects of entrepreneurship activities and innovation activities. Entrepreneurship activities show mediation effect for SoE and financial reformation, on social development; while for land reformation, a partial mediation effect is identified under longer lagging period. Innovation activities shows mediation effect for science and technology reformation, on social development. I did comprehensive robustness checking to test hypothesis under different settings, which including different DVs, IVs, mediator, as well as different lagging periods. At micro-level I did a secondary analysis on China’s Fintech unicorn company Ant Financial. Both macro and micro level studies suggest that entrepreneurship activities and innovation activities play important role in transforming policies’ impact to social development.

This article studies the impact of connecting to high-speed rail (HSR) network on regional development and the replication and sustainability of China‚Äôs GIUR system, aiming to summarize the experience of China‚Äôs HSR, which can provide several policy references for developing countries. This article conducts two research: (1) explore the impact of connecting to HSR network on the urban industrial structure, urban creativity and urban-rural income gap of cities in different regions and cities with heterogeneous locations along the HSR lines in the long and short term; (2) explore the advantages and disadvantages of the Government-Industry-University-Research (GIUR) system in the process of introducing, absorbing and innovating technologies of HSR, as well as its adjustment in the technology-pioneering stage.

For the first research, HSR and urban development, I conduct the empirical research and descriptive statistics based on urban development theory, and the results indicate following conclusions. Firstly, connecting to HSR network can significantly increase the proportion of tertiary industry in eastern cities of China. Secondly, it can promote the creativity of urban primary and tertiary industries, and more developed cities and non-eastern cities benefit more. In addition, it has also significantly improved the creativity of the tertiary industry in major hub cities, the better accessibility (with more HSR lines passing through) major hub cities possess, the more improvement in creativity of tertiary industry they can benefit compared to those minor node or non-node cities. Thirdly, connecting to the HSR network will only widen the urban-rural income gap in economically underdeveloped regions, and this expansion effect is more significant in economically underdeveloped minor node cities.

For the second study, combining the existing research and case study, I find that in the early stage of technological development in which international advanced technology can be brought in, the government-dominated GIUR system is more conducive to promoting HSR technology accumulation and development. But in the technological pioneering stage, the system needs to transform into a market-oriented Industry-University-Research system. In addition, based on above research, I argue that the government GIUR system has a good sustainability for promoting scientific research innovation but has a high threshold when applied to other industry. This study increases people’s awareness for reformation system of China’s HSR research and development (R&D) and helps to propel the rapid development of similar emerging industries. Finally, I discuss the policy implications.

Extended warranty is an important part of after-sales service for household appliances. However, due to management reasons and moral hazard, there are various risks in the extended warranty service for household appliances. It is urgent to make a systematic and in-depth study and provide suggestions for improvement of corresponding management measures.

In order to improve the current strategy of extended warranty service, this paper systematically and deeply studies the compensation scenario, profit and loss, and pricing of extended warranty service of a household appliance retailer, G-Company. This paper firstly analyzes the data of G-Company's extended warranty service, including the time interval distribution of repair and warranty purchase, the repair characteristics and distribution by region/product/time, then proposes some hypotheses to identify the potential repair frauds. Furthermore, this paper analyzes the relationship between the number of insured and premium, and identifies the optimal pricing scheme under different conditions. Based on the above data analysis, a revenue optimization model and algorithm suitable of extended warranty service for household appliances are proposed to optimize the profit.

Finally, based on the data analysis, this paper discusses the relevant management implications, and puts forward the corresponding management countermeasures and implementation approaches. These management approaches are mainly divided into product management in the extended warranty service and overall enterprise management. For example, adjusting the validity period and adding some restrictions at the design stage of warranty products can reduce moral hazard. At the same time, this paper also discusses how to combine the blockchain technology to manage and optimize the business process, so as to avoid the issues such as frauds and false reports in the current process. Furthermore, the evolution and innovation of technology-enabled service model are also discussed. This paper also explores the application scenarios and future research directions, including the application in the field of health insurance and hospital management.

As an important personality trait, CEO curiosity is emphasized in practice but obtains little attention in theory. This dissertation aims to investigate the impact of CEO curiosity on firm innovation and the mediating role of external search. I argue that both diversive and specific curiosity of CEOs are positively correlated to firm innovation based on upper echelons theory (UET). Furthermore, search breadth mediates the positive connection between CEO diversive curiosity and firm innovation, while search depth mediates the positive connection between CEO specific curiosity and firm innovation. Besides, I explore the moderating effects of firm performance and market competition on the correlation between CEO curiosity and external search. Using survey data, I obtain strong empirical support for the theoretical model. This dissertation strives to investigate the connection between CEO curiosity and firm innovation, tackle the mechanism behind the relationship, and enrich the research of the upper echelons theory.

Since the Central Economic Work Conference set the mixed ownership reform as where China’s state-owned enterprises (SOE) can make breakthroughs on reforms in early 2017, enterprises at all levels, from central to local state-owned, have continuously introduced new measures and new deployments involving the reform. The mixed ownership reform (hereinafter referred to as the “mixed reform”) introduces flexible market response mechanisms and innovative management systems from private enterprises into state-owned enterprises to enhance the market awareness of state-owned enterprises, to increase their own competitiveness, vitality and creativity. It aims to build a system that conforms to modern corporate governance and better responds to market changes. At present, the mixed reform of state-owned enterprises has achieved initial results. In spite of a gradual increase in the number of enterprises, quite a few are still in a wait-and-see situation. Only a few have actually completed the mixed reform. In addition, although government departments have announced the top-level design plan for the mixed ownership reform, there is no ready-made operating system to borrow experience from. Therefore, it is necessary to conduct research on the mixed-ownership reform from practical cases and explore its feasible paths to provide reference for other enterprises.

The mixed ownership reform is a comprehensive reform involving property rights, rooted in not only changes to the ownership structure, but also system and mechanism revolutions. In the course of reform, enterprises take different paths and design various incentive mechanisms to suit different markets and governance objectives, which in turn will have an impact on corporate performance. The configuration of incentive mechanisms after the reform comes as the key to assessing whether the reform achieves expected results. On this basis, the paper focuses on the relationship between innovating incentive mechanisms and enterprise performance in the context of the mixed ownership reform of state-owned enterprises and sets the goal of research at incentive mechanisms for mixed-reform enterprises. In the case study of Yunnan Baiyao and Greenland Holdings Corp., Ltd., the paper starts with the internal and external environment of enterprises to analyze the causes and paths of their mixed reforms, examines the relationship between incentive mechanism adjustments and corporate performance in the two companies, reveals the problems existing in incentive mechanisms in the course of practicing the reform, and puts forward suggestions for improvement.

On the basis of the property rights theory, the principal-agent theory and the incentive mechanism theory, the author builds the basic theoretical and practical framework for incentives through analyzing the needs of senior managers, human nature assumptions and behaviors, expounds the impact of the problems occurring in the current mixed ownership reform of state-owned enterprises on incentive elements, and carries out empirical examination and case analysis of incentive mechanisms. For the analysis of core elements, this paper sees the optimal salary system as an entry point and compares such key points as salary incentives, equity incentives, and spiritual incentives. It also tries to construct a complete and practice-oriented incentive system against the background of the mixed property rights reform, supplemented by management systems with Chinese characteristics, including the governance structure of “three meetings and one layer”, the disciplinary mechanism of party organization supervision, and the market-oriented recruitment of managers.

Our work has led us to four conclusions as follows. Firstly, increasing capital and shares should be a new breakthrough in the mixed ownership reform of state-owned enterprises, by which corporate capital can be expanded (to make a larger company) and corporate vitality strengthened (to make a stronger company). In particular, it can effectively promote the governance efficiency of state-owned enterprises during the mixed ownership and formulate a win-win situation. Secondly, equity incentives have become a common model to drive company performance. Under the incentive model of virtual equity, senior managers can enjoy certain dividends and the rights of share price appreciation without weakening the state-owned holding status or impairing the equity structure. Meanwhile, immediate right to earnings will work as an effective incentive for managers and in turn affect current corporate profits. Thirdly, status conversion to private enterprises is an effective channel for job transfer and a more appealing incentive than retention in state-owned enterprises. The channels for executive transfer for the mixed ownership reform of state-owned enterprises include the tenure transfer of former state-owned enterprise managers appointed by administration, the market-based recruitment and hiring of external professional managers, and the identity transfer of private entrepreneurs. Fourthly, building a business partner sharing mechanism is a more productive incentive than performance distribution. The mixed ownership reform of state-owned enterprises must bring creative changes to talent management, redefine the relationship between managers and enterprises, treat employees as the “partners of human capital” to break away from the original employment relationship, and turn the management into the owner of an enterprise and professional managers into the masters, thus enabling employees to share the wealth brought by corporate development.

The highlight of this paper rests on the study of problems related to the mixed ownership reform of state-owned enterprises from the perspective of corporate governance through multiple cases. At present, most domestic literature discusses the reform paths from the level of a single equity or case. Few researchers have addressed incentive mechanisms in a systematic way. In the course of analysis, the author fans out from point to area, analyzes the obstacles to the mixed ownership reform of China’s state-owned enterprises in a comprehensive, clear pattern, and proposes applicable solutions to paint a reasonable roadmap for the reform. Therefore, the value of our contribution lies in two aspects. In terms of theory, it explores the internal mechanism that explains how the property rights reform contributes to corporate performance from the angle of incentive mechanisms and enriches multidimensional theoretical research on incentive mechanisms. Supported by the analysis of the principal-agent system in the mixed ownership reform, this paper connects the system with the incentive mechanisms of the property rights reform, deduces the internal mechanism of the property rights reform that works on corporate performance improvement, studies the relationship between incentive mechanisms and the improvement of corporate performance, and investigates the key mechanism that enhances corporate performance via deconstruction analysis. With respect to practice, our research aims to provide Chinese state-owned enterprises with theoretical guidance on the paths of the mixed ownership reform and offer insights into the formulation of policies for the mixed reform.

Decoupling strategies have been the main focus of supply chain and resource management studies. Increasingly, due to the shift in geopolitical dynamics, the term ‘decoupling’ is now used in finance, accounting, political, and strategic management fields to describe the effect from the fallout of tense international relations. Existing research on this topic includes modeling strategic retaliation theories and evaluating firm effects from an accounting and finance perspective. Yet, there still is little research published on meso-level analysis of the relationship between macro and micro factors that affect organizational decoupling strategies. This study hopes to add to this new body of research by exploring the real costs of a forced decoupling from one supply chain location to another. The author explains the various costs using three novel approaches: Industry Structure; Governmental Policy, and Leadership Succession.

The Industry Structure study investigates and proposes based on grounded theory how firms in China’s manufacturing supply chains are formed. A novel index is used to categorize the focal firms’ innovation strategies and corporate governance choices. The results show that some firms can withstand a forced decoupling better than others.

The Governmental Policy approach looks into the history of mobile phone manufacturing in China and the specific roles the Chinese State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs) play in shaping the nation’s sustained competitive advantage. A unique event study of foreign social media attacks is performed to understand the effects of exogenous threats to the state, and its subsequent reactions are observed and analyzed.

Finally, the Leadership Succession approach looks into the conduciveness of the proposed alternative sites to China. From a cultural similarity perspective, the study chose Taiwan but finds significant succession challenges with the next generation of leaders in family-owned firms. The findings suggest that weak leadership succession is occurring either because the successor does not have the intention of carrying on the business or if external political forces create adverse shocks to the supply chain, which can put the focal firms at a disadvantage. This leadership void and the firm’s poor performance trend may cause it to be vulnerable to acquisitions, hostile or otherwise. This study concludes by presenting a case study of a large Taiwanese manufacturer that faced a non-family succession and was acquired by a Chinese SOE. As the global environment undergoes seismic shifts post Trump and pre-COVID vaccination, many scientific research fields are joining hands to recalibrate their datasets and research boundaries. This thesis emphasizes the need to conduct meso-level studies when exploring the topic of decoupling to give a richer context of understanding, which is vital for researchers in the pursuit of causal validity.