International and Area Studies Commons^™

Commercial Patterns And Spatial Networks In Hanoi’S Old Quarter: A Case Study Of Vendors On Lan Ong Street, Daniel Weiner

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Walking the streets of the Hanoi’s Old Quarter, one can easily begin to question the economic viability of the area’s commercial pattern. That is, how can multiple stores that sell the exact same products coexist in such a densely concentrated arena? Why do traders with the same goods choose to locate next to each other? Through a literature review of the history of Hanoi’s Old Quarter as well as a case study of the vendors on Lan Ong Street, I examine the purpose and the functionality of the Old Quarter’s spatial structure. I find that the vendors in the Old …

Ann Veeck, Nate Coe

International Faculty Researchers

Rapidly changing food consumption patterns in China has for the last 15 years captured the attention of Western Michigan University international researcher and marketing professor Dr. Ann Veeck. In nearly annual trips to China, Veeck examines how these patterns are changing parallel to the expansion of the Chinese economy and how marketing efforts affect consumers' lives in both positive and negative ways.

Ann Veeck's website

Claiming Manaslu: The Agency Of A Rural Community In Nepal’S Developing Mountain Tourism Industry, Sierra Gladfelter

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Due to the commoditization of Everest‟s summit and road construction around Annapurna, adventure tourists drawn to Nepal for wilderness and „authentic‟ village experiences are increasingly seeking more remote destinations like the Manaslu Circuit, which only opened to trekkers in 1991. The trekkers and mountaineers who travel such routes play a crucial role in ushering in the development of remote regions and reshaping the face of previously isolated villages. As agencies, nonprofits and community organizations design and market these alternative treks with the noble goal of alleviating poverty in rural Nepal, there is often a disconnect between those promoting the destination …

Getting The Sharks To Bite In Your Ocean: A Look At Regional Differences In Funding Components In China And The United States, Jennifer Ashley Schwall

Honors Projects in Finance

This study explores the relationship between a venture capital firm’s geographic region and the investment traits that it values. This study’s results will help determine whether venture capital firms, by geographic region, emphasize certain investment traits over others when funding new companies.

The study examines three regions (the East Coast of the United States, the West Coast of the United States and China, specifically Beijing and Shanghai). By surveying available firms in each region, I collected data on which funding components, or investment traits, the sampled respondents valued. To increase the usefulness of my findings, I held constant the stage …

Validating The Culture Of Agriculture: Farmers Groups And Organic Agriculture Mitigating Rural To Urban Migration In Bhutan, Emma Dosch

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Agricultural occupations make up the largest proportion of Bhutan’s workforce. Over the past two decades the occupation has shrunk from 90% to 65% of Bhutan’s employment. The younger generation of Bhutan’s rural population is seeking livelihood opportunities in urban areas, leaving farms with labor shortages. The movement may compromise the identity and sustainability of Bhutan’s rural population and undermine the nation’s goals of Gross National Happiness (GNH) directed policy. Initiatives to retain and legitimize agricultural livelihoods are emerging inside and outside of government policy. Existing efforts are models of ways to reconnect educated individuals with the needs and values of …

Explore The Phenomenon Of Buddhist Temple Stay In South Korea For Tourists, Wei Wang

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Temple Stay program is a newly developed but comparatively mature tourism product in Korea, which is to accommodate and cater tourists in Buddhist temples and have them experience over 1700 years Korean traditions of Buddhism and culture. As a product of compromise between Korean Ministry of Culture and Tourism and the most influential Buddhist organization Jogye Order, Temple Stay program was first launched in 2002 during FIFA World Cup to receive excessive international tourists. Through almost ten-year systematical development, Temple Stay program turns out to be a distinctive phenomenon which successfully establishes a unique identity of Korean culture and tourism, …

Cultural Tourism Products: A Case Study In The Xi’An City, Yining Zhang

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Nowadays, culture has been a major driver of tourism. Cultural tourism is another form of tourism by involving cultural elements. Some people traveled specifically to gain a deeper understanding of the culture or heritage of a destination. In order to satisfy tourists’ cultural needs and wants, cultural tourism products typically attracts consumers by the cultural attributes. A cultural attest is not a cultural tourism product unless it transforms itself into products that could be consumed by tourists. The market value of cultural tourism can be realized by cultural tourism products. This paper is to explore the development and evaluation of …

The Relationship Between Foreign Direct Investment And Exports From The Technology Sector In Costa Rica, Rodolfo Santamaria

Graduate Student Dissertations, Theses, Capstones, and Portfolios

The research examined the relationship between FDI, imports and exports of the technology sector in Costa Rica. A three-stage procedure was used to examine this relationship: Testing Time Series Properties, Cointegration and Granger to estimate FDI significance and effects of FDI on technology sector exports. The results suggest an export-platform for FDI supporting that the finding may be important for Costa Rica. Also, examined were links between FDI and imports, which may show the significance effects of FDI and imports.

The study followed a causal correlational approach to analyze the relationship between FDI, imports and exports, and respective regression equations. …

Customer Satisfaction Index Of Singapore 2010: Full Year Overview, Institute Of Service Excellence, Smu

Research Collection Institute of Service Excellence (2007-2024)

The Customer Satisfaction Index of Singapore (CSISG) has completed its fourth consecutive year of measurement since 2007. Under a quarterly measure and release system with two out of eight sectors measured per quarter, CSISG 2010 scores of companies for the Retail and Info-Communications sectors were released in the first quarter of 2010, Transportation & Logistics and Education sectors released in the second quarter, Food & Beverage and Tourism sectors released in the third quarter, and finally the current release of Finance & Insurance and Healthcare sectors, marking the end of measurement for 2010. The CSISG 2010 national score is computed …

[Introduction To] Propaganda State In Crisis: Soviet Ideology, Indoctrination, And Terror Under Stalin, 1927-1941, David Brandenberger

Bookshelf

The USSR is often regarded as the world's first propaganda state. Particularly under Stalin, politically charged rhetoric and imagery dominated the press, schools, and cultural forums from literature and cinema to the fine arts. Yet party propagandists were repeatedly frustrated in their efforts to promote a coherent sense of "Soviet" identity during the interwar years. This book investigates this failure to mobilize society along communist lines by probing the secrets of the party's ideological establishment and indoctrinational system. An exposé of systemic failure within Stalin's ideological establishment, Propaganda State in Crisis ultimately rewrites the history of Soviet indoctrination and mass …

Creating Trust In Piranha-Infested Waters: The Confluence Of Buyer, Supplier And Host Country Contexts, Akbar Zaheer, Darcy Fudge Kamal

Business Faculty Articles and Research

Research by Dyer and Chu (2000) suggests that trust in exchange varies significantly across borders and influences the level of trust in cross-border exchange dyads. However, while a good start, research has yet to develop the concept that not only can the countries of origin of the partners to the exchange influence the nature and outcomes of dyadic trust, but also the country where the exchange dyad is located. Furthermore, such home and host country differences may interact with dyad-level differences in trust creation capabilities and influence trust violation and repair. We develop a framework and propositions along these lines.

A Theoretical Analysis Of The Future Of Nato, Kaj W. E. Pedersen

CMC Senior Theses

My argument about NATO’s future is a combination of both neo-realist and constructivist thought, an adaptation of both neo-realist power struggles and constructivist institutional structures. Due to a lack of a significant threat, NATO will collapse as a military alliance. However, due to the longevity of the Trans-Atlantic Relationship, the similarities in the governmental structure of its members and the history of peaceful interactions between the allies on both sides of the Atlantic, the current “security community” will remain despite the collapse of the military aspects of the Alliance. NATO has been held together through organizational inertia and shifting the …

An Overview Of The Low-Cost Carrier Model In The Russian Market, Tamilla Curtis, Dawna L. Rhoades

Publications

This study provides an overview of the low-cost carrier (LCC) model in the Russian market. The LCC model seeks to achieve a competitive advantage through the reduction of operating costs, below the traditional airline model. Since Russia is an emerging and developing economy, airlines face a high level of uncertainty. Despite the fact that the Russian aviation market is dominated by a few large carriers, Russian lowcost airlines such as SkyExpress and Avianova have been growing rapidly since starting their operations. While Russian LCCs follow the traditional LCC model, some differences are apparent as a result of the specifics of …

From Peasants To Farmers: Peasant Differentiation, Labor Regimes, And Land-Rights Institutions In China's Agrarian Transition, Q. Forrest Zhang, John A. Donaldson

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

The development of factor markets has opened Chinese agriculture for the penetration of capitalism. This new round of rural transformation—China’s agrarian transition— raises the agrarian question in the Chinese context. This study investigates how capitalist forms and relations of production transform agricultural production and the peasantry class in rural China. The authors identify six forms of nonpeasant agricultural production, compare the labor regimes and direct producers’ socioeconomic statuses across these forms, and evaluate the role of China’s land-rights institution in shaping these forms. The empirical investigation presents three main findings: (1) Peasant differentiation : capitalist forms of agricultural production differentiate …

The Impact Of Firm Strategy And Foreign Ownership On Executive Bonus Compensation In Japanese Firms, Toru Yoshikawa, Abdul A. Rasheed, Esther B. Del Brio

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Building on information-processing perspectives and the Japanese contextual factors, this study investigates the relationships between firm strategy and executive bonus pay as well as the moderating role of foreign ownership on the strategy–compensation relationship in Japanese firms. We focus on R&D investment and product diversification as strategy variables and investigate their direct effects on executive bonus pay. Further, we examine the moderating effects of foreign ownership on the strategy–pay sensitivity. The results, based on a sample of the 148 largest industrial firms in Japan for the 1990–1997 period, show that both R&D investment and product diversification are positively related to …

Customer Satisfaction Index Of Singapore 2010: Q3 Results, Customer Satisfaction Index Of Singapore 2010: Full Year Overview

Research Collection Institute of Service Excellence (2007-2024)

Following the release of CSISG results for the Retail, InfoCommunications, Transportation & Logistics, and Education sectors in the first two quarters of 2010, the current third quarter release of results are of the Food & Beverage (F&B) and Tourism, Hotels & Accommodation Services (THAS) sectors. CSISG results of the final two economic sectors for 2010, the Finance and Healthcare sectors, is scheduled to be released in January 2011, together with the 2010 national score. CSISG company scores are based on face-to-face interviews with end users of companies’ products and services. Sub-sector scores are derived as a weighted average of company …

Accessing Ict Enabled Content In Low-Income Countries: Think Big, Start Small, And Scale Up, Solomon Negash

Faculty Articles

While the digital revolution has transformed the way many of us work and live, more than half the world's population lives in rural areas that have been shut-out of the digital transformation. Low-income countries have yet to realize the benefits from the digital revolution; therefore, a need exists for innovative and alternative models to overcome the lack of access to knowledge and learning. This paper examines the challenges faced by low-income countries in accessing ICT enabled content and proposes a Big-Small model where low-income countries can harness the ICT revolution. This paper concludes with a discussion on sustainability and future …

Influence Of Financial And Policy Environments On The Business Strategy Of Biotechnology Companies In India, Sumesh Mohan Arora

Dissertations

The biotechnology industry thrives on innovation and new knowledge creation, but is also capital intensive with a complex regulatory environment (Hine and Kapeleris 2007). It is seen as a sunrise industry by the Indian government (Natesh and Bhan 2009). Current literature on the business strategy of Indian biotechnology companies and the influence from external factors is very limited. The objective of this research was to qualitatively test the applicability of the Miles and Snow (1978) theory of organizational behavior which describes four strategy choices: prospector, analyzer, defender and reactor, in the context of the Indian biotechnology sector. Research on Western …

Price Movers On The Stock Exchange Of Thailand: Evidence From A Fully Automated Order-Driven Market, Charlie Charoenwong, David K. Ding, Nattawut Jenwittayaroje

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This study examines trade sizes used by informed traders. The selected sample includes 73 active stocks from the Stock Exchange of Thailand (SET), a pure limit order market, that cover two distinct market conditions of a bull and bear market. Using intraday data, the study finds that large sized trades (i.e., larger than the 75th percentile) account for a disproportionately large impact on changes in traded and quoted prices. This finding compares with the results of studies conducted on U.S. markets that show informed traders employ trade sizes falling between the 40th and 95th percentiles (Barclay and Warner 1993; Chakravarty …

Reforming China's State-Owned Farms: State Farms In Agrarian Transition, Qian Forrest Zhang

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

China’s 2000 strong state-owned farms are experiencing a dual transition in the country’s economic reforms: the market transition (from state-owned enterprises embedded in the redistributive system to independent enterprises in the new market economy) and agrarian transition (from small-scale, household-based agriculture to large-scale, capitalist forms of agriculture that rely on market exchanges of land, labor and products). This paper highlights the results of a comparative analysis of the state farms and rural farming households in the agrarian transition to address the theoretical debate about agrarian transition. Using field research data from state farms in HeilongJIANG Province and drawing extensively from …

Mir Talks To Vinita Bali, Managing Director And Ceo Of Britannia Industries, Srinivas K. Reddy

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Today we live in a truly global economy, no matter whether we talk about goods, services or manpower. Whereas economic growth rates in Europe and North America remain moderate, many Asian countries are booming despite last year´s economic downturn. This is reason enough for MIR to take a closer look at one of the rising stars: India. In June 2010, MIR talked to Vinita Bali, one of the few female CEOs of leading companies, who has worked in influential marketing positions on five continents. In describing how Britannia, one of the most famous Indian brands, handles everyday business and marketing …

How Predictable Is The Chinese Stock Market?, Fuwei Jiang, David E. Rapach, Jack K. Strauss, Jun Tu

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We analyze return predictability for the Chinese stock market, including the aggregate market portfolio and the components of the aggregate market, such as portfolios sorted on industry, size, book-to-market and ownership concentration. Considering a variety of economic variables as predictors, both in-sample and out-of-sample tests highlight significant predictability in the aggregate market portfolio of the Chinese stock market and substantial differences in return predictability across components. Among industry portfolios, Finance and insurance, Real estate, and Service exhibit the most predictability, while portfolios of small-cap and low ownership concentration firms also display considerable predictability. Two key findings provide economic explanations for …

Basic Education And Education For All In Nigeria: The Role Of Multinational Corporations, Mary Plangnan Haggai

Journal of Global Initiatives: Policy, Pedagogy, Perspective

In spite of the concerted efforts made by the Nigerian government at funding the Universal Basic Education (UBE) in the country, 11 million children of school age are still out of school. To augment the funding, the paper proposes the involvement of multinational corporations. Participation in UBE is seen as a tangible Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) project that will have direct impact on the host communities in such a way that will eliminate the hostilities of the host communities towards multinational corporations.

A Forward-Looking Commentary: China's Agricultural Development, Priya A. Roy

Journal of Global Initiatives: Policy, Pedagogy, Perspective

This paper describes China's agricultural development before the reform period from institutional, economic, and ideological perspectives; the reform period; the 11th 5-year plan; and the current situation. The paper gives two case examples of the Soviet Union and India. Finally, the paper ends with a discussion of what this means for China.

Spirituality At Work And Organizational Citizenship Behavior: A Replication Study In Taiwan, Gilbert Tan, Christine Kuo, Eugene Zhen Yao Geh

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Interest in Management, Spirituality and Religion (MSR) research has surged over the last decade. However, most of the studies are done in the Western context. Tan and Geh’s (2009) is an exception. In Tan and Geh’s study, they provided a theoretical model linking spirituality at work with organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) through organizational commitment as the mediator and tested it empirically. The findings of the study, though exploratory, were interesting. They affirmed the effectiveness of affective commitment as a mediator between spirituality at work and OCB. Normative commitment, however, was not as effective. Their findings also show that continuance commitment …

Financial Sector Liberalization And Its Challenges To The Local Banks: The Experience Of Singapore, Swee Liang Tan, Gilbert Yip Wei Tan

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The main theme of the paper is about the challenges that financial sector liberalization poses to local banks. It reviews the experience of Singapore. We begin by explaining the unique circumstances surrounding Singapore. A small city-state controlled by a single party with about 65% majority in Parliament, Singapore has a paternalistic government that can be protective of industries that are strategic to the development of the country. Yet its government is also pragmatic, forward looking and pro-reformists. Because of its unique circumstances, the Singapore experience with liberalization is worth studying. Three key ideas will emerge in the paper. First, the …

Competition, Competitiveness And 'Created' Competitive Advantages: Re-Positioning The Singapore 'Advantage' In China, India, Vietnam And Indonesia, Caroline Yeoh

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

No abstract provided.

Collective Investments For Pension Savings: Lessons From Singapore's Central Provident Fund Scheme, Benedict S. Koh, Olivia S. Mitchell, Joelle H. Y. Fong

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Singapore's mandatory national defined contribution pension system permits participants to invest their retirement savings in a wide range of investment instruments if they wish, rather than leaving their savings in Central Provident Fund (CPF) accounts to earn interest rates by default. This article asks whether workers seeking to earn higher returns can expect to do better than the CPF-managed default, by moving their money into professionally managed unit trusts. We use historical data to investigate whether fund managers possess superior stock picking and market timing skills, as well as whether they exhibit persistence in performance and offer diversification benefits to …

Emotion Management In Radical Change: A Preliminary Study Of Earthquake Power Restoration, Taieb Hafsi, Xu Liang, Wenjing Lin, Kangxiong Yu, Li Yan

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This paper studies leaders’ emotion capacity as a strategic response to unexpected radical changes, forced by a social and natural crisis. We propose that empathy is a critical strategic management tool enhancing management effectiveness. We also provide insights of the dynamics between decision making process and emotion management.

National Venture Competition And Technopreneurship Development In Malaysia, Wee Liang Tan, Karl Egge, Osman Mohamed

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

In the global slowdown, there is a revived interest in entrepreneurship development particularly in new startups based on technology. Many countries see this as a basis for future growth and competitiveness. To encourage technology-based entrepreneurship, also called technopreneurship, business plan competitions could be one strategy. Typically one finds business plan competitions either for members of a region of a country (e.g.,SW Pennsylvania); or, as an extension of University programs in business and entrepreneurship (e.g., MIT). Certainly such competitions can generate and exploit interest in entrepreneurship. In Malaysia, beginning in 2001, a business plan competition with a difference has been established. …