Asia Pacific Management Review最新文献

With a sample of 332 dividend announcements from January 2019 to December 2020, using the event study methodology with the market model, we provide evidence that the dividend announcements failed to influence the stock prices under the pandemic stress. Although the pre-pandemic period announcements significantly impacted the stock returns, the pandemic period dividend announcements failed to generate significant abnormal returns even for an increase in dividend over the previous year. The pre-pandemic period results are consistent with previous literature with significant returns for constant, increase, and decrease in dividends. During the pre-pandemic period, we also find the possibility of information leakage in the Indian stock market as the pre-announcement period is marked with positive significant abnormal returns while the post-announcement period seems to be profit booking. The industry-wise analysis reveals the presence of positive returns in the Information Technology, Media and Telecommunication sector. However, the rest of the results are in line with the previous analysis. The findings suggest that before making such announcements, the companies should wait for the market to recover; else, the positively impacting dividend announcement will fail to influence the stock prices when the market is already under pandemic stress. We conduct the first-ever study to examine the impacts of dividend announcements during a pandemic stress period with also comparing the impacts during the pre-pandemic period.

This study examines Chinese managers’ ethical evaluations of business-to-government guanxi in three regions of China. We conducted in-depth interviews with 20 senior Chinese managers in Beijing, Shanghai, and a county of Hebei, representing the urban northern, urban Southern, and rural northern regions of China, respectively. Based on the content analysis of these interviews, we found that the ethical evaluations of the managers in Beijing and Shanghai were more negative than those of the managers in Hebei. Our findings suggest that institutions play a more important role in shaping attitudes toward business-to-government guanxi than culture.

This study aims to explore the support and impede factors of entrepreneurial activities amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. By using the qualitative method, 18 in-depth interviews were conducted with entrepreneurs operating micro-, small- and medium-scale enterprises. Interviews were transcribed for content analysis to generate themes using NVivo 12. COVID-19 has adversely affected the entrepreneurial activity in Pakistan was a key theme found after analysis. Three main categories were found as situations provoking business decline and their manifestation, entrepreneurial actions and reactions to COVID-19 crisis, and their futuristic plans amidst COVID-19. This research highlights issues entrepreneurs face to follow protocols of lockdown, social distancing, and operational hours. The findings of this study contribute to the scholarship of entrepreneurship and areas for the empirical investigation to develop efficient ecosystems to support entrepreneurs. This study suggests government and non-government stakeholders devise strategies for entrepreneurial revival post-COVID-19. This is probably one of the first qualitative assessment of the likely effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on entrepreneurship. It also recommends interesting related research areas and suggestions on how to empower entrepreneurs to overcome it.

Innovation and technology have been one of the challenging factors, bringing about uncertain business circumstances. Many business sectors have currently focused on competitiveness by improving a production process and other related operations. This research aims to study the roles of knowledge-oriented leadership and human resource development on a sustainable competitive advantage of an organization using data from employees in the high technology and innovation organizations of Thailand. These sample organizations are called the New S-Curve industries under the definition of the “Thailand 4.0 Model”. The Structural Equation Modeling was employed to analyze the effects. The results showed that knowledge-oriented leadership directly affected the sustainable competitive advantage, where human resource development did not have a significant direct effect on the sustainable competitive advantage. Moreover, both knowledge-oriented leadership and human resource development indirectly affected the sustainable competitive advantage through organizational innovation's component factors.

This study examined the effects of global symbolic-value orientation, subjective knowledge and attitude on positive electronic word of mouth (eWOM) towards local brands in the fashion product domain. The study examined these links in two separate groups: young consumers and mature consumers. Also, the study draws on cultural identity theory and eWOM concept. Data was collected through an online survey in Indonesia. The study raised three popular local brands, of which respondents were asked to evaluate just one. For each brand, a separate questionnaire link was made available to respondents for two consecutive weeks. The results reveal that although both groups have a strong orientation towards global culture symbolism, neither group is demotivated from engaging in positive eWOM about local brands. Indeed, both groups seem to live simultaneously in global and local culture. These results suggest that social media use and symbolic consumption behaviour differ across the two groups.

This study empirically analyzed the mediating role of differential treatment in the effect of perceived organizational support and perceived organizational politics on organizational performance using 1206 employees at 67 corporates, including seven representative corporates in South Korea. Differential treatment was found to be mediated by perceived organizational support and perceived organizational politics in Korean corporates, showing collectivism tendency and acting closely to people with different background. Organizational performance was found to be directly influenced by perceived organizational support and perceived organizational politics with differential treatment as a complete mediator. Implications of our study result for Korean corporates and their hands-on workers are discussed in detail.

Environmental impact becomes an emerging problem since global warming has caused climate change issues, especially natural disasters in recent years. Based on International Energy Agency (IEA), the concentration of CO₂ in 2015 was 399 parts per million by volume and was about 40% higher than in the mid-1800s. Since the transportation sector accounts for great responsibility for emissions, how to reduce CO2 emissions and keep the efficiency of transportation has become a more important issue. Dial-a-ride Problem (DARP) is a new form of mobility-on-demand public transportation, and the route and schedule of DARP are flexible to accommodate customer needs. This study aims at integrating the concept of eco-efficiency into DARP, and a bi-objective dial-a-ride problem with time-dependent costs is formulated. Two objectives, CO₂ emissions and travel time, are explicitly considered. The formulation considers the perspective of eco-efficiency and fluctuation of travel time for the dial-a-ride problem. A revised branch-and-price solution algorithm with a large neighbor search (LNS) is adopted to solve the problem. In order to solve the two objectives simultaneously, this study applies the weighted sum with the normalization approach. Due to the difficulties of estimating emissions, a traffic simulation model is incorporated with the solution algorithm to provide emissions values. Several experiments based on a city network are conducted to evaluate objectives based on different factors, including traffic condition, time window, and maximum ride time. The results show that (1) weights for objectives need to be designed appropriately to reflect the preference; (2) the travel times and CO₂ emissions reduce with respect to the increase of time window length; (3) The total travel time and CO₂ emissions decrease with respect to the length of maximum ride time.

With the rapid evolution of technologies and markets in the IT industry, it is especially crucial for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the IT sector to possess the dynamic capability of seizing opportunities. This paper adopts the concept of “opportunity–seizing capability (OSC)” from the perspective of dynamic capability, and investigates its impact on relative firm performance via new market development. Furthermore, we examine whether environmental uncertainty influences the effect of a firm's OSC. Our hierarchical ordinary least squares regression results obtained using the data of 215 IT SMEs indicate that new market development is an important link between a firm's OSC and relative performance. The positive effect of a firm's OSC on new market development is stronger under a highly uncertain business environment. The findings indicate that enhancing an IT SME's OSC is crucial for its survival, particularly under an uncertain business environment.

This study identifies the factors affecting volunteer retention and engagement. A dearth of research has focused on volunteering for not-for-profit organisations. These organisations are involved particularly in raising funds through public benevolence. There have been rising trends of not-for-profit organisations around the world while the number of volunteers decreases. Information on the factors influencing volunteer retention and engagement is expected to support the management of not-for-profit community services. Therefore, this study uses a case study of a not-for-profit organisation to identify the factors contributing to volunteer retention and engagement. The interview data is analysed using thematic data analysis. Benightedness, communication, management support, volunteer skills and volunteer participation in management decision making are associated with volunteer retention and engagement. These findings are expected to enhance the operation process of not-for-profit Community Fund Management Organisations. Future research is suggested to enhance the management of volunteers in other types of not-for-profit organisations.

Seasoned equity offerings (SEOs) and return of capital (ROC) are activities carried out by listed companies in the capital market. The decision of the company manager to engage in SEOs and ROC is actually in the scope of the agency mechanism. This paper explores the characteristics of SEO and ROC companies and whether SEOs and ROC will affect the company's performance and whether the agency problem will (partially) mediate the impact of SEOs and ROC on company performance. We use the annual data of domestic (Taiwan) listed companies from the Financial Supervisory Commission website and the Taiwan Economic Journal for the 2000–2018 period and adopt the Fama-French three-factor asset pricing model to hierarchical regression analysis to study the mediating role of the agency problem. The empirical results support that SEO companies are mostly in the expansion or growth stage and SEOs reduce company performance, both in the short term and long term. After considering free cash flow, the effect of SEOs on performance declines. The results support that ROC companies are mostly in decline stage and ROC increases long-term company performance. However, free cash flow does not affect the performance of the companies engaging in ROC. This research combines SEO and ROC data, and it is based on the perspective of the agency problem so that we can understand the impact on company performance.