Volume 17, Number 2, 2014

EN:

The purpose of this paper is an investigation into aspects of the decision-making process of German-Canadian business owners regarding the reasons for their choice of location and their assessment of the differences of some major traits of German and Canadian employees. This paper presents the results of a questionnaire that was administered by mail to German business owners in Canada. The purpose of this focus is to provide regional planners with some understanding why German owners/managers choose specific provinces or sites, and to provide managers in Canada with information concerning differences in traits of German and Canadian employees. The results of this work are that location decisions are mostly personal when it comes to choosing Canada as a country for their business, but the more we zoom into the chosen province and the specific site, the more business-related features become relevant. As far as personnel evaluations by German managers are concerned, the key result is that while at first glance it may appear that Canadians and Germans (and, by extension, Canadian and German employees) are not very different culturally, they actually are. Whereas some results appear to support common stereotypes, e.g., Canadians rank higher when it comes to politeness and tolerance, while Germans excel in job knowledge and punctuality, others are more unexpected. Among them are the results indicating no significant differences when it comes to flexibility, ambitiousness, and the acceptance of authority.

EN:

Focus on the practice of intellectual capital business model (ICBM) in high technology enterprises in China would be very important to the development of Chinese economic reform. The case study of K Group shows that we should examine the intellectual property right (IPR) protection system from three-dimensional perspective constituting law, economics and management to fully understand the ICBM. Policy recommendations following for the analysis can then help Chinese high technology enterprises strengthen their international competitiveness and raise their IPR protection level higher in the future.

EN:

This study compares and contrasts Chinese firms with internationally active value chains that started their internationalization efforts by engaging in international revenue generation or downstream value chain activities (defined as market-seeking firms) versus those that began through international sourcing or upstream value chain activities (defined as resource-seeking firms). Face-to-face survey interviews conducted with firm managers during the autumn of 2011 yielded complete data for 308 Chinese firms. Our findings suggest firms that start their internationalization process by engaging in “market-seeking” behavior showcase better performance than those that begin by engaging in “resource-seeking” activities. In addition, financial indicators are found to be strong factors that discriminate between market-seeking and resource-seeking Chinese firms.

EN:

Three different types of employees can be found in workplaces all over the world: “Necessities,” “Commoners,” and “Parasites.” A person is a Necessity if s/he is irreplaceable and crucial to the functioning of an organization. A Commoner is a person of normal ability and talent who has no significant impact on organizational success. Parasites are detrimental freeloaders who damage the functioning of an organization. To identify the principal characteristics of these three types of workers, a group of researchers led by Chong W. Kim conducted six studies in which they collected survey data from undergraduate and graduate business students in the U.S., India, Korea, Chile, and Japan. The results of this research effort are reported in Kim & Sikula (2005), Kim & Sikula (2006), Kim, Sikula & Smith (2006), Kim, Cho & Sikula (2007), Kim, Arias- Bolzmann & Smith (2008), and Kim, Arias-Bolzmann & Magoshi (2009). The summary of these six studies has been reported in Kim, Smith, Sikula & Anderson (2011). The purpose of this article is to compare the results of the summary study with a new set of data, which was collected from a multicultural student body. The authors note the points of commonality between the data sets and offer their thoughts on future research in this area.