As the number of immigration and their later generations grow in the workforce of more developed Western countries, understanding the processes and consequences of acculturation has gained a new level of importance. An old and re-emerging issue is the morality and reparative behavior in Western versus Eastern cultures, as well as its antecedents and consequences. We examined the effects of acculturation on the perception of psychological proximity, the intensity of moral emotions of shame and guilt, and the degree of compensation to victims of one’s wrongdoing. Our sample was comprised of a collectivistic group from a shame culture, China, and an acculturated group of Chinese living in a much less collectivistic society of a guilt culture, Canada. Our results indicated that participants’ perception of psychological proximity to other people and the level of compensation offered to the victims of transgression were significantly different among the two samples. Furthermore, shame and guilt mediated the relationship between perceived psychological proximity and the decision to compensate differently.

The purpose of this study is to identify the relationship between the characteristics of the board of directors and strategic change of a firm in the Chinese context. In this study, strategic change is defined as strategic deviation relative to industry norms and strategic variation relative to historical experiences. The size, independence and leadership structure of the board of directors are defined as the board characteristics. We then propose hypotheses on the effects of board characteristics on a firm’s strategic change. This study takes strategic resource allocation profile as measure to calculate strategic deviation and strategic variation, and then empirically tests and verifies the hypotheses using data from Chinese publicly listed companies in the information technology industry from the year 2006 to 2010. We find that the size, independence and leadership structure of the board of directors significantly affect both strategic deviation and strategic variation. Therefore, we conclude that board characteristic affects a firm’s strategic change. The conclusion of the study indicates that moderate reductions in the size of the board, increasing the proportion of independent directors and separating the roles of chairman and chief executive officer can facilitate promoting the process of strategic change for a firm in a dynamic environment. Through this study we re-examine the role and significance of the board of directors in strategic decision-making for a firm, and provide useful suggestions on how to form a board that can meet the needs for strategic change for a firm in a dynamic business environment.

This paper explores the determinants of the abnormal and volatile fluctuations of China’s agricultural product prices in recent years by examining the trading behavior of traders, especially that of irrational noise traders. We present an overlapping generations model of the garlic market in which noise traders with erroneous beliefs influence prices. Noise traders’ beliefs create a risk in the price of agricultural products that deters rational arbitrageurs from aggressively betting against them through changing supplies in a way that enables prices to diverge significantly from fundamental values even in the absence of fundamental risk. We also show that asymmetry of supply information, low price elasticity of demand, speculative capital inflows, restricted distribution channels, distorted wholesale markets from the perspective of market mechanisms and low risk aversion, biased self-attribution, and projection bias from the perspective of investor psychology, all influence expectations of investors and increase the volatility of agricultural product prices.

The two-dimensional (hierarchical and job content) model have been predominating the extant career plateau literature. However, based on Schein’s cone-shaped organizational mobility model, we contend that stagnation in organizational centrality (inclusive plateau) may be another dimension of career plateau. Furthermore, grounded in social exchange theory and need-satisfaction models, we aim to examine the effects of career plateau on affective commitment and underlying mechanisms. In Study 1, based on a sample of 219 employees from different professions, we developed a primary validation of our threedimensional career plateau scale. In Study 2, we examined our hypothesized model with another dataset of 288 employees. The results suggest that job satisfaction fully mediates the relationship between the job content plateau, the inclusive plateau and affective commitment. The analysis demonstrates that the specific indirect effect of job content plateauing and inclusion on affective commitment through intrinsic job satisfaction was greater than through extrinsic job satisfaction. However, the hypothesis regarding the relationship between hierarchical plateau and affective commitment was not supported, when another two dimensions of career plateau were added to the model. Our findings provide some theoretical and practical implications.

Employee creativity is both the core element of a firm’s innovation capabilities and the sources for its growth. To improve an organization’s ability to innovate, it is necessary to improve the creativity of its employees. Based on theories from strategic human resource management, creativity and organizational learning, this paper investigates the relationship between high performance work systems and employee creativity and explores the role knowledge sharing plays in their relationship. A questionnaire is designed and administered to a group of part-time executive students in the winter of 2012. Two hundred students are invited to answer the survey questions with 117 valid responses. Data are collected and processed by using statistical regressions. The empirical findings reveal that high performance work systems positively affect knowledge sharing and employee creativity. Knowledge sharing plays a mediating role in the relationship between high performance work systems and employee creativity. Implications for practice and future research are discussed.

The research fields of dynamic capabilities and strategic entrepreneurship have developed concurrently but separately. This study aims to bridge the gap in research on the underlying linkage between the two independent areas, both of which are critical for firms to sustain competitiveness in changing industrial environments. Drawing upon insights from the integrated perspective of hierarchical dynamic capabilities, strategic entrepreneurship, and environmental dynamics, an explicit theoretical framework is put forward to achieve a better understanding of the ways through which hierarchical dynamic capabilities promote strategic entrepreneurship. Moreover, through the proposed theoretical lens, this study further explores the detailed mechanisms of how first-order and second-order dynamic capabilities improve strategic entrepreneurship with regard to uncertainty of market conditions.