Relating cultural change to strategic adaptation: an interpretation of modern Chinese management

Research into Chinese management has investigated foreign direct investment, organisational structures, and the implications of Western management influences on Chinese domestic practices. The recent entry of China into the World Trade Organisation has increased the demand for Western business knowledge by Chinese managers. This thesis extends present research with an investigation of change and adaptation in the national cultural values and strategic decision making of the individual Chinese manager. In particular, it researches the effects at a boundary of British and Chinese cultures, studying Chinese managers working or training in the UK. A national group of managers has distinct decision making and problem solving characteristics. Such characteristics result from tendencies to prefer certain `ways of doing things' over others, identified through national cultural values. At the interface of Western and Chinese national cultures there is unresolved academic debate whether Chinese value systems are diverging, converging or crossverging - moving from, or closer to, the Western `way of doing things' or creating a unique set of Chinese cultural controls. Change in cultural characteristics and associated networks would dynamically reflect in the governing, control system criteria over Chinese strategic decision making. To interpret change in Chinese problem solving criteria, this thesis links Western strategic theory with Chinese cultural characteristics. Relevant research in the Chinese and Western literature is reviewed and the characteristics of Chinese management values identified. An empirical data set on Chinese values and networking (guanxi) provides quantitative and qualitative evidence that adaptation in Chinese management strategy can be interpreted using cross-cultural research techniques and economic concepts. Methodological limitations in cross-cultural research are discussed and a mixed method research approach, and pragmatic research design, is deployed. Chinese management characteristics are mapped with unified Western transaction cost, resource base and real option theories related to economic exchange. This thesis concludes that there is a determinable relationship between Chinese cultural characteristics, strategic decision making and Western economic and strategic theory. An explanatory, relevant and practical schema is theorised from the relationship. Flexible strategic problem solving by modem Chinese management infers an expansion of market governance in a low context, less hierarchical environment whilst retaining high context, guanxi relational governance for complex economic exchange. Strategic adaptation, domestically responsive but also internationally integrative, is reflected through change in the traditional way things are done -a transvergent adaptation

Doing evolution in economic geography

Evolutionary approaches in economic geography face questions about the relationships between their concepts, theories, methods, politics, and policy implications. Amidst the growing but unsettled consensus that evolutionary approaches should employ plural methodologies, the aims here are, first, to identify some of the difficult issues confronting those working with different frameworks. The concerns comprise specifying and connecting research objects, subjects, and levels; handling agency and context; engaging and integrating the quantitative and the qualitative; comparing cases; and, considering politics, policy, and praxis. Second, the purpose is to articulate a distinctive geographical political economy approach, methods, and illustrative examples in addressing these issues. Bringing different views of evolution in economic geography into dialogue and disagreement renders methodological pluralism a means toward improved understanding and explanation rather than an end in itself. Confronting such thorny matters needs to be embedded in our research practices and supported by greater openness; more and better substantiation of our conceptual, theoretical, and empirical claims; enhanced critical reflection; and deeper engagement with politics, policy, and praxis

Approximate Bias Correction in Econometrics

This paper discusses ways to reduce the bias of consistent estimators that are biased in finite samples. It is necessary that the bias function, which relates parameter values to bias, should be estimable by computer simulation or by some other method. If so, bias can be reduced or, in some cases that may not be unrealistic, even eliminated. In general, several evaluations of the bias function will be required to do this. Unfortunately, reducing bias may increase the variance, or even the mean squared error, of an estimator. Whether or not it does so depends on the shape of the bias functions. The techniques of the paper are illustrated by applying them to two problems: estimating the autoregressive parameter in an AR(1) model with a constant term, and estimation of a logit model.bias function, mean squared error, simulation, finite samples

The chiral symplectic universality class

We report a numerical investigation of localization in the SU(2) model without diagonal disorder. At the band center, chiral symmetry plays an important role. Our results indicate that states at the band center are critical. States away from the band center but not too close to the edge of the spectrum are metallic as expected for Hamiltonians with symplectic symmetry.Comment: accepted in Proceedings of Localisation 2002 Conference, Tokyo, Japan (to be published as supplement of J. Phys. Soc. Japan