Corporate governance and political involvement in Japan and Taiwan

This thesis examines issues associated with the interaction of government and financial institutions in the operation of a company through the board of directors in Japan and Taiwan. Specially, it highlights the relationships between a company, the main bank system, and the system of amakudari (appointing retired bureaucrats to the board of public companies). The focus is on why government and financial institutions intervene in the operation of a company, and whether the intervention of government and financial institutions is related to the subsequent operation of a company through the board of directors. The empirical results suggest that governments and financial institutions tend to appoint representatives to the board in order to help troubled companies. On the other hand, a negative relationship is established between the presence of retired bureaucrats (amakudari) and subsequent firm performance and the degree of internationalisation. Thus, while the system of amakudari may use its power in an attempt to save troubled companies, the argument that monitoring ability of the board may be jeopardised to the detriment of firm performance and the degree of internationalisation is supported. The empirical results also demonstrate that intervention of governments and financial institutions is an integral part of the operation a company in Japan and Taiwan.Furthermore, with the latest reform of corporate governance in Taiwan, the thesis also introduces the institutional background of incentive payments and sub-committees and examines whether the level and the structure of top executives' compensation and incentive payments are related to firm performance and the corporate governance mechanism. The empirical results indicate that the alignment between executives' and shareholders' interests is not less efficient in government-linked companies (GLCs) compared to non-government-linked companies (non-GLCs). Additionally, although the Taiwanese authorities have started to reform corporate governance in Taiwan, the grants of incentive payments to top executives are not necessarily related to performance or the corporate governance mechanism, such as the ratio of outside directors

A Mixed-methods Study of Governance Mechanisms and Outsourcing Information System Services on Goal Performance

Background: Information systems outsourcing (ISO) is one of the critical businesses in information technology outsourcing (ITO). Due to the increasing complexity of ISO, the failure rate of such outsourcing increases. Outsourcing information system services (OISS) was thus proposed to deal with this. A conceptual framework based on the information processing view was developed to investigate how the client firms assess OISS goal performance. Governance mechanisms (governance structure, relational governance, and IT coordination) were treated as antecedents of transaction cost and outsourcing flexibility; these would further affect goal performance (goal achievement and goal exceedance) with task complexity as a moderator. Method: A mix-methods study was conducted; the qualitative approach was employed to validate the conceptual framework by interviewing three managers with experiences in OISS from the client firms, whereas the quantitative approach, with 206 responses from those with OISS experiences from the client firms, provides empirical evidence. Results: The results indicated that relational governance effectively reduced transaction cost and increased outsourcing flexibility; the governance structure was also vital for outsourcing flexibility. Transaction cost was found to negatively affect goal achievement, and outsourcing flexibility positively affected both goal achievement and goal exceedance. The moderating effects of task complexity were also confirmed. Conclusion: The results extended the information processing view to OISS and proved that transaction cost and outsourcing flexibility are necessary to link governance mechanisms and goal performance. Practically, the client firms are suggested to maintain a positive relationship with the OISS provider. The OISS provider should offer an exclusive channel during and after the execution of the OISS project to reduce the possible cost that occurs during the implementation and improve the outsourcing flexibility to allow the client firms to consider their goals have been achieved and beyond their expectations. By doing so, the effect of goal performance can be maximized

Interpretations of Domain Adaptations via Layer Variational Analysis

Transfer learning is known to perform efficiently in many applications empirically, yet limited literature reports the mechanism behind the scene. This study establishes both formal derivations and heuristic analysis to formulate the theory of transfer learning in deep learning. Our framework utilizing layer variational analysis proves that the success of transfer learning can be guaranteed with corresponding data conditions. Moreover, our theoretical calculation yields intuitive interpretations towards the knowledge transfer process. Subsequently, an alternative method for network-based transfer learning is derived. The method shows an increase in efficiency and accuracy for domain adaptation. It is particularly advantageous when new domain data is sufficiently sparse during adaptation. Numerical experiments over diverse tasks validated our theory and verified that our analytic expression achieved better performance in domain adaptation than the gradient descent method.Comment: Published at ICLR 202

THE ANTECEDENTS OF AN INDIVIDUAL\u27S COMMITMENTS TOWARD CONTINUOUSLY USING SOCIAL NETWORK SITE

The Social network sites (SNS) has been rapid diffusion around the world. With the increasing importance of SNS, continuance intention also becomes a popular issue in the SNS context. SNS providers have to maintain better relationships with users and make individuals continue to use their sites. Based on this phenomenon, the objective of this study is to gain a better understanding of the continuance intention of SNS through examining the effects of commitments. Specifically, followed Meyer and Allen’s three-component model of commitment, we develop a theoretical model to understand the factors that influence normative, affective and continued commitment and investigate the effects of commitments on continuance intention in the SNS context. Through a survey-based empirical investigation, we anticipate the results to enhance our existing knowledge on continuance intention in the SNS context