Dr Peiran Su

This article analyses the relationship between a Scottish manufacturing company and the accountancy firm which provided it with professional services across its existence (1894–1967). It examines the professional roles fulfilled by the accountants, the work done and the fee income derived from it, in the context of the company’s history. It emphasises the importance of the services provided by accountancy firms for unlisted companies in understanding the development of professional accountancy in the United Kingdom. The material presented is used to test three different explanations of the UK accountancy profession’s rise which relate to the auditing function and has implications for historical methodology and epistemologies. The explanations explored may be categorised as economic rationalist, Foucauldian and jurisdictional points of view.

Scottish heavy industry declined in c.1950-1970, suffering inter alia from severe shortages of fuel, raw materials and skilled labour. Among a great number of heavy engineering firms closed in the 1980s was 114-year old A. F. Craig & Co. Ltd. of Paisley, a manufacturer of textile machinery, oil refinery equipment and sugar machinery. The firm survived economic recessions and two World Wars but not the period c.1950-1970. To understand how A. F. Craig reacted to its difficulties strategically, we explored its last years to investigate whether new strategies emerged in the firm and, if they did, their influence on the firm. Investigating archival data for the firm, we found that it adopted exploitative strategies without including explorative strategies in technological search and international diversification. The impact of these strategies was not effective enough to lead the firm out of its increasing difficulties. 

Purpose - The paper aims to explore determinants for the adoption of mobile payment in the Chinese market. It proposes a model that integrates the technology acceptance model and the innovation diffusion model, as well as risks, social influence, and internet experience.

Design/methodology/approach - We conducted a survey in Guangdong, China during December 2012 and January 2013. A sample of 922 usable responses (response rate 64.1%) was collected from 25 randomly selected branches of China Unicom in the region. Having over 500 branches in Guangdong, China Unicom is one of the largest telecommunication companies in China. Prior to the main survey we conducted two pilot surveys to test and improve the questionnaire.

Findings - Five factors determined users’ intentions to use mobile payments in the Chinese market. The factors were compatibility, perceived usefulness, Internet experience, perceived risks, and subjective norms. Users’ Internet experience had the strongest influence on those intentions to adopt mobile payment among the five factors. Subjective norms had the second strongest influence on users’ intentions to make payments with their smartphones.

Originality/value - We integrated the technology, social, and psychological factors in the models of technology adoption and customer behaviours to explore factors that motivated the adoption of mobile payment. Our study contributed to the literature where existing studies on mobile payments rarely took into consideration customer psychological and market environmental factors. Our focus on the Chinese market provided unique settings for the study.

This paper demonstrates how meta‐analysis can be combined with structural equation modeling (MASEM) to address new questions in strategic management research. We review this integration, describe its implementation, and compare findings from bivariate meta‐analyses, a direct‐effect structural equations model, and two mediating frameworks using data on the strategic leadership and performance relationship. Results drawn from 208 articles that collectively included data on 495,638 observations demonstrate the new insights available from MASEM while also suggesting a revision to conventional thinking on strategic leadership. Whereas some theories posit that boards of directors influence firm performance through monitoring and disciplining the top management team, MASEM provides more support for the view that boards mediate the top management teams' decisions. Implications for applying MASEM in strategic management are offered.

We explore the interaction of open innovation and intellectual property (IP) in two Chinese latecomer pharmaceutical firms in their catch-up process. Studying archival data, documentation, and interviews, we found that the two firms exhibited five periods that were characterised by different open innovation activities and R&D capabilities. In their early stages, the two firms lacked R&D functions; thus, they imported technologies and pursued production-oriented strategies. As they gradually entered into collaborations and established their R&D departments, open innovation and IP protection played important and dynamic roles in this process. Thus, a catch-up process involves not only acquiring technological capabilities and innovative competencies but also transforming a firm's capacity to strategies.

This thesis addressed three questions regarding learning from failure: 1) How does firms’ failure experience influence their search activities? 2) How does firms’ failure experience affect their performance? and 3) How does firms’ exploration and exploitation influence the impact of failure on performance? Based on the theoretical lens of learning from failure, absorptive capacity, and exploration and exploitation, the series of longitudinal quantitative studies in this thesis revealed that firms’ failure experience negatively affects exploratory search, positively influences R&D performance, and exhibits a mixed blessing on firms’ financial performance. Boundary conditions of the relationships were discussed.