Narrow Results

Globalization enhances efficiency and economic growth and expands the domain of personal contact and communication. Nonetheless, globalization has also evoked discontent because of claimed social injustice. The relation between globalization and social justice therefore merits attention, in order to identify whether justifications for discontent are present and, if there are reasons for discontent, to establish whether globalization should be blamed.

In this paper, we attempt to shed light on whether Japanese households are rational or if their behavior is influenced by culture and social norms by examining their saving and bequest behavior. To summarize our main findings, we find that Japan’s household saving rate showed great volatility, was often low and even negative and was high only during the 25-year period from around 1960 until the mid-1980s (if we exclude the war years) and that we can explain the high level of, and trends over time in, Japan’s household saving rate via various socioeconomic and policy variables. This seems to suggest that the Japanese are not a saving-loving people and that their saving behavior is not governed by culture and social norms. Moreover, the bequest behavior of the Japanese suggests that they are less altruistic toward their children and less reliant on their children than other peoples, suggesting that the alleged social norm of strong family ties in Japan is largely a myth, and that the Japanese do not appear to be appreciably more concerned about the continuation of the family line or the family business than other peoples, suggesting that the influence of the “ie” (family) system is apparently not so pervasive either. However, we argue that these findings do not necessarily mean that culture and social norms do not matter.

It is a basic consensus that culture affects savings, but the empirical evidence is inadequate. This paper investigates the relationship between culture and savings by using the Hofstede cultural indices, and macro data across 48 countries over the period 1990–2013. The results show that country-fixed effects are highly significant, even if traditional variables are controlled for. We discover that culture can explain much of these individual effects and thus is very important in explaining differences in savings across countries. We use the method of Relative Importance Analysis (RIA) to measure the relative importance of the various cultural dimensions in affecting saving rates. We find that culture-related variables are among the most important saving determinants, along with other variables more commonly used in the economics literature, such as economic growth, social security, and demographics.

Culture offers an important setting for entrepreneurship to grow, and trust is critical for entrepreneurship to thrive. In recent years, there has been debate whether Chinese culture facilitates or hinders entrepreneurship; there has also been a call for empirical investigation of trust in entrepreneurship research. Our paper investigates the relationship between Chinese cultural values and two kinds of trust, in two different enterprises as two subcultures in China. The two kinds of trust are dispositional trust and interpersonal trust; and the two enterprises are a joint venture and a state-owned enterprise. We composed questionnaire from established work about trust and cultural values, ran survey research on 226 employees in the two organizations in China, and analyzed the survey data by descriptive statistics, factor analysis, correlations, and MANOVA. We found that dispositional trust and interpersonal trust are different at individual level; Chinese cultural values correlate significantly with both dispositional trust and interpersonal trust, and positively correlate to both kinds of trust. Employees in the state-owned enterprise held higher level of Chinese cultural values but had lower level of interpersonal trust, which suggests potential problems in its management. Our study is one of the recent studies that separately measure dispositional trust and interpersonal trust, and our findings across two different types of organizations have practical implications for entrepreneurship research in China. Our study is also one of the recent studies that find Chinese cultural values may benefit trust in enterprises, although some earlier studies suggested the opposite.

Applying Ajzen’s planned behavior theory, we study the impact of control beliefs (reflected by an internal locus of control) and normative beliefs (investigated via individualistic cultural orientation) on entrepreneurial attitudes and self-employment intentions of final year university students. We particularly explore the interactive effect of internal locus of control and culture when explaining entrepreneurial attitudes, which consequently shapes self-employment intentions. The data were collected at a German university and three universities in East Africa. We received 590 complete responses. We used PROCESS Macro to test our model and hypotheses. Our findings show that both internal locus of control and culture predict entrepreneurial attitudes and self-employment intention. The effects of international locus of control are mediated by entrepreneurial attitudes. Moreover, the indirect effect is further conditioned by culture. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.

The article is about Biopolis Shared Facilities. It is an overview of the purpose-built resource that provides research support to the Biopolis community. It mentions the facilities, equipment and technologies that it offers to the Biopolis community.

A Crisis in the Development of Antibiotics.

Bacterial Culture and Anti-microbial Susceptibility Testing – their Use in Guiding Therapy.

Epidemiology and Impact of Multi-Drug Resistant Gram Negative Infections in Critically Ill Patients in Asia.

Antibiotics and Resistance in Ocular Infections – Indian Perspective.

China Unveils World-Class Biotech Ambitions.

Chinese Scientists Awarded Cancer Research Prize.

BGI Researchers Uncover Extensive RNA Editing in Human Transcriptome.

Johns Hopkins Commences New China STEM Program.

Father of Hybrid Rice Conferred 2011 Mahathir Science Award.

Personalized Medicine Receives Boost in China.

GeneNews & Shanghai Biochip to Establish First Sentinel Centre for Personalized Medicine.

SINANO Invents New Microfluidic Chip for Bacterial Culture.

MALAYSIA — Veolia expands presence in East Malaysia.

SINGAPORE — Syneron Dental Lasers signs distribution agreement with Healthcare Solutions & Services Pte Ltd.

SINGAPORE — Fujitsu advances healthcare innovation in collaboration with National University of Singapore.

SINGAPORE — Clearbridge BioMedics makes a big impact at the 2012 Asian Innovation Awards.

SINGAPORE — TauRx Pharmaceuticals receives $111.8m commitment from Genting to prepare for Market Leadership in Alzheimer's.

THAILAND — Key Phase II HIV/HCV trial has commenced in Bangkok.

AUSTRALIA — Hatchtech mechanism of action data and safety study published.

AUSTRALIA — Power to you: carbon nanotube muscles are going strong.

EUROPE — GE Healthcare Life Sciences opens new £3 million laboratories for cell science.

EUROPE — AstraZeneca announces Phase III results from naloxegol pivotal trials.

EUROPE — ACADIA's pimavanserin sees Phase III success.

EUROPE — Big Pharma is doing more for access to medicine in developing countries.

EUROPE — CAVATAK™ bladder cancer – positive preliminary data.

EUROPE — Avita Medical initiates European trial in the management of chronic lower limb ulcers.

NORTH AMERICA — FEI unveils broad correlative microscopy solution set for cell biologists.

NORTH AMERICA — A single dose of Medicago's H5N1 VLP vaccine protects against additional pandemic flu strains in a preclinical study.

NORTH AMERICA — Biologics and stem cell research boost the cell culture market.

Cognoptix licenses AD detection technology.

3D cell culture firm Reinnervate and specialist Oncology CRO Oncotest GmbH enter collaboration agreement.

Medicago awarded contract from the U.S. Department of Defence.

Clinical Network Services acquires New Zealand partner BELTAS' business assets.

VABIOTECH licenses cell-based Japanese encephalitis technology from Inviragen.

University of Illinois licenses novel anti-cancer therapies to StemPar Sciences.

Adimab announces new discovery collaboration with Kyowa Hakko Kirin.

Priaxon enters collaboration with GSK on protein-protein-interactions.

Lantheus Medical Imaging and FUJIFILM RI Pharma renew long-term license and distribution agreement.

Malaysian Bio-XCell Sdn Bhd seals a deal exceeding US$35 (~RM107m) with Agila Biotech Sdn Bhd during BioPharma Asia 2013.

Nagasaki University and Astellas launch collaborative research for screening new anti-dengue virus drugs for neglected tropical diseases.

Eurofins collaborates with AB SCIEX and Phenomenex to improve analysis of animal feed.

Biolife Science $5m ASX listing to progress stomach & breast cancer vaccine.

Naz Haji appointed Chief Information Officer, Quintiles Asia markets.

Roche and BioLamina start collaboration to develop novel cell culture systems.

Simulated virtual realities offer a promising but currently underutilized source of data in studying cultural and demographic aspects of dynamic decision-making (DDM) in small groups. This study focuses on one simulated reality, a clock-driven business simulation game, which is used to teach operations management. The purpose of our study is to analyze the characteristics of the decision-making groups, such as cultural orientation, education, gender and group size, and their relationship to group performance in a real-time processed simulation game. Our study examines decision-making in small groups of two or three employees from a global manufacturing and service operations company. We aim at shedding new light on how such groups with diverse background profiles perform as decision-making units. Our results reveal that the profile of the decision-making group influences the outcome of decision-making, the final business result of the simulation game. In particular, the cultural and gender diversity, as well as group size seem to have intertwined effects on team performance.

We propose the fundamental illusion theory to explain knowledge creation based on Japanese companies. This theory is a hearing illusion which explains that when two tones occur together a third lower pitched tone is heard, but this last perceived pitch is a frequency (fundamental) for which there is no actual source vibration. If we make an analogy between fundamental frequency and knowledge, between tones occurring together and learning + culture + leadership, we have a new management model.

Research on innovation practices reinforces the notion that majority of innovation projects fail systematically due to being managed as raw technology projects. Open forms of innovation where internal and external ideas are leveraged across the organisation are gaining importance over the internal and centralised approach to R&D. India, during the last 15 years, has been spiralling ahead towards ultimate economic success based on its 'knowledge-based talent pool'. Innovation has become a top strategic focus for most Indian companies. Seeing the growing importance of innovation and knowledge management, a need was felt to understand how organisations manage their knowledge capital so as to promote innovation.

This paper aims to provide insights into how an organisation manages knowledge through culture, structure, technology and leadership, so as to promote acquisition and application of knowledge which leads to innovation. The study brings out the importance of tacit knowledge embedded in the firm's culture, structure and leadership as a complement to the explicit knowledge embedded in the firm's technology and documents.

Measuring organisational trust gives stakeholders many indicators of their organisations. These indicators are performance, leadership, employees' satisfaction, job satisfaction, and knowledge sharing culture. In addition to that, the highest levels of organisations' trust can critically reduce conflict charges and transaction costs.

This paper is the first stage of a research study that discusses the importance of trust to knowledge sharing. This paper shows to what extent culture influences organisational trust compared with the global trust index. This research adopts a model of trust with five dimensions and they are relating to knowledge sharing in an organisation; concern for employees, openness and honesty, identification, reliability, and competence. The adopted model was used to develop the global trust index. A survey of 26 different items was conducted on 135 profitable organisations in Jordan in different industries. A total of 397 questionnaires were returned in a form eligible for the analysis.

The results show that the overall organisational trust index in Jordan compared with the global index is low and the difference is significant. Furthermore, all trust dimensions in Jordan have lower values than the world's trust dimensions. Locally, the openness and honesty dimension has the highest value, and the competency dimension has the lowest value. Therefore, Jordanian culture significantly affects the trust index in the country and lowers it compared with the global trust index.

Purpose — The purpose of this pilot study is to understand the knowledge sharing attributes of the librarians in the Education City libraries and to identify the impending factors that affect the sharing process. This pilot study is part of a country wide study on the aspects of knowledge sharing in libraries.

Findings — The results showed that library professionals in the Education City, Qatar were involved in a lot of knowledge sharing activities among colleagues within their library and other libraries. The result also identifies the knowledge sources and with whom they share what. It was also found that cultural differences, language and library policies are important factors that have impacted significantly the flow of knowledge in the expatriate library community.

Research limitations/implications — The coverage on the universities in this paper is confined primarily to Education City, where majority of the universities are present. However, future research could include the few other universities/colleges that are out of the ambit of Education City to have a wider population in the study.

Practical implications — This paper has practical implications for those who are not fully aware of the working conditions in this region and Qatar in particular. It provides a useful overview of the knowledge sharing trends and requirements and the impediments to sharing vital knowledge that would help professionals in gaining some knowledge about the constraints and be prepared.

Originality/Value — There are no previous studies undertaken on knowledge sharing among library professionals in this region. This is the first ever study undertaken to understand the knowledge sharing attributes and trends among librarians in Qatar. So this study would be in the interest of all the library professionals that are contemplating an international career in this region and also understand the cultural and other differences when they arrive.

It is particularly important for developing countries to define useful TQM constructs to measure these principles, and their effect on improvement of performance. This research is aimed at measuring TQM constructs in the Thai manufacturing industry and Thai culture. The research identifies nine TQM implementation constructs and one outcome construct. A measurement instrument is developed based on a survey of some 275 ISO 9000 certified manufacturing companies in Thailand. A stepwise regression model is then used to identify the primary implementation construct regressors that significantly influence the outcome construct. The results show that customer focus, continuous improvement, top management commitment, employee involvement and product innovation are significantly and positively related to product quality. The findings are useful for practitioners and academia in developing countries.

This study demonstrates how top management team (TMT) conflict impacts new product development (NPD) under cultural differences between Taiwan and the United States. Based on cultural differences, we compare Taiwan and the United States to explore how the heterogeneity of TMT composition leads to team conflict and how TMT conflict affects NPD outcomes in different stages. Several research propositions are presented and indicate that the higher TMT heterogeneity results in a higher degree of team conflict. Furthermore, cognitive conflict positively affects NPD initiation stage, but negative in the implementation stage. From a perspective of cultural differences, managers in Taiwan, compared with those in the United States, tend to sustain organizational cohesion and harmony, emphasize personal relationships, and sidestep direct conflict as much as possible. This cultural characteristic negatively affects NPD initiation, and also wears away the competitive advantages for Taiwanese companies.

This paper applies the multiple-perspective decision-making approach [Linstone (1984, 1999); Linstone and Zhu (2000)] and the concepts of discounting and technological forecasting and planning as a framework to study the influence of culture on technology development and management in Korea. Korea was an early innovator of both metallic movable type printing and MP3 players and they had the first-mover advantage of developing both technologies earlier than other technologically advanced countries in the same era. However, these two innovations were not commercially successful in Korea. Many reasons could have attributed to the failure. By analyzing these two cases and an additional case on Korea's plan to build an Internet-centric economy, we conclude that the imbalance among the technical, organizational, and personal (TOP) perspectives was the major factor. Business executives and policy makers need to deal with not only issues related to discounting and forecasting when planning for commercialization and diffusion of new technologies, but also the organizational and cultural factors which play an important role that bridges inventions and the successful diffusion of innovations. In sum, the balance of multiple perspectives of decision-making, the applications of the principles of discounting and technology forecasting and planning, and the roles of diversity and government policy are all crucial for the success of an innovation in a global context.

Although knowledge has been cited as one of the most important strategic assets, the creation and sharing of knowledge at the organizational level is a difficult process that will not proceed without incentives and conscious efforts by management. The complexity of knowledge management (KM) is further compounded by the influence of a wide variety of factors such as leadership, ba, organizational culture, organizational control and individual work styles.

Based on a large dataset gathered from a questionnaire survey of a multi-national Japanese pharmaceutical company and its subsidiary in the US, we compare how the aforementioned organizational factors influence KM, expressed through the SECI model of socialization, externalization, combination and internalization. The results of a structural equation modeling path analysis show that a single model of KM should not be applied unilaterally to both organizations, although part of the same company, and instead may need to be adapted to each stage of KM maturity.