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The rise of humanoid robots in hospitality services accelerates the need to understand related consumer reactions. Four scenario-based experiments, building on social presence and social cognition theories, examine how humanoid robots (vs. self-service machines) shape consumer service perceptions vis-a-vis concurrent presence/absence of human staff. The influence of consumers' need for human interaction and technology readiness is also examined. We find that anthropomorphizing service robots positively affects expected service quality, first-visit intention, willingness to pay, as well as increasing warmth/competence inferences. However, these effects are contingent on the absence of human frontline staff, explained by viewing anthropomorphism as a relative concept. Humanoid robots increase psychological risk, but this poses no threat to expected service quality when consumers' need for human interaction is controlled for. Additionally, we show that a humanoid robot's effect on expected service quality is positive for all but low technology readiness levels. Further implications for theory/practice are discussed.

Faff’s (2015, 2019) pitching research concept provides a simple 2-page template tool, with the aim of presenting a framework SO THAT a novice researcher can confidently and succinctly convey all the essential elements of a new research proposal to an academic expert. The “low technology” way of implementing the pitching research exercise is to create a pitch using a WORD version of the template. However, a web portal version is freely available at PitchMyResearch – and this provides a more “high tech”, “mobile friendly” way of completing the pitching task. The current paper explores user data (primarily, the sequence of completion and time spent on each item) extracted from the web portal, based on pitch exercises conducted in a PhD course at the University of Queensland.

The World Economic Forum's (WEF) annual assessment using the Global Competitiveness Index (GCI) since 2006 shows that Vietnam’s national competitiveness has been relatively low. Globally, Vietnam has been in the middle of economies surveyed. Regionally, Vietnam has been in the middle of ASEAN countries. Regarding level of development, before 2015 Vietnam was in stage 1 (factor-driven), which includes ASEAN's less developed countries (Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar). Since 2015 Vietnam has shifted to a transition toward stage 2 (efficiency-driven), which includes Brunei and the Philippines. The country has lagged behind Indonesia and Thailand (in stage 2), Malaysia (in transition to stage 3) and Singapore (in stage 3, innovation-driven). To complement the WEF’s assessment, this study provides some in-depth analyses of main causes of Vietnam's low competitiveness. These are structural problems due to its factor-based growth model, expansionary policies to aid growth, slowly improved business environment, low R&D expenditure, low-quality higher education and under-developed infrastructure. The research also examines implications of these shortcomings for Vietnam. These are low productivity, diminishing GDP growth, middle income trap, macroeconomic instability, low business competitiveness, low technology level, low human capital quality and environmental degradation. Based on the analyses, policy measures are proposed to improve Vietnam’s competitiveness. Major suggestions include structural reforms to change the growth model from factor-based to productivity-based, raising technology level, enhancing human capital quality, improving business environment, ensuring macroeconomic stability, upgrading infrastructure and learning from advanced economies such as Korea.

Remarkable achievements have been made on foreign trade since China’s entry into the WTO 14 years ago. However, China’s foreign trade is facing huge amounts of challenges in the meantime. For instances, from the perspective of trade sustainability, the way of extensive growth is causing increasing pressure on natural resources and environment; international trade frictions or disputes are also frequently happening; the export products are of low technology content and less competitive in the global markets. As the “Decision of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on Some Major Issues Concerning Comprehensively Deepening the Reform” puts, China intends to construct a new system of the open economy (NSOE). The strategic arrangement of the NSOE points out a right path for the development of China’s foreign economic relations in the new era. Meanwhile, it also puts forward new requirements of sustainable development to China’s foreign trade.

When studying the relationship that exists between entrepreneurship and intellectual property, patents receive the most scholarly attention. The attention makes sense when we consider that patents are closely associated with technical progress, grant temporary monopolies that incentivize investment in research & development (R&D), and function as vectors of technological dissemination in and of themselves. In a number of industries however, conventional forms of innovation often associated with patenting are minimal or missing altogether, and require us to look elsewhere to discern innovative behavior.This Essay highlights novel applications for trademark law to entrepreneurial activity in low-technology industries and low-financing locations around the world. This Essay illustrates both functions through the examination of trademark application activity in China as opposed to European industrialized nations at various points over the past thirty years. This Essay then discusses the many ways by which trademarks can impact the life-cycle of firms engaged in everything from social networking to men’s fragrances. In doing so, this Essay explores the varied relationship trademarks have with entrepreneurial activity in developed and developing nations, as well as in high and low technology industries. The result is a novel look at novel behavior, taking us beyond the Silicon Valley hacker house and into the farmhouses of China, the public houses of Ireland, and the fashion houses of Germany.

We investigate the heterogeneity within the group of foreign direct investors and the relation between affiliates characteristics and parent productivity. Using data on Italian firms, we show that foreign direct investors differ in their productivity level according to their characteristics and their investment decisions. Larger parents by employment or sales tend to be more productive, to have more affiliates and to invest in a higher number of destinations. Focusing on manufacturing firms, we show econometrically that having more and larger affiliates in rich countries leads to higher ex-post productivity. In particular, investing in high income countries or both in high and low income countries is associated with a subsequent productivity premium \textit{vis-\`a-vis} low income countries investors, especially for larger parents. Low income countries investors are found to be relatively more productive when operating in low technology sectors, while the opposite applies to high income countries investors.

Drawing on herding behavior theory, prior studies regarding the use of peers for investment decisions and compensation practices and the recent reports which suggest that firms use peer information for audit pricing, we examine the effect of peer groups on the audit pricing process of a sample of Chinese firms. Using observations for the years 2002-2012, and matching groups based on the Industry, Industry/Region, Industry/Big4 and Industry/Size to define peer group, we find that peer group information is used in audit pricing. We also find evidence that peer group information are more likely to be used in firms in low technology industry, less developed regions, and firms audited by non-Big 4 CPA firms compared to those in high technology industry, more developed regions, and firms audited by Big 4 CPA firms. Finally, we find that clients with lower audit fees than their peer groups in the previous period are more likely to increase audit fees in the current period. These are consistent with the herding theory that peer group information is most likely used in conditions when information asymmetry risk is high.

In this study, we investigate whether U.S. high-technology firms are more or less conditionally conservative relative to low-technology firms. If U.S. high-tech firms are required to expense immediately all R&D costs according to the accounting standard SFAS 2, which reflects unconditional conservatism, then in case of bad news (conditional conservatism), these firms cannot write-off their R&D costs. We expect that high-tech firms are less conditionally conservative since unconditional conservatism dampens the timeliness of accounting income. Our findings are consistent with the prediction that high-technology firms are less conditionally conservative than low-technology firms. The level of conditional conservatism increases with the level of leverage regardless of the technology level of the firm. Only low-technology firms are more conditionally conservative when they face higher auditor litigation risk. We find that neither in high-technology firms nor in low-technology firms, taxation affects conditional conservatism.

Agriculture in developing economies often employ the largest share of the workforce yet contribute the least to GDP when compared to the Industry and Services sectors. The reasons for this low productivity are numerous: land fragmentation; lack of post-harvest infrastructure; low technology utilization; weak market linkages; absent or inefficient markets; information and knowledge asymmetries (or lack thereof). This is further exacerbated by overall socio-economic structural deficiencies such as lack of access to finance and crop insurance. Smallholder agriculture often constitutes the largest segment of agricultural producers in developing countries. Increased performance of agricultural smallholders is sine-qua-non for inclusive development not just in agriculture but also at a more broad-based level. The 2010 Growth Report by the Commission on Growth and Development mentions utilization of knowledge and integration into global value chains as two of the characteristics of high growth countries. Given this context, the information and knowledge needs as well as the communication patterns (specifically the use of ICTs) were investigated using an exploratory non-representative survey of smallholders and agricultural micro-enterprises (only collectors, traders, commission agents and retailers of agricultural produce) in Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka and Thailand.

Intra-Asian foreign direct investment (FDI) is dominated by flows from high technology economies to medium technology economies, while FDI elsewhere primarily consists of flows among high technology economies. This distinctive pattern is not due simply to differences in the relative distribution of Asian FDI recipients by technology, or to systematic differences in Asia’s technology characteristics. A gravity model analysis is used to explore whether Asian FDI patterns differ significantly from those elsewhere, and if so, in what ways. The results show that Asian FDI flows, in contrast to other FDI flows, systematically favor hosts with relatively low technology achievement and relatively strong intellectual property rights regimes. This type of “Asian exceptionalism” is consistent with “flying geese” theories that have argued that Asian development is the result of technology flows among economies that occupy nearby rungs of the technology ladder.

The results of the studies on the influence of network structure of entrepreneurs on firm performance have been inconclusive. This could be due to the fact that in these studies, networks have been taken to be a conduit for single type of content. That ties are multiplex in nature is known but little work has been done to explore the interaction between network structures and content in an entrepreneurial setting. In this study we explore how the structure of the content of ties plays a role in entrepreneurial performance. By doing so, we extend the literature in two specific ways – firstly by focusing, on the structure of various multiplex ties, an attempt is made to reconcile the conflicting findings on the beneficial or detrimental effects of structural holes on performance. Secondly, we take this opportunity to understand how content of ties influences entrepreneurial outcomes - a gap that scholars have recently appealed future researchers to address (Jack, 2009; O’Donnell et al. 2001; Uzzi and Lancaster, 2003). By focusing the study within a low technology context in an emerging economy, we address how individuals set up and manage their firms in a low technological domain in India and the implications for social entrepreneurship.

For many years, analysis on innovations focused on high technology industries which were treated as synonymous with high competitiveness and growth. New research on low and medium technology industries has revealed that their growth is also based on innovations, though their sources differ from high technology industries. As the 'catching up' economies of the EU New Member States (NMS) are based on low and medium technology industries, the differences in innovativeness between high and low technology sector firms as well as within each of the sectors can play an important role in the future development of these countries. This paper aims to show the differences in innovation patterns among manufacturing firms operating in low and high technology sectors in the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland. It is based on a survey of firms which took into account innovation inputs, cooperation among firms in R&D activities, the benefits of cooperation with business partners, innovation outputs and international competitiveness. The sample consisted of 358 firms operating in both low and medium technology industries (food and beverages and automotive) and high technology industries (pharmaceuticals and electronics). After employing cluster analysis, five types of innovation patterns were detected, characterised and compared in firms operating in the low and medium technology (LMT) sectors, and four in the high technology (HT) sector. Differences and similarities in innovation patterns between firms operating in each of the two sectors are discussed. The paper shows that external knowledge plays a crucial role in innovation activities in NMS' firms. The ability to explore cooperation with business partners and the use of external knowledge are more important for the international competitiveness of the NMS' products than in-house innovation resources.

Interests in the influence of IT innovations in organization structure and management practices have assumed global significance. Due to globalization of products and services there is a need and desire to learn about the relationships between managerial behavior and technology implementations around the world. This paper examines the influence of technology on managers' jobs and performance evaluations in four Asian countries. This study finds that managers in developing countries recognize technology influencing their jobs and performance evaluations in varying degrees based on their receptiveness to technology. High technology oriented managers recognize a greater influence of technology than do the medium and low technology oriented managers. Based on their uses of IT, managers perceive IT implementations influencing their performance evaluations generally and see limited influence of IT on financial performance measures.

The importance of sectors characterized by high knowledge and technological intensity is growing in the new economy. The creation and maintenance of competitive advantage in high-technology sectors depend to a large degree on innovation. Since diffusion of innovation tends to be local, location characteristics matter. We argue that new high-technology firms can improve their survival probabilities by entering locations that stimulate and support innovation. These characteristics include urban diversity, competitive industrial structure, and clustering. In contrast, clustering, competition and diversity have lower survival value for low-technology firms, as the benefits accruing from higher innovation levels are less valuable. Indeed, the costs of urban congestion, and the pressure of competition on prices may result in negative impacts on survival. We test our hypotheses using an extensive longitudinal data base which covers all de novo entrants into the Canadian manufacturing sectors. The results indicate that clustering has a higher survival value for high-technology firms. Urban diversity and competition have positive effect on the survival of high-technology firms and negative effect on low-technology firms.