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Current Research

Na Zou, Cornelia Storz, 2023, Journal of Business Research, 161, 113821 [Published Online: 16 March 2023]

Abstract

Why do some entrepreneurs in developing environments thrive whereas others fail, even though they all face the same uncertainties? Prior research on entrepreneurial networks has attributed differences in business performance to variations in network structure. However, many entrepreneurs—such as necessity entrepreneurs—have networks with low structural variation. We show that variations in network content may be an alternative explanation for performance differences. Drawing on the resource-based view, we propose that entrepreneurs whose networks are characterized by low structural variation may benefit from variations in network content—namely, greater resource variety and more resource spanning. Our argument is supported strongly by a random sample of 200 Chinese necessity entrepreneurs working in Shanghai. By bringing network content to the analytical fore, we contribute to research on entrepreneurial networks, which has focused mostly on network structures. We further add to research on necessity entrepreneurship by examining how heterogeneous network content may influence business performance.

Link to this publication

Current Research

Yonson Ahn's edited volume, Korea and the Global Society was published in February 2023 by Routledge. This book explores multiple fields and disciplines around the theme of South Korea's engagement and exchanges with global society focusing on development cooperation, migration and the media.

The core of this volume is an analysis of South Korea's engagement and reciprocity in global society that has developed out of the country's shift from aid recipient and migrant sender to aid provider and migrant host. The contributions approach this through the three main aspects of development cooperation, migration, and the media. These themes represent an interdisciplinary array of research that introduces and analyses interconnected and concurrent instances of reciprocity, convergence, tension, inclusion, or exclusion in navigating South Korea's interactional relations with global society, spanning regions and countries including Africa, Asia, the USA, and Germany. 

This book is interdisciplinary covering a wide range of disciplines including sociology, gender studies, ethnic studies, media studies, IR, and area studies, in particular Korean studies.

The link to this book: https://www.routledge.com/Korea-and-the-Global-Society/Ahn/p/book/9781032293363#

Contributors: Sabine Burghart, Tanja Eydam, Felicia Istad, Seonok Lee, Irina Lyan, David Oh, Jinhee Park, Stephen Cho Suh, Nazanin Zadeh-Cummings, Yonson Ahn  

Citation:  Yonson Ahn ed. 2023. Korea and the Global Society. New York and London: Routledge.   

Current Research

1) New Journal Article by Yonson Ahn on South Korean Im/migrants in South Africa

Yonson Ahn published an article in Korea Journal on 31st December 2022. The topic is 'Migration Trajectories of South Korean Im/migrants in South Africa'. Since the history of this migration destination is relatively recent and on a smaller scale compared to Korean diasporas elsewhere, to date there has been no associated study in the body of Korean diaspora literature. Drawing on in-depth interviews, she maps out the spatial trajectories of migration taken by Korean im/migrants to, from, and within South Africa. Complex issues and motivations that have informed these embodied movements and migration trajectories are explored. This study greatly contributes to the IZO's focus on research on Global East Asia by exploring an under-represented part of Korea/East Asian migration in the Global South whose journeys can be conceptualized within the multi-directional and onward geographic migratory trajectories across Global North-South.

Yonson Ahn “Unending Journeys: Migration Trajectories of Korean Im/migrants in South Africa" Korea Journal, vol. 62, no. 4 (Winter 2022), pp.137-170.  doi: 10.25024/kj.2022.62.4.137   

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2) Yonson Ahn has published a journal article in an under-researched field on Korean Migration in the Global South.

Yonson Ahn together with Jihye Kim published another article in Korea Journal on 31st December 2022. This study is on South Korean migration in the Global South. Migratory trajectories and complexities in the North to South migration are explored. The authors address complexities in the socio-economic motivations and circumstances within which Korean immigrants operate in the Global South. These complexities can be seen in the opportunities, challenges and risks they encounter. Consequently, those in the South find alternative routes and options and diversify their trajectories with high mobility.

Yonson Ahn and Jihye Kim, “Korean Migration in the Global South: Contextualizing Migration Trajectories and Complexities", Korea Journal, vol. 62, no. 4 (Winter 2022), pp.5-17, doi: 10.25024/kj.2022.62.4.5 

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Current Research

Sep 30 2022
09:00

Current Research, September 2022

​Heike Holbig on the Canonisation of Xi Jinping Thought

In her contribution to CPC Futures. The New Era of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics edited by Frank N. Pieke and Bert Hofman, Heike Holbig traces the process of canonisation of what would come to be known as “Xi Jinping Thought for a New Era of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics". The objective is not only to illustrate the ever-growing importance of party ideology in contemporary China, but also to highlight the real-world implications of a process that might appear opaque and self-contained yet intersects closely with political, economic, social and cultural developments at home and abroad.

In this edited volume, China experts from Asia, the United States, Europe and Australia set out the future implications of trends in CPC ideology, politics and governance in Xi Jinping's “New Era." Published in September 2022, the collection offers clues on what the upcoming 20th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party will bring, what the next decade of party rule might look like, and what China's political elites do envision for the party's and the country's future. The book is distributed in Open Access.

Citation:

Holbig, Heike (2022). Canonising Xi Jinping Thought – Ideological engineering and its real-world relevance. In: Frank N. Pieke and Bert Hofman (eds.), CPC Futures. The New Era of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics, Singapore: NUS Press, 41-46. DOI: https://doi.org/10.56159/eai.52060

Download: https://epress.nus.edu.sg/cpcfutures/9789811852060.pdf (Open Access).

Current Research

Prof. Zhiyi Yang elaborates on the concept of "Sinophone Classicism" in a new article in the Journal of Asian Studies, published in online first format by Cambridge University Press in June 2022.

In recent decades, highly heterogeneous literary and artistic articulations harking back to China's classical past have gained increasing currency in the global Sinophone space and cyberspace. Instead of dismissing them as “fetishisms" or authenticating them as “Chinese traditions," I propose “Sinophone classicism" as a new critical expression for conceptualizing this diverse array of articulations. It refers to the appropriation, redeployment, and reconfiguration of cultural memories evoking Chinese aesthetic and intellectual traditions for local, contemporary, and vernacular uses, by agents identified or self-identified as Chinese. This essay proposes a subjective, intimate, and reflexive way to experience an individual's culturally acquired “Chineseness" that is temporal, mnemonic, and often mediated by digital media. It joins recent scholarly efforts to dismantle the view of “Chinese modernity" as a monocentric and homogenous experience by refocusing on classicism as a kind of “antimodern modernism." It also joins the post-Eurocentric turn in global academia by hinting at a future of “global classicisms."

Current Research

Feb 15 2022
09:00

Current Research, February 2022

Bertram Lang on China's Anti-Corruption Policy as Fragile Crisis Management

IZO Coordinator Bertram Lang has published a contribution in an edited volume on Crises in Authoritarian Regimes by Jörg Baberowski and Martin Wagner. The volume is the outcome of an international workshop organised by historians and political scientists at Princeton University and Humboldt University in January 2021.

Based on quantiative text analysis of 6,957 articles published on the topic in Chinese newspapers, Bertram Lang analyses the trajectory of Chinese anti-corruption policies and discourses since the late Hu-Wen era until today. Using topic modeling and sentiment analysis, he shows how corruption was constructed as an existential crisis immediately before and after Xi's ascent to power and how domestic and international cases of corruption are treated in systematically different ways in Chinese media. At the same time, the analysis also elucidates the severe problems in framing anti-corruption during Xi's second term, where news reports strike and increasingly fragile balance between announcements of success and calls to persevere in a 'heroic' fight. Initially vocal voices calling for the institutionalisation of the anti-corruption struggle based on rule-of-law principles have been gradually muted over the past years.

Lang, Bertram (2022): China's 'Anti-Corruption' Campaign Under Xi Jinping: Framing Catastrophe and Catharsis in a Never-Ending Crisis, in: Jörg Baberowski & Martin Wagner (eds.): Crises in authoritarian regimes, Campus: Frankfurt/ New York, pp. 79-113.


Current Research

In his paper on “The Cost of Security. Financing Yellow River Hydraulics during the late Imperial Period", Iwo Amelung investigates the effect of paternalistic views at the Qing court, inspired by Confucianism, on financing hydraulic projects on the Yellow River and on the Great Canal. On the basis of a detailed study of the existing documents he shows that expenditures for hydraulic engineering constantly increased well into the 1840s and eventually amounted to more than 20 per cent of the total expenditure of the central government. While research in the past generally assumed that the high costs of hydraulics were due on the one hand to ecological factors and on the other hand to administrative corruption and inefficiency, Amelung shows that the fiscal catastrophe was due mainly to the desire of the Qing emperors – and specifically of the Kangxi and Qianlong emperor – to bring as much relief to the peasant population as possible in accordance with the image of the “provisioning state" (von Glahn). The fact that after the relocation of the river bed in 1855 the responsibility for the control of river and canal was transferred to the regional administration can thus also be  interpreted as an attempt to free the Qing state from financial burdens that were ideologically motivated. This was only partially successful and in fact it was no longer of great urgency because the Qing state in the last years of the empire managed to broaden its fiscal basis by introducing Lijin and the highly efficient maritime customs service. The restraint of the central government also implied a diminishing moral commitment from the state which added to the de-legitimization of the imperial government during the final phase of the empire. 

Iwo Amelung, “The Cost of Security. Financing Yellow River Hydraulics during the late Imperial Period", in: Iwo Amelung, Bertram Schefold (eds.), European and Chinese Histories of Economic Thought Theories and Images of Good Governance, London: Routledge 2022, pp. 33-46, DOI https://doi.org/10.4324/9780367434496

Involved IZO Researcher(s):

Prof. Dr. Iwo Amelung


Managing Director

Sinology: Chinese History and Culture

Current Research

Dec 15 2021
09:00

Current Research, December 2021

Cornelia Storz Analyses the Chinese Ecosystem of Technology Transfer.

In November 2021 Cornelia Storz, together with Marcus Conlé, Henning Kroll and Tobias ten Brink, published an article in the Journal of Technology Transfer (JOTT). Technology transfer in Europe and Asia is a subject that receives much attention, especially from an economic and political perspective, because interesting transfer mechanisms have developed in these contexts. One instance is the University Satellite Institutes (USI), which feature large in China. Prof. Storz and her co-authors take a closer look at this contributor, which has been largely overlooked, taking as an example the situation in the Chinese province of Guangdong.

In the context of IZO research on Global East Asia, this project identifies an important mechanism largely neglected in innovation research, namely institutional proximity which helps to successfully implement technology transfer. This mechanism is shown to be of equal relevance to any successful innovation policy in our part of the world. JOTT was chosen advisedly for the publication of this article because of the journal's interest in both failed and successful policies of technology transfer. The article is an open access publication and is available under DOI (see below).


Marcus Conlé,· Henning Kroll,· Cornelia Storz &· Tobias ten Brink (2021): University satellite institutes as exogenous facilitators of technology transfer ecosystem development. In The Journal of Technology Transfer, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10961-021-09909-7 (Open Access).

Current Research

In a recent open access publication in the Journal of Contemporary Asia, Heike Holbig and Bertram Lang investigate the impact of the Chinese NGO legislation of 2016 on interaction in international civil societies. Drawing on interviews as well as theories of institutional change, the authors look beyond the mere implementation of the NGO law, drawing up four scenarios of long-term developments of Chinese policy with regard to international NGOs and foundations. In particular, their analysis shows that this policy goes well beyond the regulation of inner-Chinese activities and that new forms of politically controlled cooperation with civil societies are developing within the framework of the Belt and Road Initiative. While the NGO law affects mainly organisations in the US, Hong Kong and some Western European countries, it is primarily actors in countries of the global south such as Nepal or Cambodia, countries which China is closely allied with, for whom these new formats are of particular importance.

Involved IZO Researcher(s):

Prof. Dr. Heike Holbig

Political Science with a Focus on Chinese and East Asian Area Studies

Bertram Lang, M.A.

Academic Coordinator
(IZO and CEDITRAA)

Current Research

Just like IZO brings together East and Southeast Asian Studies in Frankfurt, academic networks “on the ground" in East and Southeast Asia are increasingly cooperating across the region. An example is the new journal INContext, which is a collaborative journal bringing together the Korean Association for Public Sector Translation and Interpretation (KAPTI), the Language and Intercultural Studies Institute (LISI), Universitas Gadjah Mada (UGM), Indonesia, and the Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU). For their inaugural issue, they asked the IZO member Arndt Graf to contribute an article, and he was also invited as member of the Editorial Board of the new journal.


Abstract
Before the Covid-19 pandemic deeply impacted the economies and societies of Southeast Asia, Malaysia had achieved many of the goals formulated in the so-called “Vision 2020" during the era of Prime Minister Dr. Mahathir Mohamad (1981-2003). As this long-term development program emphasized strongly on knowledge society (k-society), knowledge economy (k-economy) and Information and Computer Technology (ICT), one important legacy of this era was the establishment of numerous excellent academic programs, including in technological disciplines. The post-Mahathir administrations since the early 2000s built on this asset and successfully transformed the country's Higher Education sector further, so that it attracted hundreds of thousands of international students from the early 2000s until the beginning of the Covid-19 crisis in early 2020. This paper examines the linguistic and cultural implications of Malaysia's emerging role as hub of both international Higher Education and Industry 4.0.