Current Research
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.
Current Research
The link to this book: https://www.routledge.com/Korea-and-the-Global-Society/Ahn/p/book/9781032293363#
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
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
Current Research
Current Research, September 2022
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
Current Research, June 2022
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
Current Research, February 2022
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.
Current Research
Current Research, January 2022
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
Current Research
Current Research, December 2021
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).
Current Research
Current Research, November 2021
Political Science with a Focus on Chinese and East Asian Area Studies
Academic Coordinator
(IZO and CEDITRAA)