Ever since China opened its door to the world in the ¡¥90, investors poured into China to ¡§dig gold¡¨. Hence, a new surge of ¡§learning Chinese¡¨ has been setting off. According to an unofficial statistics, over 30 million people all over the world are learning Chinese. Likewise, Taiwan is certainly eager to attract Chinese learners while the whole world is infected with ¡§Chinese fever¡¨. As a result, Chinese centers affiliated to higher education institutes in Taiwan have sprung up in recent years. However, the market size in Taiwan is relatively smaller in comparison with China. Each year, the average number of foreign students heading for China fluctuates between 70,000 to 80,000 while only about thousands of students choose to study at Taiwan though the number eventually exceeded 10,000 for the first time in 2007. As the market remains stagnant, the emergence of more competitors obviously intensifies the competitiveness. Therefore, how is each Chinese center going to survive and even excel in such keen competition? Many scholars analyze competitive strategies of enterprises from external factors. Whereas, the research of Rumelt ¡]1991¡^and Roquebert¡]1993¡^indicates that external factors only account for 15%~19% while analyzing the variation of overall performance. The resource-based view investigates how enterprises build up and sustain competitive advantages from internal resources and abilities. This research is conducted on the basis of literature review and in-depth interview with two Chinese centers that enjoy a long history in Kaohsing area¡XNational Sun Yat-sen University and Wenzao Ursuline College of Languages. The purpose of this research is to probe into the strategies these two Chinese centers apply in light of the core resources and competitive advantages they possess. For those universities and colleges who plan to join this industry in the future, they may use the following conclusion and suggestion as reference in identifying their own competitive advantages and strategies. The conclusion this research has drawn is particularized as follows: 1. The core resources Chinese centers value are reputation and faculty¡¦s professionalism. Further, intangible resources are more important than tangible resources. 2. The core abilities Chinese centers value are administration, R&D and corporate culture. 3. Both Chinese centers tend to apply ¡§Strategies of Differentiation¡¨ though each possesses different competitive advantages. Whereas, our government should consider to simplify the application procedures in terms of admission and visa in order to attract more foreign students inwards. The review of Taiwan Scholarship Program and consulting service provided to those international students are necessary. More active initiatives should be adopted so that Taiwan can stand out as the key Chinese-learning providers. Further, a clearer and more favorable Chinese teacher certification system should be stipulated in order to attract more people of ability to devote themselves in this industry.

The cashmere industry is an important sector in Mongolia, and it has the potential to contribute to the growth of the economy and poverty alleviation. It provides income and employment for over a third of the population, and raw cashmere and cashmere products are the Mongolia¡¦s third largest official export products after copper and gold. Mongolia is the world¡¦s second largest producer of raw cashmere, producing over 20 percent of world supply next to the neighboring country China. Nevertheless, 55.9% of the raw cashmere is used for manufacturing finished and semi-finished products, the capacity utilization rate remains low at all stages of processing, and processing firms are losing their competitiveness. Firstly, through the review of related literature, this study finds out the key issues of cashmere industry in Mongolia. Then, based on Michael Porter¡¦s Diamond Model with AHP method, this study develops a hierarchical framework including a goal, criteria, sub-criteria, and alternatives affecting the competitiveness of cashmere industry. Secondly, this study intended to develop questionnaires for experts including CEOs and managers from cashmere industry, government organizations, and research institutions. The main purpose is to find out the relations among the factors, and give them their weights of importance, and it points out its further competitive advantages of Cashmere Industry. As a result, 25 responses were received at the end of the survey. The collected data from the survey was analyzed through the AHP approach. We have calculated a composite weight to each factor and put the factors in order based on the weight that each factor has got. Our study suggests that the cashmere industry in Mongolia should further upgrade its working efficiency in order to create a more sustainable advantage. In addition, our results further confirm that a government can play a significant role in creating competitive advantages. Finally, on the basis of the above results, we proposed several policy recommendations for relevant organizations in order to help cashmere industry upgrade their competitiveness by increasing the capacity of producing more value added products.

The core issues of traditional manufacturing industry are production and marketing. Adopting the suitable marketing strategies and production techniques based on each product characteristics will render competitive advantage. In this paper, the relationship between the knowing of production and application process of sales representatives and the marketing process was studied. Customers from different regions having various concerns of the quality and cost, require differently. The customer feedbacks collected and classified as quality and service issues, were delivered to both the production and marketing departments to help them finding the solution together. What is more, the production department can be engaged in the improvement and follow up the result for the execution according to the customer feedbacks collected from sales department and some problems which occur during production. This research provides opportunities for employees to exchange experiences, learn from each other, and improve techniques in order not to make the same mistakes again. They have learned to do everything of their own accords and increase the efficiency of management as well. It also helps the marketing personnel to understand that their knowledge on product properties and production process and successfully stimulates to learn more and enhance the skills of selling and negotiating as well.

As we enter into a high energy consumption era, people start taking notice of a simple electronic device called Light Emitting Diode (LED). A continuous rise of crude oil price in global markets and the proposal of WEEE and RoHS by European Union, ¡§energy efficient¡¨ and ¡§environmental friendly¡¨ are becoming more and more important, which leads to the attention of LED. It¡¦s one of the so called ¡§green¡¨ light emitting sources and will be the market¡¦s mainstream in near future. Therefore, LED will become another star product after the measurement of the IC and TFT-LCD industries. Taiwan has been developing LED for over 30 years and has developed a well rounded market structure. Facing huge demand by application such as computer monitor backlight, car lighting, and daily lighting appliance, Taiwanese LED supplier already responded by adjusting their market strategy and increasing their product quality. Many companies began to involve the upstream epitaxial techniques and products. How to survive through well-down strategy development is a key for these upstream suppliers. The purpose of this study is to understand how a new company to build competitive advantage through the case study of the U company. When the U company was found, it uses a different production mode to overcome many problems from traditional production modes. The U company¡¦s strategies lets it could develop fast, provide stable quality products, and manufacture with lost cost. Through this case study, this study wants to shed some light to other people who have interests in the LED industry.

Broadly, this dissertation study is an investigation of how mothers’ educational histories shape their parenting philosophies and behaviors and, through these intergenerational relationships, their children’s achievement during the transition to elementary school. Such an investigation is motivated by the life course paradigm as well as social capital theory and developmental research linking mothers’ and children’s educational trajectories through various parenting behaviors and strategies. Expanding upon this research base and the above stated research aim, the concept of diverging destinies highlights the importance of considering a specific set of life course pathways that are closely related to mothers’ educational attainment and their children’s achievement: employment and marriage. Thus, integrating mother’s employment and marriage into this dissertation study’s conceptual and analytic model, a second aim is to investigate how mothers’ education shapes the significance of women’s work and marital histories for their parenting and children’s academic trajectories. Findings from this dissertation provide support for the assertion that mothers’ and children’s academic pathways are linked through parenting. Findings also yield evidence for how mothers’ education augments the impact of marriage and employment on parenting and children’s achievement. Answering these questions has significance for sociological theory on the intergenerational transmission of advantage. / text

BACKGROUND Exploring literature about corporate sustainability and cost leadership strategy and to study the collusion of the two concepts through the case of Ikea. AIM Researching whether firms can align corporate sustainability approach to doing business on the imperatives of a cost leadership strategy. The contribution aims to provide guidance on choosing appropriate sustainability activities within the context of cost leadership strategy. Furthermore, it should be noted that this paper sets out to analyze the compatibility between sustainability and cost leadership remaining/gaining competitiveness. METHODOLOGY The study regards Ikea’s implementation of sustainable business practices through a mixed method, via informal interview, bottom-employees survey and secondary data. FINDINGS Companies having a deep understanding of sustainability can achieve to conciliate their efforts toward sustainability with their cost leadership strategy. KEYWORDS Corporate sustainability, cost leadership strategy, triple bottom line, maturity phase, challenges, competitive advantage

Outsourcing refers to contracting out the functions to a third party instead of conducting them in-house. The main contribution of this dissertation is to develop and test a model of successful outsourcing in the accomplishment of headquarters selling task. Specifically, it intends to (a) provide a theoretical framework for outsourcing partnership performance, (b) explore the potential complementarities construct in the context of a dyadic outsourcing relationship, (c) examine the role of learning dynamic capabilities in turning potential complementarities into outsourcing success, and (d) explicate the role of structural social capital as an antecedent to learning dynamic capability construct . The conceptual framework of the model is based on the resource-advantage theory which posits that resources, potential complementarities and dynamic capabilities are explicated as sub-constructs. The pool of respondents who are the practicing managers of outsourcing in the consumer packaged goods industry was used to test the hypothesized relationships. The findings showed that the learning dynamic capabilities construct is the most important factor affecting in the outsourcing partnership performance in the context of headquarters selling task. The task-related resources of the outsourcer had a significant positive effect on potential complementarities. However, the positive effect of the outsourcee’s task-related resources on potential complementarities was not significant. Likewise, the positive effect of the potential complementarities on the outsourcing partnership performance did not emerge as significant. The effect of structural social capital of the outsourcer had a significant but negative influence on learning dynamic capabilities. The positive effect of structural social capital of the outsourcee on learning dynamic capabilities and the moderating role of learning dynamic capabilities were found to be insignificant.

Recent evidence suggests that the task of managing a bilingual individual’s two languages is carried out by general attentional mechanisms. Researchers have found evidence for bilingual advantages in attention, specifically on tasks that involve inhibiting irrelevant information, which are believed to stem from lifelong practice at inhibiting the language system not currently in use. In the present study we hypothesized that, since bilinguals are better at inhibiting irrelevant information, they should show memory disadvantages if previously irrelevant information becomes relevant. 12 bilingual and 12 monolingual participants (age range:19-27) were tested in an eye tracking paradigm where the relational manipulation effect (the tendency to direct more viewing to manipulated regions of previously viewed scenes) was used to access memory for scenes that had been presented as distractors during a study block. No differences in memory were observed. However, we observed a significant difference in general viewing patterns between the two language groups, such that bilinguals made significantly shorter fixations.

Effective internal communication is an important factor for organizational success. Organizations need to evaluate and improve their internal communication especially in an increasingly difficult and competitive economic environment. In this regard, measurement instruments enable organizations to monitor communication effectiveness of internal communication systems (Ruck & Welch, 2012). The focus for this study will be the concept of internal communication within an organization. In order to establish and identify the purpose of the study a literature review was        performed that examined the existing research within the field.The purpose of this study is to investigate the factors that influence the effectiveness of internal communication from the employee perception at the logistic department of Electrolux. Three research questions were then conducted in order to answer the purpose. The study has been conducted through a case study in the form of in-depth interviews. The study was carried out through 11 interviews with employees from the logistic department of Electrolux Laundry System AB in Ljungby. In the current business environment a formal way of strategically handle the              communication that is practiced within an organization is needed in relation to higher competitive advantage. The study reveals that Electrolux logistic center is not practicing this in any higher degree in accordance to the theory of effective communication. No clear goal regarding communication or measuring communication was identified. In accordance to this practical managerial implication was concluded based on these findings. The presented research model done was suggested to be developed as a further research

ABSTRACT This research is about identifying the characteristics or success profiles of professionals working in the turnaround industry. The turnaround industry possesses a number of dynamic capabilities in processes, positions, resources and paths that are unique to its industry. The firms that compete in the turnaround industry serve their clients, the dying organizations, by using a mix of these dynamic capabilities. While these dynamic capabilities are seen as the turnaround firms’ “secrets of success,” they have over time evolved into “best practices.” This commoditization of best practices in the turnaround industry has created a need for turnaround firms to search for a competitive advantage. Specifically, this advantage is identified in the literature as the skills, knowledge, and experience of the turnaround professional. These unique characteristics of the turnaround management professional (TMP), see appendix C for a complete definitions of terms, have been accounted for in the Turnaround Management Association (TMA) certification process called the Certified Turnaround Professional, or CTP. One of the TMA’s goals is to establish professional work standards and guidelines and to regulate the industry. While a noble effort, this focus takes the “competitive advantage” away from the turnaround organization and standardizes it into the “best practices” arena via “certified” professionals leaving these organizations to compete on size and location alone. Evidence from a focus group, case research interviews, and two different surveys, suggests that there is a profound difference in the effectiveness of TMPs beyond the knowledge, skill, and experience levels identified as one of the core components of dynamic capabilities theory. This evidence led to the investigation of psychometric profiling as a method to measure the distinct success profiles of these “highly successful” TMPs, or Most Valuable players (MVP). Measuring the thinking style (cognitive reasoning ability), work motivation, personality behaviors, and occupational interests of MVP s, has led to the discovery of a success composite. The findings of this research suggest that MVP s score higher on this composite than do other TMPs who were identified as “low performers”, or Least Valuable Players (LVP), as well as non-turnaround managers, executives, and business professionals in general. It is postulated that by using this composite score in hiring, training, and promoting turnaround professionals, a turnaround firm will obtain a competitive advantage in their industry and generate higher success for all stakeholders. Resultantly, the researchers have uncovered a critical gap in the dynamic capability theory surrounding the construct of human capital. Evidence suggests that psychometric profiling is an acceptable and, indeed, important measure of the value of human capital.