In the current era of knowledge economy, the core of the competitions between corporations has evolved from production to management, and now focuses on the acquirement of adequate human resources and the amelioration of innovation. To corporations, the most vital task is often not how to obtain capable human resources, but rather how to ensure the existing ones continuously contribute to the progression of the firm. This involves the internal culture of the firm and its organizational layout; moreover, the most direct effect comes from the ¡§push-and-pull¡¨ interaction between the employer and employee, which is the fundamental quality of employee relations. This research first intends to explore and clarify the meaning of employee relation through a comprehensive study of the aggregated works on related applications of labor relations by previous scholars, including labor union, collective bargaining, negotiation, and labor involvement and participation. Bearing the attributes of high-tech industries in mind, the actual practice of employee relations can then be categorized under six major groups through an understanding of renowned models on labor relations: direct financial rewards and benefits, indirect financial rewards and benefits, non-financial rewards and benefits, employee participation and involvment, organizational communication and management on labor relations. Based on these six categories, an analysis of the actual practice on employee relations leads to the following conclusions: A.Direct financial rewards and benefits In respect to the base-salary system, position-oriented system is more widely adopted than the ability-oriented and the seniority-oriented ones. The ability-oriented system, though, imposes the maximal impacts on employee relations. In respect to the motivation system, the year-end profit-sharing system is the most common one, and it is also considered to be having the best effect on stimulating employee relations. In most firms, the department of human resources is the key unit in charge of the motivation system. B.Indirect financial rewards and benefits Regarding economical benefits, most companies follow the traditional model and engage in pension plan, the subsidy for marriage and funeral. Injury compensation is often acclaimed to be the most essential program in enhancing employee relations. These programs are often done through the Human Resource Department and the Employee Welfare Committee. Regarding benefits on leisure activities, the most common activity is domestic and international travel coordinated through the Employee Welfare Committee. Regarding facility benefits, high percentages of firms have contracts with stores or other corporations for discounts and pre-arranged special rates. However, labor co-ops are preferred as the facility that improves employee relations the most. In general, facility benefits are coordinated through the General Administrative Department, the Human Resource Department and the Employee Welfare Committee. Regarding services benefits, most firms respect foremost the smoothness of complain and appeal channel of lower-ranked employees, and they also achieve improvements on employee relation through family goodwill policy. Most of the services benefits are managed by the department of human resources. C.Non-financial rewards and benefits In respective to non-financial compensations, the leadership style of the high-tech industry often focus on the involvement and participation from the employees, and this is often done through inquiry and commentary. Regarding the working environment, the business sectors widely adopt regulation and policy on assessment, opportunities and fairness for advancement. Flexible working hours have also been known to have positive effect on employee relations. Benefits in this category are usually overseen by the Human Resource Department. D.Employee participation and involvement Most corporations implement labor participations through employee suggestion program, which also improves employee relations the most. Regarding the rights of employee participation, the participation level on financial management is the lowest, but the participation level on company¡¦s policy, marketing, production and human resource management are normal. E.Organizational communication Regarding organizational communication, parallel communication is more efficient based on survey results. The efficiency of downward communication and upward communication is normal. Besides, bulletin board, telephone, interview, meeting, and e-mail are commonly adopted, especially the last three improves employee relations most. F.Management in labor relations Regarding management on labor relations, there were only few unions in hi-tech companies. Conciliation is most widely adopted on labor dispute. Collective bargaining and collective agreement improves employee relations greatly. Since most companies do not organize unions, conciliation is more preferred, compared with arbitration and lawsuit.

Abstract Networks are a general feature of Taiwan¡¦s industry. Alongside rapid developments in technology, the island¡¦s industrial structure is being transformed; at the same time, new approaches to administration and management are developing. Hi tech industries are playing a vital role in Taiwan¡¦s economic growth, and this thesis aims to uncover the network characteristics of these industries. The thesis uses the extensive literature available today as the source material for analyzing and comparing the industrial and network characteristics of both traditional and hi tech industries. Three important underlying factors are presented in this thesis; together, these factors help to understand the differences between network characteristics in traditional and hi tech industries. Our research into the characteristics of networks in hi tech industries revealed some interesting results. Firstly, we found that these networks are more elastic, and better able to react to changes in the business environment than traditional networks. Secondly, we discovered that job status in hi tech industries is generally less obvious, more equal and more fluid. Thirdly, existing personal connections still play an important role in hi tech industries, but are less important than in traditional businesses. Networks in hi tech industries have inherited many characteristics of the traditional network; however, as the industrial environment has changed, so networks within hi tech industries have developed many interesting characteristics which differ from traditional industrial networks in important ways.

Taiwan¡¦s successful industry development model had admired by people in the world. To induce the successful industry development model was from agriculture industry, industry to hi-tech industry. Now some hi-tech products had been the No.1 in the world but some tradition industries competence are decreasing due to high cost of wage and land and low profit. Recently China¡¦s industry rises abruptly and relies on its low wage and vast local market to attract foreign capital investment. This situation made Taiwan tradition industries face severe competition. Some tradition industries are in view of surviving or diverting risk to invest hi-tech industry. Some are success but more are failure even cumbering mother companies. According to Taiwan tradition industries situation, we consider if tradition industries do not understand what core resources they own or what key success factor on hi-tech industries and invest in a swarm of bees will cause vast damage. The research is based on resource-based theory and search for the key success factors of hi-tech industries, and to realize what the competitive dominance is. We hope the research result will help for tradition industries to invest hi-tech industries. This study has three steps as following: (1) Through comparing differences between tradition industry and hi-tech industry to design questionnaire and interview experts deeply to get the key success factors. (2) To check the results by successful company. (3) To present the results of analysis and to give some suggestions. In conclusion, we get five key success factors as following: (1) Leader characteristic (2) The ability to get outer capital (3) The ability to get right professional team work (4) The ability of technique (5) Company culture

According to the research of the Taiwan Semiconductor Industry Association in 2004 , IC design in Taiwan is becoming the second major clustering centre after America. IC design house seems to be the upcoming star in Taiwan semiconductor industry, by its highly brainstorming to create higher additional value, it is also the next leading role in hi-tech industry in Taiwan.To IC design house, the quality of employees is the key of competitiveness, therefore, only dependent on the staff's constant research and innovation, could occupy a space on the competitive market, so the reserch of management of professional human resources in IC design house seems even more important. This study adopts the in-deep interview of qualitative reserch, including six RD engineers, four product engineers and five human resources personnel as the research objects.The main purpose is to understand what the employees truely demand in IC design house? How is the operation of human resource management practice and the expectation to Human Resource Department? How the professional personnel of human resources understand the idea and demand of employees, make a right management system and offer the best welfare measure. Through the interview materials, along with domestic, international documents, the results come out as following: 1. The demand of RD engineers and product engineers learning development opportunity / excellent manager / good working environment / understand the employees demand / limitless creation and innovation / the balance of work and life 2. The expectation of RD engineers and product engineers to Human Resource Department to be intercommunication channel / complete training program / attract and retain outstanding talents / strengthen professional ability more actively 3. The contribution of Human Resource Department of IC design house to Human Resource Managemant Recruit high-quality talent / administration efficiency / salary and welfare policy / incentive system to keep talent / promote innovation ability of employees / complete training program / build a common vision /build a high-quality working environment / intercommunication channel / understand the employees truly need 4. IC Design House Human Resource Management Model (1)recruit and employ: recruit channel: manpower bank/ employee recommendation/ campus recruit / national defence labor recruit procedure: recruit by HR or department director employ characteristic: good team player/ dedicated/ learning spirit employ term: response ability/ professional ability/ communication coordinate ability/ innovation ability (2)salary and benefit: attractive payment/ cash allowance/ meal allowance/ entertainment/ group insurance/ society safety/ retirement plan (3)training and development: e-learning/ invite outside instructor/ lessons by senior employees/ seminar/ training plan evaluation/ training result check and accept (4)performance evaluation: fair/ justice/ team performance/ individual performance (5)labor relations: interaction frequently/ diversified encourage program/ resignation management

The catching-up economies are unable to obtain the same power and financial status as that of the developed countries are primarily due to the less technological advancement. The research integrates the related facts and models on the development on high-tech of those of catching-up economies. A feasible strategic analysis structure is proposed serving as recommended guideline for the high-tech industries in those catching-up economies. Utilizing the CD/DVDs, semi-conductors and biological technology industries, all from Taiwan, as examples, to illustrate how the catching-up economies may structure the high-tech industries as well as how to develop strategies for the development of those three types of industries in Taiwan. The developed countries have accumulated the ability and resources from the past centuries to build the ability of R&D innovation, processing innovation, and assembly innovation in sequence. The catching-up economies must initially proceed with the method of reverse engineering. The step initiates with creating the assembly innovation and ends with research pertinent to the utilization of intensive brain-power. The research studies categorizes and divides the internal development of industry into four periods: the emerging period, the growing period, the expanding period, and the maturing period. The catching-up economies must overcome the various difficulties in order to reach the maturing period; and ultimately be able to obtain the same status as those industries of developed countries.

A continuous service innovation such as Cloud Computing is highly attractive in the business-to-business world because it brings the service provider both billions of dollars in profits and superior competitive advantage. The success of such an innovation is strongly tied to a consumer’s adoption decision. When dealing with a continuous service innovation, the consumer’s decision process becomes complicated. Not only do consumers need to consider two different decisions of both whether to adopt and how long to adopt (contract length), but also the increasing trend of the service-related technological improvements invokes a forward-looking behavior in consumer’s decision process. Moreover, consumers have to balance the benefits and costs of adoption when evaluating decision alternatives. Consumer adoption decisions come with the desire to have the latest technology and the fear of the adopted technology becoming obsolete. Non-adoption prevents consumers from being locked-in by the service provider, but buying that technology may be costly. Being bound to a longer contract forfeits the opportunity to capitalize on the technological revolution. Frequently signing shorter contracts increases the non-physical efforts such as learning, training and negotiating costs. Targeting the right consumers at the right time with the right service offer in the business-to-business context requires an efficient strategy of sales resource allocation. This is a “mission impossible” for service providers if they do not know how consumers make decisions regarding service innovation. In order to guide the resource allocation decisions, we propose a complex model that integrates the structural, dynamic, and learning approaches to understand the consumer’s decision process on both whether or not to adopt, and how long to adopt a continuously updating service innovation in a B2B context.

This thesis is an attempt to bridge some research gaps in the area of behavioural finance and investment through adopting the three essays scheme of PhD dissertations. There is a widespread belief that the traditional finance theory failed to provide a sufficient and plausible explanation for (1) what motivates individual investors to trade, (2) the pattern of their trading and the formation of their portfolios, (3) the determinants of cross section of expected returns other than risk. Behavioural Finance, however, offers more realistic assumptions based on two building blocks; behavioural biases of irrational investors and the limits of arbitrage that prevent the arbitrageurs from correcting mispricing and pushing prices back to fundamental values. This dissertation is structured as follows: In the first essay, the disposition effect is defined as the propensity of investors to realize gains too early while being loath to realize losses. Capital gains overhang is a measure of unrealized capital gains and losses that is associated with the disposition effect and the trading activities of behaviourally biased investors. We discover that firm characteristics can play a role in explaining variations in the capital gains overhang that is consistent with the activities of behaviourally biased and disposition investors. Specifically, we find that capital gains overhang is increasing in firm attributes that attract behaviourally biased investors, namely, earnings per share, leverage, growth and size. Capital gains overhang is also declining in market liquidity, possibly because liquidity allows behaviourally biased investors to excessively trade shares and beta and corporate earnings, probably because when high risk and inefficient firms experience losses, disposition investors experience capital losses that they are reluctant to realize. In the second essay, quantile regressions are employed to analyse the relationship between the unrealized capital gains overhang and expected returns. The ability of the disposition effect to generate momentum is also considered for the extreme expected return regions (0.05th) and (0.95th) quantiles. To do so, 450,617 observations belonging to 5176 US firms are employed, covering a time span from January 1998 to June 2015. Following the methodology of Grinblatt and Han (2005), the findings show significant differences across various quantiles in terms of signs and magnitudes. These findings indicate a nonlinear relationship between capital gains overhang and expected returns since the impact of capital gains overhang as a proxy for disposition effect on expected returns vary across the expected return distribution. More precisely, the coefficients of capital gains overhang are significantly positive and decline as the expected returns quantiles increase from the lowest to the median expected return quantiles. However, they become significantly negative and rise with the increase in expected returns quantiles above median expected returns quantiles. The findings also suggest that the disposition effect is not a good noisy proxy for momentum at the lowest expected return quantile (0.05th). However, interestingly it seems to generate contrarian in returns at the highest expected returns quantile (0.95th). In the third essays, we try to discover systematic disagreements in momentum, asymmetric volatility and the idiosyncratic risk momentum return relationship between high-tech stocks and low-tech stocks. We develop several hypotheses that suggest greater momentum profits, fainter asymmetric volatility and weaker idiosyncratic risk-momentum return relation in the high-tech stocks relative to the low tech stocks. To this end, we divide 5795 stocks that are listed in the Russell 3000 index from January 1995 to December 2015 into two samples SIC code and analysed them using the Fama French with GJR-GARCH-M term. The results show that the high-tech stocks provide greater momentum profits especially for portfolios that have holding and ranking periods of less than 12 months. In most cases momentum returns in the high-tech stocks explain a symmetric response to good and bad news while the momentum returns in the low-tech stocks show an asymmetric response. Finally, the idiosyncratic risk-momentum return relation is insignificant for high-tech stocks while it is significant and negative for low-tech stocks. That is, as idiosyncratic risk increases, momentum decreases for low-tech stocks. These findings are robust to different momentum strategies and to different breakpoints.

The thesis "Perception of Chinese hi-tech brands in Europe" examines how Chinese origin affects the perception of hi-tech brands by European customers. The theoretical part deals with the concept of country of origin and its relationship to the concept of brand equity. The practical part is devoted to the research on the topic of perception of Chinese smartphones in Europe. The research results confirm both hypotheses: 1. Customers when choosing a smartphone brand are not affected by the country of origin. 2. European customers do not perceive Chinese hi-tech products as of low quality.

Les deux dernières décennies ont été marquées par la montée en puissance des économies émergentes et l’émergence de startups et PME technologiques à forte croissance internationale. Cette tendance a donné naissance à un nouveau domaine de recherche, l’entrepreneuriat international dans les économies émergentes. L’objet de cette recherche qualitative est d’étudier les facteurs qui influencent le processus d’identification des opportunités internationales chez les PME technologiques issues d’une économie émergente, la Tunisie. A cet effet, nous étudions le processus d’internationalisation de sept PME technologiques tunisiennes du secteur des technologies de l’information et des communications. Les résultats de l’analyse intra et inter cas identifient les traits de personnalité de l’entrepreneur, les capacités entrepreneuriales internationales et les réseaux relationnels de l’entrepreneur comme les trois principales catégories de facteurs qui influencent l’identification des opportunités internationales. Notre recherche aboutit à la formulation et la discussion de huit propositions qui permettent de schématiser un modèle explicatif de l’internationalisation des PME technologiques issues des économies émergentes. / The last two decades have been marked by the rise of emerging economies and the emergence of start-ups and Hi-Tech SMEs with high international growth. This trend has spawned a new area of research, international entrepreneurship in emerging economies. The purpose of this qualitative research is to study the factors that influence the process of identifying international opportunities in technological SMEs from an emerging economy, Tunisia. To this end, we are studying the process of internationalization of seven Tunisian technological SMEs in the information and communications technology sector. The results of the intra- and inter-case analysis identify entrepreneurial personality traits, international entrepreneurial capabilities and relational networks as the three main categories of factors that influence the identification of international opportunities. Our research results in the formulation and discussion of eight proposals that make it possible to schematize an explanatory model of the internationalization of technological SMEs emerging from emerging economies.

Technology is trying to make life easier for students today. Digitized study materi-als or online courses are just a small example of what modern era enable students. This thesis deals with technological impact on academic dishonesty. It points to the hi-tech sector of the Czech Republic, to the technology market that allows unethical behavior and to the use of these technologies by students. This thesis answers questions about who is a cheating student, how he cheats and what motivates him to do so. These are predominantly students aged 21-23, in the second year full-time study, with good financial situation. Gender or field of studies does not influ-ence the unethical behavior of the student. The thesis outlines recommendations that schools could take to prevent students from academic dishonesty. As unethical behavior begins in schools but should continue in the working environment, the thesis also points to possible solutions for employers who are not interested in unethically acting employees.