1、INTERNATIONALBUSINESSRESEARCHCanadian Center of Science and EducationfcA*CCSE International Business Research vol. I,NO.2April 2008 www .ccsenet.org/joumal. htm 1ContentsA Profile of Innovative Women Entrepreneurs3Aida IdrisFDI and Economic Growth Relationship: an Empirical Study on Malaysia 11Har W
2、ai Mun, Teo Kai Lin, Yee Kar ManForecasting Growth of Australian Industrial Output Using Interest Rate Models 19Lin LuoA Mean- maximum Deviation Portfolio Optimization Model 34Wu JinwenPost-IPO Operating Performance and Earnings Management 39Nurwati A. Ahmad-ZalukiResearch on the Acquirement Approac
3、h of Enterprise Competitiveness Based on the Network View 49Shuzhen Chu Fontaine and Richarson, 2003; Ong Johnson, 2001). Some of the most profitable companies in the world have associated their growth with innovation, which they perceive as the ability to change and reinvent themselves as a way to
4、exploit opportunities.In most studies on entrepreneurial innovation (Gudmundson et al, 2003; Hayton et al, 2002; Shane, 1993; Thomas Hofstede, 1998) have often described behavioural differences between men and women in certain cultural settings. Masculine societies, in particular, expect men to be a
5、ggressive and women to be passive. They consistently emphasise male-female differences in social status and roles; as a result men and women choose different subjects at school and different careers, and they treat sons and daughters differently at home. Thus through this “social conditioning” proce
6、ss, masculinity - as a cultural value - induces gender differentiated behaviours. With this in mind, any research which combines men and women as a single sample is believed to be seriously misleading.Research on Malaysian entrepreneurs supports the notion that male and female entrepreneurs possess
7、different personal3Vol. 1, No. 2 International Business Researchand business characteristics. Abdul Rashid (1995) finds in his study of 115 successful entrepreneurs that more women enter business at an older age than men, and more women are either divorced or separated. The women are also more highl
8、y educated, and found in less diverse industries. In addition while the women place a higher value on interpersonal relationships, men perceive controlling as a more important function. With such arresting revelations, it is a wonder that related studies have not caught on among local researchers an
9、d thus existing literature provide only snapshots of gender differences in the society. Other scholars such as Ong and Sieh (2003) and Sieh et al (1991) have made a more in-depth examination of the characteristics of Malaysian women entrepreneurs but not included innovation issues in their analysis
10、- a gap which the current study sees fit to fill.The issue of innovation has certainly gained momentum in Malaysia over the last decade, so much so that The Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation (MOSTI) was set up in 2003 with the objective of promoting the scientific and innovative culture
11、 among Malaysians. Working together with other related agencies, MOSTI is responsible for some of Malaysias most outstanding scientific activities including the joint space project with Russia, and the exhibition on Scientific Excellence in Islamic Civilisation in Kuala Lumpur. It is unfortunate, ho
12、wever, that in Malaysia there is a tendency (Nun, 1988; Chik and Abdullah, 2002) to equate innovation with high technology and ignore the development of novelties in the administrative areas of entrepreneurship such as marketing and human resource. It is of utmost urgency that this malpractice is ad
13、dressed if the country is really serious about building its competitive advantages.When applying the concept of innovation to entrepreneurs, the general definition offered by Zaltman et al (1973) is perhaps the most relevant to the current study as it includes individuals as a possible unit of analy
14、sis; by so doing the authors have made the measuring of innovation much easier as the degree of novelty or newness may be measured based only on the entrepreneurs perception. It is concurrent with the definition proposed by Rogers and Shoemaker (1971) in the sense that something is an innovation if
15、the individual himself/herself sees it as new, regardless of how other members of the society perceive it. The description is also useful in that it takes into account other forms of novelty than product, such as practices and ideas. Thus based on these earlier works, Johanessen et al (1998) are abl
16、e to offer a more comprehensive definition of innovation for entrepreneurs - one which considers a whole range of business elements including the product and/or service, supplies, marketing, process and general administration. A more contemporary concept (Damanpour Kanter, 2001; Gudmundson et al, 20
17、03) of entrepreneurial innovation also includes the notion of adding value for the consumers as well as achieving higher efficiency and effectiveness or some other business objectives.In the present context, entrepreneurial innovativeness is defined as follows. This definition is considered appropri
18、ate as it reflects novelties which have already been carried out by the entrepreneur, instead of a personality inclined towards innovation (Thomas a period of 2 months is allocated for the questionnaires to be returned. Data are then entered into the computer and henceforth analysed using the Statis
19、tical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) application.The first part of the survey instrument consists of 9 items which have been adapted from Sieh et al (1991), and are intended to capture the personal and business background of the respondents. These variables are: Age Group, Marital Status, Highes
20、t Educational Attainment, Form of Ownership, Type of Business, Duration of Business, Business Location, Average Annual Income and Number of Full-time Employees. The answer options are designed to yield either nominal or ordinal data, which are often useful as descriptive statistics (Zikmund, 2003).
21、The fifteen items used to measure entrepreneurial innovativeness represent changes and novelties which have been observed to be common among Malaysian women entrepreneurs such as introducing new products or services, opening up new branches, using new technology or machinery, and changing the organi
22、zation structure. The five-point Likert scale ranges from 1=Never implemented to 5=Continuously implemented, with 3=Not sure as the mid-point. The level of innovativeness is measured by totaling up the mean scores of the fifteen items. The total means are then compared using ANOVA for the various re
23、spondent categories to determine any significant relationships between innovativeness and the 9 categorical variables.In the study, the population is defined as women who fulfill the ensuing criteria. One, they are business owners or shareholders actively involved in the operation and decision-makin
24、g of the said business; those who are mere investors are not included as it is unlikely that they are wholly familiar with the strategic initiatives of the business. Two, they4International Business Research April, 2008are registered as at November, 2006, with either the Small and Medium Industries
25、Development Corporation (SMIDEC) or the Ministry of Entrepreneur and Cooperative Development (MECD); these databases are chosen because they contain all the necessary background information on the entrepreneurs including their position in the organization, full address and contact number as well as
26、the nature of their business. And finally, three, due to financial and time constraints only those based in Peninsular Malaysia are considered. After filtering out incomplete addresses and double entries, the sampling frame consists of 1,021 units.4. Discussion of ResultsPrior to the conduct of furt
27、her statistical tests, two criteria scale reliability and normality of data first need to be met to produce results which are meaningful and genuine. The Cronbachs alpha statistics are used to determine the internal consistency of the entrepreneurial innovativeness (EI) scale. The standardized alpha
28、 of 0.871 falls within the acceptable range of 0.7 thus assuring the reliability of the scale. Normality of data is checked through the inspection of Kolmogorov-Smirnov (p 0.05), skewness (-2.0 to +2.0) and kurtosis (-2.0 to +2.0) statistics, as well as the normality plots. The results demonstrate t
29、hat the EI data have passed the Kolmogorov-Smirnov criterion where p 0.200. Inspection of skewness and kurtosis statistics shows that both values fall within the range -2.0 to +2.0, thus indicating that the data do approach normality. Moreover the normal, detrended normal and boxplots indicate that
30、the data have not violated the assumption of normality (Pallant, 2001).4.1 Frequency AnalysisTable 1 presents the results of frequency analysis conducted on the sample (See Table 1). Based on the mode values for all the other nine variables, it may be said that most of the respondents: are in their
31、30s, are married and have children, hold either SPM or STPM, are sole proprietors, are in the consumer services sector, have been operating for 1 to 5 years, are located in the city, earn less than RM200,000 per annum, and have between 1 to 4 employees.The current findings imply that the growth of M
32、alaysian women entrepreneurs has been somewhat sluggish. For instance, similar to the situation fifteen years ago (Sieh et al, 1991), most women entrepreneurs today are still small operators both in terms of income and number of employees. They are also still predominantly found in the services sect
33、or, implying that women entrepreneurs have not really achieved much in penetrating a wider range of industries.One explanation which may be offered for the slow growth is the economic crisis of the late 1990s which forced many Malaysian businesses into depression; in those circumstances women-owned
34、enterprises, due to related problems such as difficulty in obtaining loans, could have faced extreme difficulty to survive, much less grow. The other reason is that perhaps Malaysian women entrepreneurs are, above all else, wives and mothers; the percentage of respondents who are married, either wit
35、h or without children, appears to remain high throughout the studies (consistently more than 60%). It is believed that family commitments may have limited their ability to maximise their business potential. On a more positive note, some development in educational attainment may be deduced. In the st
36、udy by Sieh et al (1991), approximately 13% of the corresponding sample had received only primary school education; here thosewho fall into the same category make up just 8% of the total sample. The difference of 5% seems to be due to a rise - by roughly the same amount - in the secondary school cat
37、egory.4.2 ANOVA with Post-Hoc TestsANOVA tests are handy in determining the significance of mean differences across groups. In the study it is employed to examine innovative differences across the various groups of respondents structured according to the nine categorical variables. As the size of th
38、e data is very large, here only the significant results are discussed further; significant differences are observed for six categorical variables i.e. Age, Educational Attainment, Type of Business, Location of Business, Annual Income and Number of Employees. At the outset it must also be stated that
39、 the p-values of the Levenes tests for homogeneity of variance indicate that the criterion has not been violated in all the ANOVA procedures.4.2.1 Age5Vol. 1, No. 2 International Business ResearchThe p-value of the ANOVA test is 0.027 ( 0.05. Post-hoc data indicates that these differences exist betw
40、een those located in villages and three other groups (those in cities, those in large towns and those in small towns). The EI score is lowest for those operating in villages (36.3333) and highest for the city-dwellers (48.3273) and followed by those in large towns (48.2105).4.2.5 Annual IncomeThe p-
41、value of the ANOVA test is 0.001 ( RM5,000,000 income groups). The mean score for EI appears to be lowest for the RM5,000,000 (58.0000).4.2.6 Number of EmployeesThe ANOVA test yields a p-value CCSEInternational Business Research vol. I,NO.2April 2008www .ccsenet.org/joumal. htm 1FDI and Economic Gro
42、wth Relationship: An Empirical Study on MalaysiaHar Wai MunFaculty of Accountancy and ManagementUniversiti Tunku Abdul RahmanBander Sungai Long43000 Selangor, MalaysiaEmail: harwmmail.utar.edu.myTeo Kai LinFaculty of Accountancy and ManagementUniversiti Tunku Abdul RahmanBander Sungai Long43000 Sela
43、ngor, MalaysiaYee Kar ManFaculty of Accountancy and ManagementUniversiti Tunku Abdul RahmanBander Sungai Long43000 Selangor, MalaysiaAbstractForeign direct investment (FDI) has been an important source of economic growth for Malaysia, bringing in capital investment, technology and management knowled
44、ge needed for economic growth. Thus, this paper aims to study the relationship between FDI and economic growth in Malaysia for the period 1970-2005 using time series data. Ordinary least square (OLS) regressions and the empirical analysis are conducted by using annual data on FDI and economy growth
45、in Malaysia over the 1970-2005 periods. The paper used annual data from IMF International Financial Statistics tables, published by International Monetary Fund to find out the relationship between FDI and economic growth in Malaysia case. Results show that LGDP, LGNI and the LFDI series in Malaysia
46、are I(1) series. There is sufficient evidence to show that there are significant relationship between economic growth and foreign direct investment inflows (FDI) in Malaysia. FDI has direct positive impact on RGDP, which FDI rate increase by 1% will lead to the growth rate increase by 0.046072%. Fur
47、thermore, FDI also has direct positive impact on RGNI because when FDI rate increase by 1 %, this will lead the growth increase by 0.044877%.Keywords: Growth, FDI inflows, FDI and growth relationship, Malaysias economy1. IntroductionThis paper defines foreign direct investment (FDI) as international
48、 capital flows in which a firm in one country creates or expands a subsidiary in another. It involves not only a transfer of resource but also the acquisition of control. Since the 1990s, FDI has been a source of economic growth for Malaysia, believing that besides needed capital, FDI brings in seve
49、ral benefits. The most important benefit for a developing country like Malaysia is that FDI could create more employment. In addition, technology transfer is another benefit for the host countries. When the foreign factories are set up in their countries, they will expose to higher technology production and efficiency in management. Once in future, they able to produce goods and services as competitive as foreigners do. Nevertheless, insufficient funds for investment are the main reason to seek FDI. Usually many less-developed countries lack of fund for investment. Foreign
