Comparative Study Of American Research Articles

How does the collaboration with dominant R&D performers impact new R&D employees' innovation performance in different cultural contexts? A comparative study of American and Chinese large firms

In R&D activity that is more dependent upon innovative ideas, does culture still play a significant role in determining the impact of leader-member relationship on R&D employees' innovation performance? Prior studies mostly examined the cultural influence in a general sense, but studies making a cross-cultural comparison especially in divergent work settings are rare. This study thus contributes to existing literatures by empirically testing the culturally implicit leadership theory in R&D activity with the patent co-inventing data of 51 Chinese and American firms. We find that compared with those in American firms, new R&D employees who act as subordinates in Chinese firms have stronger initiatives to collaborate with dominant R&D performers who act as leaders, while new R&D employees in American firms appear to be more indifferent to this relationship, even if they are aware that an earlier collaboration with dominant R&D performers is beneficial. In Chinese cultural context that is characterized by hierarchy and collectivism, this collaboration plays an inverted parabolic role in determining the new R&D employees' innovation performance from both quantitative and qualitative aspects. By comparison, this impact is not significant in American culture that is distinguished by democracy and individualism. Policy implications based on the Chinese cultural context are given at the end of this study.

On the Comparative Study of African American’s Blues and Korean’s Arirang

There are diverse cultures which have been expressed and sublimed into the form of art when we look into the world history. When it comes to African American culture and Korean culture, African American’s blues, spirituality, and Korean’s Arirang have been in the deep ideological root of the two nations. Under unilateral dominance and colonization, African Americans and Korean nations needed something that could embrace and burst out their agony and sadness. It was the African-American spirituality, blues, and Arirang that sometimes became their mother, their partner and their social company, consoling their despair. Although the early African-American spiritual and blues and Korean’s Arirang didn’t have any specific musical form, they were the reflectors of the two nations’ emotion and culture. It is a legacy that best reflects the sentiment of two nations. The analysis on blues, Black spiritual and Arirang in this paper will be looked into the same viewpoint of Ayana Smith and J Rhee who claimed that African American’ and Korean’s positive power was originated from their singing of blues and Arirang. This paper will unceasingly try hard to analyze the traces of their positive identity through their history and their life story. Blues and Black spiritual were sung anywhere of their life to express their true story. Arirang and other folk songs were also sung anywhere Koreans scattered to burst out their anger, sadness and joy. Likewise, the examination of the history of blues, Black spiritual and Arirang let the readers face up African American’s and Korean’s real life in the form of art. The finding in this paper will supply people with more understanding of blues and Arirang for African Americans and Koreans who were in unique historical and cultural situation. This paper will look into how the musical foundation of these two nations could become the cornerstone of rebuilding up their positive identity in the harsh reality. It will be researched and analyzed in the view of Ayana Smith and J Rhee. This study will explore and analyze the history of blues, Black spiritual and Arirang, which played a crucial role in establishing the positive identity of the two peoples.

Is Travel and Tourism a Priority for You? A Comparative Study of American and Taiwanese Residents

This research identified factors influencing people’s willingness to travel by proposing and testing a model of travel importance in a cross-cultural context. Derived from a sample of 500 Taiwanese and 559 American residents, results showed that people would travel more frequently if they perceived travel and tourism as more important personally. This perception was formed based on perceived travel benefits, value relevance, and social influence. It was also found that travel importance can be better predicted by travel benefits for Taiwanese residents whereas value relevance is a better predictor of travel importance for American residents. The paper concludes with strategies to reduce the travel-participation gap that could increase the demand for tourism products and services.

A comparative study of American and Chinese college students’ motives for food choice

Previous cross-cultural research has examined college students' food choice decisions in different countries. The current study aimed to add to the literature by examining similarities and differences in motives for food choice between American (N = 328) and Chinese (N = 333) college students. The Food Choice Questionnaire (FCQ) was used to measure the participants' motives for food choice. Students’ perceptions on the importance of diet and on their body satisfaction were also obtained. Results show that, while there are many similarities between the two cultural groups on the FCQ items, there are also significant differences. Specifically, the two groups view sensory appeal, weight, health, mood, and familiarity in a similar way, but the American participants score higher on price and convenience whereas the Chinese score higher on natural content and ethical concerns. We believe contextual cultural factors of each country may be related to these results. Women view sensory appeal and weight as significantly more important than men. Interactions between culture and gender are also found. For example, American women score significantly higher than American men on mood whereas there is no gender difference in the Chinese group; on the other hand, Chinese men score significantly higher on price than Chinese women whereas there is no gender difference in the American group.

America Unbound: Encyclopedic Literature and Hemispheric Studies by Antonio Barrenechea

Reviewed by: America Unbound: Encyclopedic Literature and Hemispheric Studies by Antonio Barrenechea Charlotte Rogers Antonio Barrenechea. America Unbound: Encyclopedic Literature and Hemispheric Studies. Albuquerque: U of New Mexico P, 2016. xiv + 231 pp. In an era of multitasking and short attention spans, Antonio Barrenechea's critical analysis of the encyclopedic novel in the Americas is an outstanding model of the benefits of deeply studying long books. In America Unbound, Barrenechea examines four works of fiction that he calls "summa Americana," or great American novels of continental proportions (xi): Herman Melville's Moby-Dick (1851), Mexican Carlos Fuentes's Terra Nostra (1975), French Canadian Jacques Poulin's Volkswagen Blues (1984), and Native American Leslie Maron Silko's Almanac of the Dead (1991). Several thematic and formal [End Page 379] threads tie these works together: each novel explores the era before the American continent was separated by the imperial languages of Spanish, English, French, and Portuguese and divided into nations; each novel also features contemporary protagonists who critique the results of those divisions. Moreover, the works all have a "masterful performance inscribed within them" that self-consciously takes the entire American continent as its muse (10). The aim of Barrenechea's elegant and jargon-free book is to demonstrate how reading encyclopedic novels from different traditions reveals their shared American roots. Barrenechea takes as his theoretical point of departure the work of Herbert Eugene Bolton, an American historian whose 1932 "The Epic of Greater America" advocated for a continental rather than a national approach to American history. Bolton was undoubtedly a pioneer who wrote against the dominant paradigm of approaching US history without considering its inter-American aspects. Yet Bolton's ideas also had some fatal flaws: the Mexican historian Edmundo O'Gorman criticized him for practicing intellectual hegemony, and Barrenechea points out that Bolton was deeply Eurocentric and rarely considered the Amerindian or African experiences in the Americas. Barrenechea proposes to update Bolton's approach and enters into dialogue with more recent scholars who have spearheaded comparative American literary studies beginning in the 1980s and 1990s, including Vera Kutzinski, Earl Fitz, Lois Parkinson Zamora, and Gustavo Pérez Firmat. What makes Barrenechea's work new is his attention to the encyclopedic American novel, whose roots can be traced to colonial writings about the New World that attempted to enumerate and contain the marvelous abundance of the continent. His selected authors participate in this drive to create a compendium of the interrelated histories of peoples of the Americas, yet they do so in a critical postmodern fashion, demonstrating a "skepticism of totalizing projects" (32). The first work under consideration is Moby-Dick, a staple of the US literary canon that Barrenechea places in a broad continental setting. The rewards of this approach are immediately evident in his contextualization of the doubloon, a unit of Ecuadorian currency that circulated throughout the Americas in the nineteenth century. Melville, who could read Spanish and Portuguese, critiques US imperial ambitions by comparing the gold rush in California and its concomitant philosophy of manifest destiny to the Spanish legend of El Dorado. Ultimately, Barrenechea goes beyond canonical readings of Moby-Dick to show that the tale of the great white whale flourishes [End Page 380] "as an encyclopedic novel that recalls, and disrupts, imperial hemispheric legacies" (24). In Boltonian fashion, this first chapter reveals the deep connections between the United States and the Spanish Empire in the New World. In erudite discussions of the three twentieth-century novels, which make up the bulk of his study, Barrenechea delves deeply into the ways in which the authors depict the violent mestizaje that lies at the root of continental American history. They do so by inserting colonial texts directly into their encyclopedic novels. For example, the author shows how Fuentes mingles the content and form of imperial documents by Columbus and Cortés with contemporary characters in Terra Nostra to "deconstruct the temporal and spatial coordinates of established histories, languages, and nations" (60). While Fuentes is a canonical Spanish American writer, the other two authors discussed in Barrenechea's study occupy the traditionally marginalized intellectual spaces of Québécois and Native American literatures. In the Francophone Poulin's...

What do children say about tidy-up time? A comparative study of American and Taiwanese children’s perceptions of tidy-up time

The purpose of this study was to examine the similarities and differences in American and Taiwanese children’s perspectives of tidy-up time. The participants consisted of 25 American kindergarteners in the southeastern US, and 25 Taiwanese kindergarteners from central Taiwan. Children were asked to respond to five questions regarding tidy-up time. Qualitative analysis of the data yielded four themes: transitions, clean and safe environments, work, and cooperation. All participants associated tidy-up time with transitions. They considered tidy-up as the notion of maintaining clean environments, but only Taiwanese children perceived it to be keeping the classroom safe. Also, all participants viewed such time as work, and as time to cooperate with each other. More Taiwanese children’s responses indicated how they and their teachers cooperate during cleaning as compared to their American counterparts.

Developing Internet Jurisdiction in B2B and B2C Contracts: Focusing on Iranian Legal System with Comparative Study of American, English and eu Laws

Abstract In the modern world, electronic communications play a significant role in areas of national and international law such as Internet jurisdiction. Private international law provides that the competent court is the court within which jurisdiction the contract is performed, so it is important to know the place of performance of the contract in the case of contracts for digital goods such as e-books or computer software delivered online. It is equally important in the case of electronic services such as e-teaching. Furthermore, as consumer protection in B2C contracts is important in developing global e-commerce, it is important to consider whether the consumer party is able to bring an action against the business party in his own place of domicile or habitual residence. The article analyses these questions and proposes ways in which the Iranian legal system might be developed to address issues of Internet jurisdiction in B2B and B2C contracts.

A comparative study of American, Japanese, and Taiwanese early childhood teachers’ perceptions of clean-up time

The purpose of this study was to examine similarities and differences of American, Japanese, and Taiwanese kindergarten teachers’ perspectives about clean-up time. The participants consisted of two female American kindergarten teachers in the southeastern US, two female Japanese kindergarten teachers on the main island, and two female Taiwanese kindergarten teachers from central Taiwan, all of whom teach four-year-olds. Qualitative analysis of the data yielded four themes regarding teachers’ views of clean-up time: teaching cleaning-up methods, the developmental stages, the extension of play, and reflection of one’s own practical knowledge and skills. These teachers perceived clean-up time was more than just a transitional time. The implications for early childhood education are presented.

Patterns of schematic structure and strategic features in newspaper editorials: A comparative study of American and Malaysian editorials

To carry a message through effectively to the public, newspaper editors need to employ the generic pattern of editorials as a rule of thumb. Yet few studies have investigated the schematic structure and persuasive style of editorials. Hence, this study aims to compare the generic characteristics in 240 editorials of The New York Times ( NYT, n = 120) and New Straits Times ( NST, n = 120). To realize the objectives, the corpus was subjected to a content analysis based on a composite framework drawn from the data and previous models. The findings revealed that American and Malaysian editorials share a similar schematic structure at the move level including four obligatory moves. However, at the step level, evidence of disparity of the style of writing was apparent. The data obtained could be used as informed input in the English for Specific Purposes (ESP) classroom, so that English as a Secondary Language (ESL)/English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students’ awareness on the conventional structures in editorial writing could be heightened.

“Hemispheric Postcolonialism: Black Female Sexuality and Slavery in the Americas”

AbstractBuilding on what Günter H. Lenz describes as the “always two‐directional processes of transculturation,” this piece brings together two classic works, Gayl Jones's Corregidora and Carlos Diegues's Brazilian film, Xica da Silva (1975), specifically addressing the hemispheric connections in cross‐cultural literary and cinematic representations of black female sexuality, colonialism and slavery in the Americas. The essay presents a critical comparison of the legacy of slave concubinage and black female resistance, noting how Jones's Corregidora helps to undermine the Brazilian myth of racial democracy, while Xica da Silva deepens Gayl Jones's Pan‐African vision of the quilombos, or maroon societies, and problematizes sexuality by magnifying the complex mix of abjection and desire, which deeply engages Jones's novel. By furthering an already existing discussion yet promoting a new critical paradigm for a hemispheric postcolonialism, this work seeks to fortify the nexus of Africana Studies, Comparative American Studies and Hemispheric Studies, but with a distinct postcolonial focus on the historic and cultural intersections of U.S. and Latin America, working within the purview of postcolonial studies in particular.

The two-way flow of news: A comparative study of American and Chinese newspaper coverage of Beijing’s air pollution

This study compares newspaper coverage of Beijing’s air pollution in China and the United States (2008–2013). There are two aims: (a) to systematically compare how such a local environmental crisis has been reported across the two countries, and (b) to explore how the news coverage were produced under the influences of social systems and news flows between the two countries. Based on the hierarchy of influence theory, the content analysis reveals that US media covered the issue earlier, having more topics ‘politicizing’ the pollution, using more negative complaints as overall themes of the news articles, more US sources, and a noticeable number of Chinese NGO sources. By comparison, Chinese media reported pollution with more Chinese sources, more self-legitimizing overall themes in which topics regarding strategies and solutions of the pollution were emphasized; it also covered the issue with mild self-criticism. The results contribute to the literature of comparative media analysis between China and the US as well as the hierarchy of influence model by suggesting a two-way flow of news between the two countries.

Analysing legal status of electronic agents in contracting through interactive websites: comparative study of American, English and EU laws developing Iranian legal system

In the modern world, electronic communications play a significant role in national and international electronic transactions. This issue has forced all legal systems to face up to many emerging legal problems in the context of electronic communications, such as the legal status of electronic agents in contracting electronically. Regarding the legal validity of e-contracts made through interactive websites, the legal status of electronic agents which play an important role in this process is questionable to see whether they are akin to real agents in the physical world or they are only a mere tool of communication. The current article tries to analyse this question by criticising a number of theories and some others based on the technical nature of the Internet, the traditional legal rules and principles and the UNCITRAL regulations on e-commerce and also the statues of American, English and EU laws on e-commerce to develop Iranian legal system.

A Comparative Study of White, Asian American and Other non-White men and Women Under Community Supervision

Data from community-living offenders were examined to compare socioeconomic demographics of Whites and non-Whites with Asian Americans, and to examine how race and gender moderate the predictive power of substance use in accounting for corrections involvement. Face-to-face interviews were conducted for 192 participants in Oregon. Men displayed higher rates of substance use and corrections involvement than women. Participating non-White men and women both experienced significantly higher rates of incarceration than White counterparts; rates for Asian-American men were similar to other men of color. With regard to employment, once again, non-White men and women were significantly more likely to be unemployed or under employed (fewer than 20 h per week). Asian-American men reported higher education levels, but fewer hours employed. All of the men consumed alcohol at high rates, but Asian-American men were arrested and convicted less often than other men for alcohol related offenses. A critical limitation to the study was the small of number of Asian-American women participants and therefore an inability to conduct specific statistical tests for this subgroup. Findings fill a gap in forensic research and practice regarding adult offenders of color.

Shadow of a Man: a Chicana/Latina Drama as Embodied Feminist Practice

One of the most important influences on the development of Cherríe Moraga's feminist theatre was undoubtedly the work of Maria Irene Fornes, the Cuban American playwright and director. Moraga wrote the first drafts of her second play Shadow of a Man while on Fornes's residency programme at the INTAR Hispanic Playwrights-in-Residence Laboratory in New York, and later Fornes directed the premiere at the Brava-Eureka Theatre in San Francisco (1990). The play radically restages the Chicana body through an exploration of the sexual and gendered politics of the family. Much has been written on how the family has traditionally been the stronghold of Chicana/o culture, but Shadow of a Man stages one of its most powerful criticisms, revealing how the complex kinship structures often mask male violence and sexual abuse. Using archival material and a range of critical studies, in this article Elizabeth Jacobs explores Moraga's theatre as an embodied feminist practice and as a means to displace the entrenched ideology of the family. An earlier version of this article was presented at the Department of English and Creative Writing, Aberystwyth University, as part of the 2014 International Women's Day events. Elizabeth Jacobs is the author of Mexican American Literature: the Politics of Identity (Routledge, 2006). Her articles have appeared in Comparative American Studies (2012), Journal of Adaptation and Film Studies (2009), Theatres of Thought: Theatre, Performance, and Philosophy (2008), and New Theatre Quarterly (2007). She works at Aberystwyth University.

Understanding the intentions behind illegal downloading: A comparative study of American and Korean college students

The purpose of this study is to examine what factors predict college students’ intentions to download digital content through unauthorized peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing sites. This study also attempts to explore how cultural contexts are related to those intentions among college students in the US and Korea. Consistent with previous studies using the theory of planned behavior (TPB), the current study using survey data shows that the theory can predict people’s behavioral intentions in the context of illegal downloading. However, across three different types of variables for predicting intention to download digital content through unauthorized P2P sites (i.e. social psychological variables, TPB variables, and expanded TPB variables), several significant differences were revealed between American and Korean students. The findings show that cultural differences may play an important role with regard to people’s intentions to engage in illegal downloading.

Shopping Preference: A Comparative Study of American and Taiwanese Perceptions

With a growing number of households turning towards the Internet and the world of e-commerce to shop, invest, make payments, and do online banking, it is crucial for online businesses to understand why some consumers prefer online shopping and some prefer shopping at a physical store. It is also important to investigate further whether their shopping preference is influenced by culture. This study aims at comparing the shopping preference between the consumers in the U.S. and in Taiwan. Three hundred and seventy-two (372) Americans and three hundred twenty- six (326) Taiwanese participated in this study. Five factors of shopping perception, including perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, past online shopping experience, perceived security, and perceived uncertainty, were measured and compared between the two groups. The research findings may be used by online businesses to help recognize the factors that influence shopping preference of these two nationalities. The results should help online businesses gain an understanding of these factors and thus direct their efforts to develop features that satisfy the needs of their target customers and alter their business model to promote factors that have a positive influence on consumer adoption of online shopping.

Characteristics of Personal Value-meaning Systems: A Comparative Study of American and Russian University Students

The comparison of substantial and dynamic parameters of personal value-meaning systems of American and Russian students (n=56) has revealed social and cultural differences among them. Substantial specifics demonstrate differences in the ranking of such values as freedom, health, cognition and close friendship within the general hierarchy of personal values. Dynamic specifics, in their turn, reveal themselves in a difference of perception of the attainability of values as well as in the level of realizability of the said values. The amount of the latter is significantly higher in American students. Results of this research show that American students have defined their life goals through the process of education and fulfill the existential phase of realization of meaningfulness. Russian students, on the contrary, are still in the process of searching for meaning of activity and have not made their choice of life perspectives yet.

Hemispheric Indigenous Studies: Introduction

This special issue approaches Native American Studies across the Americas in order to emphasize connections between indigenous people that are often overlooked and/or suppressed in scholarship by both Native and non- Native scholars. Together, the contributors call for a broader discipline that challenges the political, cultural, and linguistic dominance of settler-nations, ranging from Latin America and the Caribbean to Canada and the United States. The collection features multidisciplinary articles that address an interconnected indigenous world and traverse the fields of literature, history, photography, music, and museum studies. Articles confront issues pertain- ing to American Indian cultures from the pre-contact period to the present, and in dialogue with inter-American and transatlantic studies. In keeping with the mission of Comparative American Studies, the guest-editors argue for the value of a transnational and inter-American scholarly paradigm vis-à-vis the indigenous communities of the western hemisphere.

Commitment and collective identity of long-term union participation: the case of women union leaders in the UK and USA

This article asks what sustains women union leaders’ long-term union participation given an internal environment often hostile to women and an external context antagonistic to unions. This article considers the dynamics of long-term participation by drawing on social movement interrelated concepts of commitment and collective identity in the context of a comparative study of American and British women union leaders. The study explores the experiences of 134 women union leaders, the majority of whom are long-term union participants. The findings reveal that commitment is strengthened by women’s experience of both expressive and intrinsic rewards but that such rewards are offset by costs, some of which are universal to union leadership, but others are particularly gendered. It was found that while a gendered collective identity may inform union collective identity, it is the union collective identity and associated solidarity that remains dominant in contemporary British and American women’s union leadership.

Family assistance attitudes and family cultural conflict: A comparative study of second-generation Asian American and native-born European American emerging adults.

Research shows that ethnic minority and immigrant youth hold stronger attitudes about helping their families compared with native-born European American peers. Though often portrayed as burdensome, there has been limited empirical research on how family assistance attitudes affect the mental health among diverse emerging adults. We examined the influence of various attitudes toward family assistance on family cultural conflict, a mental health risk factor. Results from our survey showed that secondgeneration Asian Americans (N 328) rated family assistance as more important than nonimmigrant European American (N 343) college students, and that this was partly explained by differences in interdependent self-construal. As predicted, higher levels of self-expectations of daily family assistance were associated with lower self-reported family cultural conflict among second-generation Asian Americans but not among native-born European Americans. Findings suggest that for second-generation Asian Americans who are emerging adults, an incongruency between self- and family expectations for assistance may be more predictive of mental health risk than for nonimmigrant European Americans. Potential implications for mental health prevention among ethnic minority, immigrant-emerging adults are discussed.