Taiwanese Case Research Articles

Process Re-Engineering Success in Small and Medium Sized Enterprises

The factors that lead to business process re-engineering (BPR) success in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are not clearly understood. This article reviews the main contributing factors to BPR success using a framework that considers culture, structure, technology and resource. Eight Taiwanese case studies are used to explore issues contributing to, or impeding, successful process re-engineering in small firms. The analysis shows that BPR success is empowered by innovation, employee empowerment, top management commitment and strategic direction and is dependent upon customer relations, IS involvement and financial resources.

Hyperammonemia and positive allopurinol test in hyperinsulinism–hyperammonemia syndrome: Taiwanese case report

Hyperammonemia and positive allopurinol test in hyperinsulinism–hyperammonemia syndrome: Taiwanese case report

Impact of government and industrial agglomeration on industrial land prices: A Taiwanese case study

Government intervention in industrial development is important in promoting national economic development in numerous Asian countries. This study aims to examine the influence of government and industrial agglomeration on industrial land prices by constructing hedonic pricing functions. Based on model testing, this study indicates that variables related to general attributes, locational attributes, industrial agglomeration and government determine land prices. Moreover, industrial agglomeration is positively related to land prices; that is, industrial parks with a stronger agglomeration economy have higher land value. However, the role of government is negatively related to land prices, indicating that government intervention has no influence in increasing land prices and probably results from the inappropriate location of industrial parks and dissatisfaction of those parks' management services. To increase the development efficiency and industry competitiveness, this study proposes that government should identify and improve the weaknesses of industrial parks and promote the establishment of industrial clustering and information transfer among firms.

Regime-switching analysis for the impacts of exchange rate volatility on corporate values: a Taiwanese case

A second-moment, regime-switching model with not only a switching intercept and a switching slope, but also a switching error variance, is applied to examine the impacts of exchange rate volatility (ERV) on corporate values (CV) for the 10 industries investigated in Taiwan. Two different regimes categorized as strong-impact and weak-impact are identified. The dominant power varies from one industry to another. The Wald statistics for the null of equality are ambiguous, which show that if the Markov-switching (MS) model is plausible, then the ERV might not be one major factor, but another factor that could switch the CV of Taiwan's industries. For the model's volatility influence, the data of 8 out of 10 industries are shown to fit a two-state model when the volatility is stimulated. A two-state, first-order MS model is appropriate for the ‘goodness of fit’ analysis at the 10% significant level.

Experiences of water transfer from the agricultural to the non-agricultural sector in Taiwan

Two type of water transfer have occurred in Taiwan, namely, regular and emergency transfers. According to the prevailing Water Law, water is permitted to transfer among water rights holders whenever they need and agree upon relevant compensation. As for the emergency transfer, in the event of extensive drought, every water user sector will suffer serious water shortages resulting in unavoidable economic losses. The Government should step in to perform emergency water transfer by suspending agricultural water rights a course of action considered to cause smaller losses even when an entire rice crop is abandoned, to minimize overall losses to the national macro economy. This study has examined two typical water transfer cases that were implemented in Taiwan. The first one involved the regular transfer of agricultural water from the Changhwa and Yunlin Irrigation Associations (IAs) to the industrial user Formosa Petrochemical Corporation (FPC). The second one involved the transfer of agricultural water from the Taoyuan, Shimen and Shinchu IAs to domestic and industrial uses during the period from 2002 to 2006 as an emergency transfer. From the perspective of water transfer options, Taiwanese case studies have demonstrated that an officially recognized marketing oriented water transfer mechanism has yet to be established. However, water transfer is still undertaken whenever necessary. In this respect, regardless of the type of water transfer undertaken, water rights can only be suspended but not terminated. In spite of the types of water transfer, it is inevitable to affect the ecological and environmental functions. Therefore, further investigations with related topics should be broadly taken into account. Ecosystem services of paddy fields have attracted increasing recognition in the monsoon Asian countries. Currently, there is a research program collaborating with the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) on the impact and influence induced by water transfer with a major concern on the ecosystem services of paddy fields in Taiwan.

Privatising the State by Béatrice Hibou , Jonathan Derrick (review)

Book Reviews 267 Béatrice Hibou (ed.), Jonathan Derrick (trans.), Privatising the State (London: Hurst; New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), pp. 279. ISBN 0-231-13464-9. $37.00 (pbk). Against the trend of many edited books, this collection successfully argues a focused theoretical point across a range of country case studies. In essence, the authors do not represent processes of privatization in terms of their success or failure; nor do they wish to look at privatization as an unproblematic concept, which can then be used to derive analyses of the changing forms of states and markets. Rather, the impetus of this book is in a sense more profound: it aims to define privatization as a social realm in which the meaning of the distinction between the state and the civic/private is nullified. The repercussions of this argument are considerable. There is now an established literature on privatization that—in normatively critical fashion—demon strates how the (neo)liberal tenets of privatization are misleading because the insti tutions of the market and the state are constantly being 'straddled' by well-placed elites. However, Hibou and her co-authors are much more determinedly TiminaT: it is not the violation of familiar categorizations (state/market, private/public, bureau cratic/ civic) that are being undermined but the categorizations themselves. Thus, there are processes of 'stateification' (perhaps its original French phras ing is more elegant!), marketization, forms of political regulation, forms of legiti mization, and negotiation which all locate the meaning of privatization in a complex social realm in which public authority is economic power and vice versa. The concern of the book is not to evaluate the processes that are captured within this perspective as much as to map them and make the core revisionist point that we need to rethink the way we look at privatization before we might then comment on its desirability, performance, and so on. The book is divided into three sections, each of which focuses on a different aspect of the politics of privatization. Part I uses the cases of China and Poland to demon strate how privatization has not led to an emaciation of the state, but a displacement of state authority into new areas of economic activity. Both cases show how states use new forms of regulation (by 'remote control' in Kernen's words), new ideolog ical constructions, and numerous 'revolving doors' of personnel to maintain state influence in privatized firms. Reading these chapters, one is persuaded that priva tization has done nothing for the 'free market' but has produced quasi-marketized public/ private forms of production and trade. Part II focuses on the state's interna tional sovereignty and shows how ostensible weaknesses or absences in sovereignty are in fact manifestations of more complex private/ public constructions. Thus, the use of foreign mining companies and security firms, which look for all the world like some form of contemporary Royal Chartered Company, are contracted to boost state revenues or to shore up a military presence against a rebel army. In Chad, borders are more akin to frontiers in which local militias, bureaucratic elites, and traffickers maintain order and regulate/ tax trade. For the Taiwanese case, an absence of jurid ical sovereignty has led to the construction of private commercial representations that also take guidance from governments. Part III explores the ways in which priva tization has changed state practices, away from universal national programmes and towards negotiated and quasi-formal forms of economic management which might be called 'governance' if it was not for the illicit features that these practices involve. Much of the focus here (as in the rest of the book) is on everyday practices rather ) Max Weber Studies 2008. 268 Max Weber Studies than declarations, legislation, and constitutions. The latter have indeterminate pur chase, and might even constitute ruses to mislead external agencies form the more pedestrian and opaque realities of state power. Each of the case studies is of high quality and refreshingly theoretically engaged (as opposed to empirical and comparative in approach). I will finish with a few criti cal comments, none of which should be taken as a reason not to read the book, which is an important...

Evaluating the performance of sponsored Chinese herbal medicine research

Chinese herbal medicine has recently become a hot research field internationally; an increasing number of pharmaceutical researchers and scientists have dedicated themselves to such research work. Based on papers in the American Journal of Chinese Medicine from 2002 to 2004, 60% of papers published in the journal were sponsored by different institutions in the authors’ countries. This fact indicates that researchers receive sponsorship for their work, and sponsors should pay more attention on the control of the researchers to use financial support more efficiency. This study applied Analytic Hierarchy Process, AHP to evaluating the performance of sponsored Chinese herbal medicine research, and this method can help sponsors weight evaluation elements without having to change the system of every category of research. To explain the process and application of AHP, a Taiwanese case study is presented. The analytical results presented in this study, provide a reference for institutes supporting research on Chinese Herbal Medicine.

Liability of foreignness and entry mode choice: Taiwanese firms in Europe

This paper examines the case of Taiwanese firms operating in Europe where linkages to local resources overcome the liability of foreignness. Taiwanese firms have chosen the wholly owned subsidiary (WOS) as the entry mode because the WOS is more effective in establishing and managing local relationships. Both intra-firm and inter-firm linkages are sought. While intra-firm linkages are useful in exploiting firm-specific capabilities, inter-firm linkages are useful in exploring new capabilities. The Taiwanese case demonstrates the importance of building local responsiveness and achieving vertical integration within the firm at the same time.

Artificial neural networks in reorganization outcome and investment of distressed firms: The Taiwanese case

Using a sample of 59 Taiwanese firms in distress, we investigate investor gains or losses around the filing date and the confirmation date of the reorganization plan and propose ex ante trading strategies that can generate potentially substantial returns from these stocks. We further experiment with a novel approach to sensitivity analysis of neural network inputs for refining and rating the most important input variables and then construct artificial neural network (ANN) models to classify and predict the post-reorganization filing resolutions in a three- (Model 1) and two-group (Models 2 and 3) resolution setting. We are unaware of any other paper that has used artificial intelligence techniques in analyzing post-bankruptcy resolutions. The results show that our five-variable models produce a consistent estimate between the training and testing sets; that is, both three- and two-group models are of a high degree of accuracy and stability, demonstrating the robustness of the ANN models.

Using a Set of Strategic Indicator Systems as a Decision-making Support Implement for Establishing a Recycling-oriented Society - A Taiwanese Case Study (16 pp)

BACKGROUND, SCOPE AND AIMS: To realize the vision of sustainable development (SD) originating from the 'only one earth' philosophy, and to integrate the conceptions of ecology and sustainability into the planning and decision-making criteria of urban growth management, the establishment of a recycling-oriented society (ROS) is essential. However, before the above intention can be achieved, it is indispensable to develop a system of strategic indicators for supporting a radical reformation of the urban development plan. Therefore, this study, based on the conception of the new urban development pattern ROS, attempted to carefully choose a sample city in Taiwan for launching a preliminary case study, and furthermore designed and proposed a concise and strategy-oriented assessment indicator system termed ROSAIS. ROSAIS, on the one hand, can act as a compass for understanding resource using efficiency and recycling status during city development and, on the other hand, can serve as an implement supporting decision-making for ROS construction. According to the definition and spirit of ROS, the structure of ROSAIS should clearly represent the relationship between resources and environment in human activities. The eco-efficiency indicator system (EEIS) and environmental symbiosis indicator system (ESIS) can be considered two key subindicator systems, and are the necessary components of ROSAIS. EEIS chooses the dominant production sectors in urban economic activities to calculate their eco-efficiency (EE). Separately, for obtaining a consensus regarding the framework of ESIS, the questionnaire approaches and expert consultation, together with the research experience and foundation of current relevant studies and indicator systems, are applied when crucial resource and environmental issues and respective indicators are selected. The calculation results of EEIS in this case study indicated that among the three dominant production activities (agricultural, fishery, and animal husbandry sector) the fishery sector has the highest EE, which indicates that the fishery activities and resources significantly influence the sustainability of the economic-environmental system of the sample city. Furthermore, according to a consensus achieved in ESIS, local green spaces, resource recovery, energy consumption pattern change, freshwater conservation and greenhouse effect abatement were considered as the five crucial issues influencing how the case study city can develop into an ES-city. The rate of local green spaces, resource recycling, freshwater conservation and the rate of reduction of nonrenewable energy use as well as carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions were used to evaluate the above five issues. This case study is unparalleled in Taiwan. Even in Japan, where ROS legislation has been implemented, this kind of study remains in the preliminary stages. Furthermore, when communicating the indicator results, it is essential to provide the context and countermeasures of the crucial issues that are faced. The two sub-indicator systems proposed in this case study could comply completely with the above-mentioned requirements. For example, the EEIS provides information for achieving a balance between environmental burden and economic benefits among dominant production sectors; the ESIS provides information for setting strategies for overcoming the crucial issues faced. This study recommends that urban planers should consider the construction of the corresponding strategic indicator system to be indispensable, and makes further use of the indicator results related to the environmental education of residents for identifying and promoting participation with ROS, and turning them into implements for supporting urban SD decision-making. Furthermore, a successful indicator system depends on data availability and quality. This study recommends that urban planers should pay considerable attention to constructing relevant data collection channels, databases and the data quality.

An implementation model for WEGS in WLAN applications: a Taiwanese case

The advances in wireless communication technologies in recent years have caused enterprises to pay more attention to the development of mobile commerce (m-commerce). Studies have indicated that many enterprises have failed in the implementation of information systems (ISs). A meaningful model is needed as a reference for the implementation of wireless systems (WS). This paper therefore proposes such a model on the basis of the relevant literature and a practical case study. The paper begins with a case study of a wireless exhibition guide system (WEGS) based on a wireless local area network (WLAN). The implementation is investigated on the basis of the key success factors in m-commerce as identified in the literature, and by comparing the differences between an information system and a wireless system. Finally, a reference model for implementing a wireless system is proposed to help enterprises reduce the risks associated with m-commerce.

Transhipment Port Selection and Decision-making Behaviour: Analysing the Taiwanese Case

The study uses the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) technique to determine the importance of various criteria in the transhipment port selection decision-making process. The authors propose a set of transhipment port selection criteria from a container carrier's perspective. Sourcing the data from an AHP survey in Taiwan, transhipment port selection is found, tenuously at this first stage of research, to depend mainly on port competitiveness as represented by the cost that carriers are faced with for loading and discharging of containers and on port efficiency as represented by the container loading and discharging rates. Fuzzy multiple criteria decision-making methodology (FMCDM) was applied to obtain evaluations of port alternatives and the relevant responses de-fuzzified to derive crisp values of port performance.

An empirical investigation of total quality management: a Taiwanese case

Not long ago, the Asia Pacific area suffered economic decline due to financial crises. By contrast, Taiwan, stood apart from its regional competitors and was able to manage and turn the crises into opportunities. Besides the financial factors discussed by economists, quality management should also be considered as a major factor in this development. Investigates how industry in Taiwan implemented quality issues, especially total quality management, within the last decade. Questionnaires were generated and distributed to the largest corporations in Taiwan to gather information. Statistical analysis was performed to evaluate the quality implementation status in Taiwan. The results can be used to study the comparative impacts of quality management in the area of the Asia Pacific.

Inequality decomposition by factor component: a “rank-correlation” approach illustrated on the Taiwanese case

SummaryThis paper systematises the method initiated by Burtless (1999) and provides a general framework for decomposing inequality by factor components. It has the double advantage over usual decomposition procedures to allow for a decomposition of changes in the whole income distribution and to distinguish between the effect of marginal distribution changes of income sources and that of changes in correlation between income sources. An illustration is provided for Taiwan, which emphasises the central role played by changes in assortative mating of spouses.

Inequality decomposition by factor component : a “rank-correlation” approach illustrated on the Taiwanese case

The issue of measuring the relative importance of income factors in the distribution of household income is at the heart of studies of changes in income inequality. Usual decompositions methods mostly based on Shorrocks (1982) framework allow for a broad evaluation of the contribution of income sources. These decomposition procedures however suffer from two strong drawbacks: i) the share of inequality imputed to any income source is independent of the inequality measure used and, ii) the impact of changes in the marginal distribution of income sources cannot be disentangled from the effect of changes in correlation between sources. This paper generalizes the methodology briefly and intuitively initiated by Burtless (1999) and provides a general framework for inequality decomposition by factor components. This method, based on the concept of rank correlation, has two main advantages over usual decomposition procedures: i) it allows for a decomposition of observed changes in the whole income distribution and not just of a specific inequality index and, ii) it enables to isolate the specific impact of marginal distribution changes of income sources, as well as that of changes in correlation between sources. This paper illustrates the application of the methodology on Taiwanese data over the 1979-94 period. After a long phase of economic development with decreasing inequality, Taiwan has experienced a widening of income disparities since the end of the 70s. Many studies emphasize the role played by changes in family structure and especially to a rise in assortative mating of spouses, but fail to measure the specific impact of rising correlation between spouses' income. Using the methodology developed in the first part of the paper, we find that changes in the earning structure of household members have been strongly unequalizing and that the main force comes from the rise in the correlation between spouses' earnings.

Taiwan's Distorted Democracy in Comparative Perspective

Many scholars have lauded Taiwan's successful democratization as a miracle, parallel to its well-known miracle of the 1960s and 1970s. This paper argues, however, that the fulfillment of formal, procedural conditions of democracy conceals the development of a distorted democracy in Taiwan. An iron rectangle of the state, the ruling party, local factions, and conglomerates have gradually dominated Taiwan's political economy at the expense of distributional equality and economic efficiency. In addition to the analysis of these four institutions, this paper extends the neo-institutional analysis to a comparison with the cases of Korea and Japan. These cross-country comparisons disclose the gradual convergence of the Taiwanese case with the Korean and Japanese models.

Taiwan's Distorted Democracy in Comparative Perspective

Many scholars have lauded Taiwan's successful democratization as a "political miracle," parallel to its well-known "economic miracle" of the 1960s and 1970s. This paper argues, however, that the fulfillment of formal, procedural conditions of democracy conceals the development of a distorted democracy in Taiwan. An iron rectangle of the state, the ruling party, local factions, and conglomerates have gradually dominated Taiwan's political economy at the expense of distributional equality and economic efficiency. In addition to the analysis of these four institutions, this paper extends the neo-institutional analysis to a comparison with the cases of Korea and Japan. These cross-country comparisons disclose the gradual convergence of the Taiwanese case with the Korean and Japanese models.

Juvenile Justice Legislation in Canada and Taiwan

Canada's changes in juvenile justice legislation have been extensively analyzed in relation to the urbanization, industrialization, and growth in education of the last century. During the last half century, Taiwan has experienced these same structural transformations. Using three models of juvenile justice, this article examines the usefulness of the analysis usually given the Canadian case for understanding changes in Taiwanese juvenile justice legislation. It is concluded that the Canadian analysis is partially, but not fully, adequate for the Taiwanese case. The differences allow further reflection on the experiences of both countries.

Correlates of public opinions toward punishment: The Taiwanese case

This study examines the impact of attitude toward the limits of official power and other attitudinal correlates upon the Taiwanese public's views of punishment. Data were from a sample of 3,751 adult respondents who participated a national survey in 1984. Findings from this study showed that the majority of Taiwanese favor an immediate and harsh punishment of criminals. Furthermore, acceptance of a broader official power and other attitudinal correlates determine the public's punitive opinions.

The Declining Gender Difference in Crime: The Taiwanese Case

Industrialized Taiwan is facing increasing crime rates. Despite concern from the government as well as the general public, crime has hardly been researched. Research regarding gender difference in crime is nonexistent in Taiwan. This article examines the extent and nature of gender difference in crime from 1979 to 1993 in Taiwan. Data are from official arrest records in Crime Statistics. Results of a longitudinal analysis reveal that both male and female total crime rates have increased. However, the male-to-female crime ratio has declined in total arrests, as well as in four types of crimes: violent, property, drug, and gambling. The sharpest decline in gender ratio has occurred in the category of drug offenses.