Strategic positioning of Taiwan in the outsourcing market: Evidence from information technology services and electronic manufacturing outsourcing to China

In outsourcing relationships with China, the Electronic Manufacturing (EM) and Information Technology Services (ITS) industry in Taiwan may possess such advantages as the continuing growth of its production value, complete manufacturing supply chain, low production cost and a large-scale Chinese market, and language and culture similarity compared to outsourcing to other countries. Nevertheless, the Council for Economic Planning and Development of Executive Yuan (CEPD) found that Taiwan's IT services outsourcing to China is subject to certain constraints and might not be as successful as the EM outsourcing (Aggarwal, 2003; CEPD, 2004a; CIER, 2003; Einhorn and Kriplani, 2003; Kumar and Zhu, 2006; Li and Gao, 2003; MIC, 2006). Some studies examined this issue, but failed to (1) provide statistical evidence about lower prevalence rates of IT services outsourcing, and (2) clearly explain the lower prevalence rates of IT services outsourcing by identifying similarities and differences between both types of outsourcing contexts. This research seeks to fill that gap and possibly provide potential strategic guidelines to ITS firms in Taiwan. This study adopts Transaction Cost Economics (TCE) as the theoretical basis. The basic premise is that different types of outsourcing activities may incur differing transaction costs and realize varying degrees of outsourcing success due to differential attributes of the transactions in the outsourcing process. Using primary data gathered from questionnaire surveys of ninety two firms, the results from exploratory analysis and binary logistic regression indicated that (1) when outsourcing to China, Taiwanese firms' ITS outsourcing tends to have higher level of asset specificity, uncertainty and technical skills relative to EM outsourcing, and these features indirectly reduce firms' outsourcing prevalence rates via their direct positive impacts on transaction costs; (2) Taiwanese firms' ITS outsourcing tends to have lower level of transaction structurability relative to EM outsourcing, and this feature indirectly increases firms' outsourcing prevalence rates via its direct negative impacts on transaction costs; (3) frequency does influence firms' transaction costs in ITS outsourcing positively, but does not bring impacts into their outsourcing prevalence rates, (4) relatedness does influence firms' transaction costs positively and prevalence rates negatively in ITS outsourcing, but its impacts on the prevalence rates are not caused by the mediation effects of transaction costs, and (5) firm size of outsourcing provider does not affect firms' transaction costs, but does affect their outsourcing prevalence rates in ITS outsourcing directly and positively. Using primary data gathered from face-to-face interviews of executives from seven firms, the results from inductive analysis indicated that (1) IT services outsourcing has lower prevalence rates than EM outsourcing, and (2) this result is mainly attributed to Taiwan's core competence in manufacturing and management and higher overall transaction costs of IT services outsourcing. Specifically, there is not much difference between both types of outsourcing context in the transaction characteristics of reputation and most aspects of overall comparison. Although there are some differences in the feature of firm size of the outsourcing provider, the difference doesn't cause apparent impacts on firms' overall transaction costs. The medium or above medium difference in the transaction characteristics of asset specificity, uncertainty, frequency, technical skills, transaction structurability, and relatedness has caused higher overall transaction costs for IT services outsourcing. This higher cost might cause lower prevalence rates for ITS outsourcing relative to EM outsourcing. Overall, the interview results are consistent with the statistical analyses and provide support to my expectation that in outsourcing to China, Taiwan's electronic manufacturing firms do have lower prevalence rates of IT services outsourcing relative to EM outsourcing due to higher transaction costs caused by certain attributes. To solve this problem, firms' management should aim at identifying alternative strategies and strive to reduce their overall transaction costs of IT services outsourcing by initiating appropriate strategies which fit their environment and needs.

Guantánamo and Cuban Nationalism, Lecture by Michael E. Parmly

This flyer promotes the event "Guantánamo and Cuban Nationalism, Lecture by Michael E. Parmly", cosponsored by the FlU Latin American and Caribbean Center.

Taiwan Discovered: In Place and Time

Catalog of an exhibition held at the Frost Art Museum, Florida International University. Curated by Carol Damian and Catalina Jaramillo.

Immigration and nationalism in Greece

A source of emigration until the early 1970s, Greece has become home to a rising tide of immigrants since 1991, and its foreign-born population rose from below one to over 11 percent. Equally important is the fact that the Greek state has historically premised national belonging on ethnicity, and striven to exclude people who did not exhibit Greek ethnic traits. My study examines how immigration has challenged this nationalist model of ethnically homogeneous belonging. Further, it uses the Greek case to problematize the hegemonic assumption that the nationalist model of social organization is a human universal. Data consist of reactions to a 2010 landmark law that constituted the first jus soli bill in the nation's history, and include a plurality of voices found in parliamentary proceedings, newspapers, a government-sponsored online forum and Facebook discussions. Voices examined correspond to three main conceptual camps: people who premise belonging on ethnicity and hegemonic definitions of what it means to be Greek, people who mitigate nationalist norms enough to include immigrants, but reproduce a nationalist worldview, and people who seek to divorce political belonging from ethnicity altogether.

Does U.S counter-drug policy affect nationalism in the Anglophone Caribbean? A comparative study on the impact of counter-drug policy on nationalism in Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago

This dissertation examined the effect of United States counter-drug policy on nationalism in small states, focusing on Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago. The states were selected for their roles and geostrategic importance in the illegal drug trade; Jamaica being the largest drug producing country in the Anglophone Caribbean and having strong links to the trade of Colombian cocaine, and Trinidad being a mere seven miles from the South American coast. Since U.S. counterdrug policies have frequently been viewed in the region as imperialistic, this dovetails into ideas on the perceptions of smallness and powerlessness of Caribbean nations. Hence, U.S. drug policies affect every vulnerability faced by the Caribbean, individually and collectively. Thus, U.S. drug policy was deemed the most appropriate independent variable, with nationalism as the dependent variable. In both countries four Focus Groups and one Delphi Study were conducted resulting in a total of 60 participants. Focus Group participants, recruited from the general population, were asked about their perception of the illegal drug trade in the country and the policies their government had created. They were also asked their perception on how deeply involved the U.S. was in the creation of these policies and their opinions on whether this involvement was positive or negative. The Delphi Study participants were experts in the field of local drug policies and also gave their interpretations of the role the U.S. played in local policy creation. Coupled with this data, content analysis was conducted on various newspaper articles, press releases, and speeches made regarding the topic. In comparing both countries, it was found that there is a disconnect between government actions and the knowledge and perceptions of the general public. In Trinidad and Tobago this disconnect was more apparent given the lack of awareness of local drug policies and the utter lack of faith in government solutions. The emerging conclusion was that the impact of U.S. drug policy on nationalism was more visible in Trinidad and Tobago where there was a weaker civil society-government relationship, while the impact on nationalism was more obscure in Jamaica, which had a stronger civil-society government relationship.

Racist Aspects of Modern Turkish Nationalism

Peer reviewed

China and Taiwan

General note: Title and date provided by Bettye Lane.

Racism, nationalism and right-wing extremism online: The Austrian Presidential Election 2016 on Facebook

Thee 2016 Austrian presidential election saw a run-o between the Green party candidate Alexander Van der Bellen and the Freedom Party of Austria’s (FPÖ) far-right candidate Norbert Hofer. This paper asks: How did voters of Hofer express their support on Facebook? It presents the results of a qualitative ideology analysis of 6755 comments about the presidential election posted on the Facebook pages of FPÖ leader Heinz-Christian Strache and FPÖ candidate Hofer. The results reveal insights into the contemporary political role of the online leadership ideology, online nationalism, new racism online, the friend/enemy-scheme online, and online militancy. Right-wing extremism 2.0 is a complex problem that stands in the context of contemporary crises and demagoguery.

Perspectives on gender, migration and transnational work: joint work of social reproduction and care in Southern Europe

This paper presents the "state of the art" and some of the main issues discussed in relation to the topic of transnational migration and reproductive work in southern Europe. We start doing a genealogy of the complex theoretical development leading to the consolidation of the research program, linking consideration of gender with transnational migration and transformation of work and ways of survival, thus making the production aspects as reproductive, in a context of globalization. The analysis of the process of multiscale reconfiguration of social reproduction and care, with particular attention to its present global dimension is presented, pointing to the turning point of this line of research that would have taken place with the beginning of this century, with the rise notions such as "global care chains" (Hochschild, 2001), or "care drain" (Ehrenreich and Hochschild, 2013). Also, the role of this new agency, now composed in many cases women who migrate to other countries or continents, precisely to address these reproductive activities, is recognized. Finally, reference is made to some of the new conceptual and theoretical developments in this area.

Examining Factors Affecting Attitudes toward Nuclear Power in Taiwan

Thesis (Master's)--University of Washington, 2016-06

Cultural Nationalism

Nationalism may involve the combination of culture and politics, but for many of its most prominent students, the former is subordinate to the latter. In this view, nationalist appeals to culture are a means to a political end; that is, the achievement of statehood. Hence, for Ernest Gellner (2006 [1983]: 124), culture is but an epiphenomenon, a ‘false-consciousness … hardly worth analyzing …’. For their part, Eric Hobsbawm and Terrence Ranger (1983) suggest that national traditions are ‘invented’ by elites concerned with the legitimization of state power. Similarly, John Breuilly (2006 [1982]: 11) defines national movements as ‘political movements … which seek to gain or exercise state power and justify their objectives in terms of nationalist doctrine’. A broadly similar characterization of nationalism can be found in the writings of many other esteemed scholars (Giddens, 1985; Laitin, 2007; Mann, 1995; Tilly, 1975). The privileging of politics over culture remains the dominant approach to understanding nationalism, but it is not without criticism. There is now a vast and rapidly growing body of literature insisting that the role of culture should be made more prominent. In opposition to the argument that nationalist appeals to culture are but an exercise in legitimation, this body of literature suggests that they can be ends unto themselves. This latter phenomenon, generally referred to as cultural nationalism, is the subject of this chapter. The chapter proceeds as follows. I begin with the definition and history of cultural nationalism before discussing several key themes in its study. To conclude, I briefly outline several lines of research that I believe hold particular potential for developing the field. In the light of the huge array of literature on cultural nationalism, the review is focused on seminal contributions.

Les différences et les similarités au niveau du comportement de consommation des immigrants de Chine, de Hong-Kong et de Taiwan au Québec

La culture est un facteur fondamental déterminant du comportement de l'être humain. Chacun de nous est le produit de sa culture (Wilkie 1986). Elle nous fournit un ensemble de valeurs, de normes et de formes de comportement, apprises et partagées par les membres d'une société et transmises de génération en génération (Petrof 1988). Une culture évolue avec l'environnement. Les systèmes économiques et politiques et le niveau technologique contribuent à l'évolution de l'environnement. Une culture comprend ordinairement plusieurs sous-cultures. Une sous-culture peut être définie comme un groupe d'individus dont les normes et les valeurs sont différentes de celles qu'on retrouve à l'intérieur de la culture globale dont elle fait partie (Dussart 1983; Petrof 1988). Il y a un certain nombre de caractéristiques qui peuvent définir une sous-culture dans une culture: - l'origine ethnique ou l'ethnicité (par exemple, les sous-cultures française, italienne et chinoise au Canada); - les groupes religieux (par exemple, les juifs et les catholiques); - la situation géographique (par exemple, au Canada, les provinces de l'ouest, les provinces de l'est et celles de l'atlantique); - la race (par exemple, les noirs).