A Study on the Impact of Branding, CEO, and Global Learning Capabilities on Export Sales Performance of Korean Fashion Firms. International Business Journal 2016 Vol.27 No.4 pp.41-68.

'Meso'-Foundations of Dynamic Capabilities: Team‐Level Synthesis and Distributed Leadership as the Source of Dynamic Creativity. Global Strategy Journal 2016 Vol.6 No.3 pp.168-182

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Plain language summary

Globalization has transformed the international business environment into an increasingly more complex, uncertain, and diverse entity. Multinational enterprises are under greater pressure to develop their dynamic capabilities to not only adapt to, but also proactively cope with, the speed and complexities of the fast‐changing environment. Some research suggests that dynamic capabilities are closely correlated with top management functions, while counterarguments stress that dynamic capabilities are embedded in organizational activities. From the perspective of organizational knowledge creation, making a distinction between the creative and adaptive aspects of dynamic capabilities, this article argues that 'creative' dynamic capabilities are rooted in the activities of teams in middle levels of the organization. The article also presents leadership practices that are favorable to fostering dynamic capabilities.

Technical summary

This article examines the theoretical foundations of an organization's dynamic capabilities--sensing, seizing, and transforming--from the perspective of organizational knowledge creation. Making a distinction between the creative and adaptive aspects of dynamic capabilities, this article argues that the foundation of creative aspect is 'meso:' it stems from team‐level interactions of frontline workers' capabilities facilitated by middle managers, rather than from individual‐level (or micro‐level) capabilities. In this middle‐up‐down management model, top management sets the vision of the organization, but middle managers grasp and solve the gap between the top and the frontline by facilitating team‐level dialectic interactions of employees. The leadership practices of both top and middle management that facilitate this process are illustrated with four Japanese multinational companies--Fujifilm, Eisai, Mayekawa Manufacturing, and Toyota. Copyright © 2016 Strategic Management Society.

The effects of a central bank's inflation forecasts on private sector forecasts: Recent evidence from Japan. Bank of Japan Working Paper, No.16-E-11, 2016

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How central banks can best communicate to the market is an increasingly important topic in the central banking literature. With ever greater frequency, central banks communicate to the market through the forecasts of prices and output with the purposes of reducing uncertainty; at the same time, central banks generally rely on a publicly stated medium‐ term inflation target to help anchor expectations. This paper aims to document how much the release of the forecasts of one major central bank, the Bank of Japan (BOJ), has influenced private sector expectations of inflation, and whether the degree of influence depends to any degree on the adoption of an inflation target (IT). Consistent with earlier studies, we find the central bank's forecasts to be quite influential on private sector forecasts. In the case of next year forecasts, their impact continues into the IT regime. Thus, the difficulties of aiming at an inflation target from below do not necessarily diminish the influence of the central bank's inflation forecasts.

Volatility Contagion across the Equity Markets of Developed and Emerging Market Economies. ADBI Working Paper Series 2016 No. 590

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Using variance risk premiums (VRPs) nonparametrically calculated from equity markets in selected major developed economies and emerging market economies (EMEs) over 2007‒2015, we document the correlation of VRPs across the markets and examine whether equity fund flows work as a path through which VRPs spill over globally. First, we find that VRPs tend to spike up during market turmoil such as the peak of the global financial crisis and the European debt crisis. Second, we find that all cross-equity market correlations of VRPs are positive, and that some economy pairs exhibit high levels of the correlation. In terms of volatility contagion, we find that an increase in VRPs in the United States significantly reduces equity fund flows to other developed economies, but not those to EMEs, in the period after the global financial crisis. Two-stage least squares estimation results show that equity fund flows are a channel for spillover of VRPs in the United States to VRPs in other developed economies.

Internet and Gender. The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Gender and Sexuality Studies. Edited by Nancy Naples. New York: John-Wiley and Sons pp.1-4

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This entry provides a brief review of the literature on gender and the Internet. Earlier studies on the subject were rather descriptive because the overarching purpose was to identify and to monitor the gaps. The emerging trend in the literature is more reflective and nuanced. The topic has become more interdisciplinary, moving beyond communications and social sciences, and reaching into medicine and health sciences, among others. Owing to more extensive data collection and more precise survey instruments, researchers are applying advanced research methods with convincing results. The empirical evidence is more international, encompassing developing countries in addition to industrialized economies. These advances have cleared a wider field. Gender and the Internet is engaging a broader audience and becoming a more mature area of research, both richer in context and more firmly rooted in theory.

Japanese Nationalism Today – Risk Resurgence, Necessary Evil or New Normal? Mejiro University Humanities Journal, 2016 Vol.12 pp.63-77