Suchergebnisse

The Magadhan king Srenika Bimbisara and his son Kunika Ajatasatru are widely featured in both Buddhist and Jaina literature. Previous studies have generally focused on the parallels between Buddhist and Jaina depictions of these two figures. Rather less attention has been devoted to exploring how or why the Buddhist and Jaina stories about them differ. This article contrasts the Buddhist and Jaina accounts of their future rebirths. Whereas the Jainas spoke much of Srenika's eventual jinahood and kept silent on Kunika's future destiny, the Buddhists said little about Bimbisara's future destiny, while giving several prophecies of Ajatasatru's eventual awakening. Based on a comparative survey of the Buddhist and Jaina accounts, the article argues that the Buddhist and Jaina authors held significantly different understandings of how key religious factors such as karma, the Dharma, the power of the Buddha or Mahavira, and an individual's inherent spiritual potential play out in soteriological discourse. It also argues that the Buddhist prophecies of Ajatasatru and the Jaina prophecies of Srenika share a common idea that moral culpability has no permanent karmic effects, thus constituting no real obstacle to spiritual growth in the long run.

Abstract
Drawing on data from in-depth interviews with twenty-one founder-CEOs of social work organisations (SWOs) in Mainland China, this article develops the concept of 'strategic resource mobilisation' and investigates how founder-CEOs' professional backgrounds influence their mobilisation of resources in three areas—funding, human resources and government relations. We find that founder-CEOs adopt different strategies in mobilising resources, presenting distinct advantages and disadvantages according to their professional background. In particular, founder-CEOs affiliated with universities are viewed with trust and respect by the government and have social work students as human resources but report a lack of management skills; founder-CEOs from a business background have wider access to financial support and make good use of their management experiences and skills but are challenged by frontline social workers; and founder-CEOs with prior government experience rely on connections with officials to secure funding but face greater administrative constraints. The findings provide valuable insights for SWO executives to better assess their organisational capacity, leadership and management. The research further suggests that, to ensure the sustainable development of SWOs in Mainland China, government policies could be introduced to help diversify the funding sources, and efforts should be made to improve the partnership between the government and SWOs.

This chapter examines the impact of the changing China-EU relations from a comparatively micro-level analysis - a longitudinal study of an international acquisition of a European company by a Chinese company. We investigate the collaboration and value creation dynamics of these two parties, and the evolution and interaction of their country- and firm-specific (dis)advantages following their merger. The findings suggest that: 1) the firm-specific (dis)advantages of these two companies perfectly complement each other, while the influence of country-specific (dis)advantages on their cooperation is channeled through firm-specific (dis)advantages. 2) Previously existing firm-specific (dis)advantages of two companies are significantly improved during the collaboration through several key elements: maintained autonomy of specialities, gradual and moderate resource reconfiguration, trust building over time, and mutual understanding, learning, and compromising. 3) Synergic benefits are mainly created and reaped after several years' efforts of the Chinese acquirer on bias reduction and trust building. Since firms can be the beneficiaries or victims of government regulations and interstate linkages, policymakers should consider the lessons learned from firm-level international cooperation when creating foreign economic policies and establishing interstate relations. This case study firmly indicates that there is a reciprocal relationship between sound China-EU relations at the macro international level and fruitful business interactions between Chinese and EU companies at the micro-level. However, these relations can only be achieved through bias reduction, trust-building, and mutual accommodation.

In China kooperieren Internetfirmen offiziell mit staatlichen Banken. Dadurch erhält der chinesische Staat weitreichenden und offenen Zugriff auf Kundendaten. Das hat Vor- und Nachteile und muss kritisch hinterfragt werden.

Purpose
This paper aims to investigate female founders' digital identities (i.e. the founder's online self-representation) and explore how female founders' digital identities affect crowdfunding performance.


Design/methodology/approach
Leveraging a data set of 3,125 Kickstarter crowdfunding campaigns launched by women between 2014 and 2019, this study uses the latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) topic model to investigate female founders' digital identities and explore their impacts on crowdfunding performance via logistic and Tobit regression analyses.


Findings
This study finds that on crowdfunding platforms, female founders display four main types of digital identities: educational practitioner, experienced entrepreneur, creative innovator and life dreamer. Moreover, our results reveal the differential influences of these identities on crowdfunding performance. Specifically, the experienced entrepreneur or educational practitioner portrayal may benefit fundraising; the life dreamer portrayal may hinder it; and the creative innovator portrayal may have no significant effect.


Practical implications
This study suggests how women can use their digital identities to improve their crowdfunding performance, indicating a fruitful way to overcome female entrepreneurial financing hurdles in the digital age.


Originality/value
This study highlights the digital identities of female founders engaged in crowdfunding, enriching the emerging research on digital identity in entrepreneurship and crowdfunding. Furthermore, the application of the LDA topic model in the study enlightens future research on leveraging big data analytic methods to examine female entrepreneurship in the digital economy context.

Abstract
Background
Although freshwater ecological restoration (FER) has undergone an immense development over the past two decades in China either in the number of projects or in the spatial scale of implementations, a dearth of clear and comprehensive trends in this field is still a particular concern. We conducted a literature survey through searching the database of Web of Science between 1997 and 2017 to investigate the driving force behind FER practice and to summarize the restoration outcomes.

Results
A total of 2047 publications were hit and 198 of them were finally retained after manual screening. The number of studies in this field has been steadily increasing in recent years and their provincial distribution is positively correlated with GDP growth and the investment to pollution control and environmental protection, suggesting that economic development is a key driving factor of FER practice. Among the remaining articles, nearly half (46.5%) focus on lake ecosystems, and 34.8% and 32.8% of the studies indicate that land reclamation and eutrophication are the predominant causes of freshwater ecosystem degradation. The overarching target of the restoration is biodiversity increase (31.4%), followed by water quality improvement (24.7%) and ecosystem services (23.9%). Revegetation is a dominant restoration approach (40.9%). Reference sites for assessment of restoration projects are normally control locations without intervention (60%), or the status of the targeted sites before the interventions. For the restoration outcome evaluation, 86% of the studies present positive outcomes in terms of water quality improvement, and 79% have improvement in biological features. The most frequently monitored organisms are macrophytes (31%), followed by benthos as indicators of ecological condition.

Conclusions
Economic growth, water pollution and investment into environmental protection are the main driving factors of FER practice in China. The effort of restoration and evaluation over the past two decades has not been limited to improving hydrological function and water quality, but also pay increasingly more attention to biological processes and ecological integrity, and further the ecosystem services in recent years. However, the lack of long-term monitoring and socioeconomic attributes considered in restoration success assessments are still particular issues that need to be addressed in the future FER researches and projects.

PurposeThis paper aims to examine the contextual embeddedness of female entrepreneurship through a focus on gendered institutions. Specifically, it draws upon Scott's (1995) institutional categories and explores how the three dimensions of gendered institutions combine to explain both a high level of female Total Early-stage Entrepreneurship Activity (TEA) rates and female/male TEA ratios.Design/methodology/approachCollecting data from the Global Entrepreneurship Research Association, the World Economic Forum and the World Bank for 63 countries, this study uses the fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) method to explore causal complexity between the regulative, normative and cognitive dimensions of gendered institutions (conditions) and the female TEA rates and the female/male TEA ratios (outcomes).FindingsFirst, this study confirms the complex interactions occurring among institutional components. Second, the results highlight the key role that gender equality in entrepreneurial cognitions plays in achieving high female entrepreneurship. Third, configurations for the high female TEA rates and the female/male TEA ratios share a high similarity.Practical implicationsThe study provides policymakers with a holistic viewpoint and alternate solutions with the aim of promoting female entrepreneurship in their respective countries.Originality/valueThe study highlights gendered institutions beyond general institutions, enriching the literature on the gender and institutional determinants of female entrepreneurship. Furthermore, the application of the fsQCA method in the study helps to enhance the understanding of how institutional components complexly interact to shape female entrepreneurship.