Xinbo Sun

An Empirical Study on Motivational Factors for Knowledge Workers

The study model of motivational factors for knowledge workers is constructed based on literature review and basic hypotheses. With knowledge workers from the knowledge enterprises in Liaoning-Shenyang Region as the object of this study, the author has drawn a conclusion through the empirical study that the motivational factors for knowledge workers have a positive correlation with the incentive degree for knowledge workers. In addition, the author has also found that sex, age, educational background, service year, salary level and nature of work of knowledge workers have a significant influence on the sensitivity to every motivational factor.

Building a Global Responsive Organization: The Case of the Haier Group

Abstract nThis chapter outlines the philosophic underpinnings of the self-management paradigm developed over the past three decades by China’s Haier Group, a global leader in white goods. The successful transformation of Haier from a small resource-poor firm to a dominant global giant is often attributed to the self-management culture established in the company by its legendary leader Zhang Ruimin. This management paradigm is a function of the humbleness displayed by Mr. Zhang Ruimin and rooted in his strong belief in the traditional Chinese philosophy of I-Ching and Daoism. We show how the hexagram of Qian (“qian”: humbleness, modesty) from I-Ching is linked to Mr. Zhang’s humble approach and analyze how the six parts of the hexagram of Qian are related to the six development stages of the Haier Group. These insights are used to give some thoughts to the leadership challenge associated with the creation of a dynamic and responsive global organization.

The Effect of Diversification on Financial Contagion

The economic and financial crises of the early 21st century (e.g. 2007 - 2009 global financial turmoil) have made financial instability, which is induced by financial contagion, as one of the major concerns in the economics or financial field worldwide. In this paper we model a network of financial cross-holdings based on the classic Leontief input - output framework, and study the effect of diversification of interbank exposures and interbank connection on the magnitude of financial contagions. We perform a comprehensive numerical experiment by varying the sequences of interbank exposures and interbank connections, the result shows that the diversification has negative influence on financial stability in some extent. Our study has significant implications on financial regulation and surveillance.

A Study of Financial Contagion in Interbank System

Financial contagion was often observed during the recent financial crisis, which indicates a critical need for a new and fundamental understanding of its dynamics. Drawing analogies with the extinction analysis -- a technique widely used in the study of ecosystems - we focus on modeling and analyzing the financial contagion in a system where a large number of financial institutions are randomly connected by direct balance sheet linkages owing to their lending or borrowing relationships. We propose a simple contagion algorithm to study the effect of several determinants, such as the topology of a financial network, exposure ratio, leverage ratio, and liquidation ratio. We find that the financial contagion weakens with the growth of a networks connectivity to some extent. Therefore, a financial system with higher connectivity is more stable or robust. We also find that the exposure ratio increases the risk of financial contagion, but both the leverage ratio and liquidation ratio have negative relationships with financial contagion.

On developing an open courseware organization mechanism for China' higher education institutions

From the system perspective, this paper classifies the open courseware organization mechanism into seven parts, which include course selection mechanism, teaching contents and methods design mechanism, video fabricating mechanism, intellectual property protection mechanism, service & feedback mechanism, publicity & promotion mechanism, and operation mechanism, aimed at constituting a structural equation model composed of such seven first-order factors. The analysis of questionnaire data using confirmatory factor analysis method indicates the first-order structural model is tenable, and there is higher correlation between factor constructs; the second-order factor model is also tenable and gives an interpretation of the correlation between the first-order factors. The research outcome will serve as a reference for developing an open courseware organization mechanism for Chinas higher education institutions.

A Supply Chain Disruption Problem with Node's Failure and Recovery

Contemporary industry trends and business practices, such as global sourcing, decentralized production, reduced number of suppliers etc., make supply chains more susceptible to disruptions which have caused severe domino effects in the past few years. This paper addresses a supply chain disruption problem with recovery from disruptions. Two types of producers are assumed to exist inside and outside a supply chain, internal producers and external producers. We develop two models to investigate the emergency ordering strategy from external producer. To validate the effectiveness of the proposed models, a case study about instant noodle supply chain is conducted and related numerical experiment is also implemented. We analyze the experimental results and some implications are derived from this study, for example, external producer may transfer to internal producer under certain circumstances.