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Organizations and managers in the for-profit private sector have traditionally attracted the greatest attention from management scholars and the media. In recent times, with countries all over the world moving towards more market based economies, managerial issues in state owned enterprises (SOEs), or public sector organizations (PSOs) as they are also known, have started to elicit the interest of researchers. Governments in many countries have tried to subject SOEs to the discipline of the market, through stock market listings and opening up hitherto state-dominated sectors to competition from private organizations. As SOEs have come under the influence of the market, a key challenge facing them is striking the right balance between social and economic (efficiency) goals. In this paper, we study the performance of Indian Railways over a sixty year period (1950-51 to 2010-11) to see how it has attempted to strike a balance between social and economic criteria.

Drawing directly on Stinchcombe (1968, 1983) we study the interdependence between power and legitimacy in state—organization contests for maintaining institutional control. We focus on postcolonial sub-Saharan Africa and the dynamics between the Zimbabwean state and Econet Wireless Zimbabwe, a start-up private firm that challenged the state's rights to monopoly control over the telecommunications sector during the period 1993—1998. Our findings show that in contexts such as postcolonial settings, states use their power to dominate institutional sectors and maintain institutional control. We find as well that states can attempt to reinforce the legitimacy of their use of power and coercion through (1) securing critical property rights and embedding these rights in the state bureaucracy, and (2) calling on other `centers of power'. Finally, our study highlights the ways in which states and challenging organizations engage in various strategies of institutional work to maintain and disrupt, respectively, existing structures and practices of institutional control.

Purpose
The purpose of this study is to explore the regulatory framework in China and the extent to which Chinese multinationals have implemented and disclosed their anti-bribery and corruption (ABC) compliance practices. This is done against the backdrop of the evolving international ABC compliance standards.


Design/methodology/approach
This study is based on detailed reviews of the ABC compliance standards of international organizations; legislation passed by the USA, the UK and Chinese Governments; seven semi-structured interviews with leading experts in the field; and comparisons of ABC program disclosures of four Chinese with four best-in-class western multinational corporations.


Findings
A high level of convergence was found in the ABC standards published by the international organizations. Several positive features were found in the Chinese ABC regulatory frameworks but our findings indicate that there is minimal disclosure around ABC compliance program practices. This paper shows that a transparent disclosure would represent an easy win for Chinese multinational corporations and contribute to raising their reputations internationally.


Research limitations/implications
While there are numerous studies in the law literature on ABC compliance standards and the extent to which they are effective in achieving their objectives, this is an emergent area in management research, to which our study makes a contribution. Future research could explore how other emerging economies are tackling this important issue.


Practical implications
By proactively adopting ABC compliance practices, corporations can seize the ethical high ground and build solid reputations with their stakeholders.


Originality/value
It is believed that this study is the first academic study that compares Chinese and international ABC standards.

We present a three-stage growth framework, in which we propose that the challenges for pan-European expansion of European technology companies can become opportunities and advantages for expansion beyond Europe. First, European technology companies are born in less competitive environments than their U.S. counterparts. Thus, the fragmentation of European markets in terms of languages, cultures, legislation and taxation means that they have the opportunity to embed themselves strongly in their home market contexts and are thus exposed mainly to local competitors in the start-up and early growth stages. Second, the very factor - fragmentation of markets - that enhances their survival potential in the start-up and early stages becomes a challenge that has to be surmounted for pan-European expansion. Third, once this challenge of fragmentation and diversity has been overcome through addressing the external and internal challenges (explained in detail in the article), we believe that European technology companies possess the right balance between being global and local to expand into Asia, Latin America and Africa.

The contributors to this book look at the phenomenon of entrepreneurship in emerging regions in India, China, Ireland, Eastern Europe, North and South America, and North and South-East Asia. The organization is designed to take the reader from a general framework for understanding the relationship between economic development and entrepreneurship to more specific examples of how entrepreneurs and their firms respond to the opportunity and threats that are dynamically evolving in such places. The book represents the first serious attempt to suggest new theoretical frameworks for understanding the emergence of entrepreneurship in regions that do not have all of the classical prerequisites (such as financial and human capital, favorable geography, institutional infrastructures, and so on) predicted in extant development models