Impact of Outsourcing on Effectiveness of Call Center Services

Call center is the frontline of communicating with customers. This paper reports the findings of a survey on service effectiveness of call center operations of mobile communication service providers in Turkey that either use in-house or outsourcing method. The primary objective of this paper is to explore how the customers of mobile communications service provider companies perceive the inbound call center processes for speed, easiness of use, first call resolution, effective inquiry and in doing that what qualities they display. For this purpose a survey was conducted with the customers who use call centers either to make an inquiry or to complain about the services. The aims were: to specify the typical behavior of mobile communications service users; how the firms handle inquiries or complaints; if they solve the problems for good and in what time or how long it takes to get an answer practically useful; to reveal the speed and timeliness of the processes. The survey was conducted with the mobile phone users in a highly populated area of Istanbul.

Does Information Asymmetry Influence Hi-tech Entrepreneurial Financing?

Exploring the effective ways of start-up financing is an important and practical issue to technological innovation and economic development. This paper aims to investigate the impacts of information asymmetry on the high-tech start-up financing preference, and whether an entrepreneur’s internationality features moderate the main effects. A sample of 500 high-tech start-ups and new ventures was collected at Shenzhen, China. Regression models are designated for testing both the main effects predicted in research hypotheses and the predicted moderating role of an entrepreneur’s internationality features. Our test results lead to 3 findings: firstly, in the high-tech industries, the information asymmetry mitigated by disclosing intellectual properties can significantly increase the start-up preference for external financing. This finding can be explained by the reduction of agency costs of debts. Secondly, the lessened information asymmetry can shorten the life cycle of start-up financing under the pecking order hypothesis. Lastly, the liability of foreignness is observed to have a significant positive moderating role on the main effects under the investigation. It can be concluded that the information asymmetry and the liability of foreignness are crucial factors influencing start-up financing decisions.This conclusion implies that reducing the information asymmetry by adequately disclosing technological strength and tacit knowledge can benefit the entrepreneurial financing for the high-tech start-ups and new ventures at the early stages, as well as provide an effective shortcut to the start-up financing cycle. Furthermore, the introduction of overseas technologies, funds, knowledge, experiences, and entrepreneurship into the high-tech start-ups does not create the liability of foreignness, and on the contrary, it is an “asset” that can help improve entrepreneurial financing decisions.

Sori Yanagi’s Industrial Design Aesthetics

With the development of social economy, industrial design has become more and more influential. The development of the industrial design industry is one of the signs showing a modern civilization, innovation ability and comprehensive national strength. In the future economic development, design will become the mainstream force driving innovation. It can be seen that showing the added value in industrial design is a popular trend in the power balance between countries in the future. This article will discuss the aesthetic thought of Sori Yanagi, the father of Japanese industrial design, and discuss the influence of his aesthetic thought on Japanese industrial design.

Online Education for Chinese Elementary and Secondary School Students: Experiences and Challenges

In addition to studying in schools where online learning has been increasing in recent years, many Chinese elementary and secondary school students participate in outside school online education programs, often urged by their parents so that their learning can be enhanced. Being descriptive, this is a literature review study. The purpose of this article is to provide a narrative of online education for Chinese students with regard to experiences and challenges in the last two years, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic. The data sources of this paper are mainly documents published by the Ministry of Education, but literature published by other organizations and individuals are also referred to. Four hundred and twenty-three million Chinese had received online education by the end of March 2020. For elementary and secondary students, increasing online education in schools and outside schools plays a positive role in reducing the dropout number and provides other substantive benefits. In addition, online education for students during the pandemic allowed children to continue their learning without being on campus, but their overall experiences were mixed, and there were serious challenges to be dealt with.

Toward a Central Bank Collateral Framework for ABMI

The post-global financial crisis highlighted the importance of engaging in collateralized securities financing to meet the ever-increasing market needs for liquidity and risk management. Given the heavy reliance on volatile Eurodollar system and the fragmented governance and limited cross-border usability of the collateral among ASEAN+3 countries, it is important to relax prevailing constraints on collateral and mobilize cross-border transactions. To address the imperatives for securing collateral-based cross-border financial markets in the region, Asia needs the initiatives of central banks to develop a regional collateral framework for better financial plumbing. By collaborating on common grounds for cross-border collateral utilization, some of the prevailing constraints on collateral use can be relaxed. The inclusive collateral framework that incorporates CBCA (Central Bank Collateral Arrangement) would provide strong initial market support for the ABMI, thus help achieve sustainable financial stability.

The City of “Matera” Cultural Capital and Cinematographic Destination with the Power of Literature

Aliano is a small village in the province of Matera (Note 1). The city is characterized by the exceptional nature and the uniqueness of a “lunar landscape”, of a vast expanse of eerie beauty. The area was not always accessible for the same reasons, it became world famous for completely different reasons and specifically through the novel of a writer called Carlo Levi (Note 2). This particular author has left a strong mark on the history of Italian literature, although his work is not very rich. The place and the conditions of his new life as an exile in a poor isolated village of southern Italy, became the reason for the creation of his most important book entitled "Christ stopped at Eboli (Note 3).The book presents the rural south of Italy through its social condition, but not only as the result of an unbearable for the country archaic condition, but also as a place of existence of an important civilization. In this way the author’s narrative, as argued by Palmieri (2020), works as an objective account that is subjectively equated to a literary form.[… Christ did not arrive at this dark land where there is no sin and redemption, where evil is not moral, but an earthly pain that always exists in life. Christ stopped at Eboli.] (Levi, p. 12).

Financial Environment and Risk of Stock Price Crash

The risk of stock price crash has become an important topic in the field of macroeconomics and micro-finance in recent years, but there are relatively few researches on the risk of stock price crash from an external perspective. Therefore, this paper takes China’s GEM listed companies as samples to empirically test the impact of financial environment on stock price crash risk. The research finds that there is a significant negative correlation between the financial environment and the risk of stock price crash, that is, the better the financial environment of the GEM listed company is, the lower the risk of stock price crash is. This conclusion still exists after controlling for the conservatism and endogenicity.

Uncovered Interest Parity and Expected Depreciation in a Dollarized Cambodian Economy

This paper tests the Uncovered Interest Parity (UIP) for Cambodian economy using the Generalized Methods of Moment (GMM). GMM method is used to address the weak result of simple OLS method, including the problems of endoneneity, serial correlation, heteroskedasticity. The result showed that, during the period of exchange rate stability, UIP is not valid even the country is a very highly dollarized economy and people can save in both local currency and USD in domestic banks. The UIP coefficient is negative and significant for three-month and six-month interest rates. The negative coefficient suggests that the monetary policy that tries to decrease interest rate (increase) may face the risk of currency depreciation (appreciation). If local currency depreciation is the driving force of dollarization, reducing local interest rate will encourage more dollarization in the economy.

Insider Perspectives of Mate Selection in Modern Chinese Society

With the increased exposure to Western cultures and the transition towards modernization, Chinese society has experienced substantial social change, which has influenced marital relationships. Although recent research has documented contemporary patterns of marital interaction, less is known about what Chinese adults consider to be an ideal marital partner. The values of contemporary Chinese adults about mate selection preferences were addressed by conducting six focus groups in Taipei, Taiwan. The focus groups included a total of 51 participants (male=25; female=26) and included separate groups for middle-aged married men, middle-aged married women, younger married men, younger married women, never-married young adult men, and never-married young adult women. The results from qualitative analysis indicated three major themes in an ideal partner: family-of-origin, which included similar family background and good relationship with in-laws, personal qualities, which included financially stability and being responsible, and relationship qualities, which included getting along, communicating well, mutual respect, and gender equality. These results indicate that contemporary Chinese adults value a combination of traditional Chinese (e.g., similar family background) and Western (e.g., good communication) values. Overall, the young Chinese participants showed greater incorporation of Western values than the older participants. These findings suggest that modern Chinese society is being increasingly influenced by individualistic Western values.

Archives and Classification: A Methodological Approach

The attention paid to the original position (initial deposit) of archive material in the phase of reordering is a sensitive subject within the archival praxis. This is the basis from which takes form the reorganization model proposed in this contribution takes form. Keeping in mind this solicitation comes therefore exposed the criteria utilized for the treatment of information deriving from material preserved in a university building archive.