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of the relationship diagram. In contrast, risk factors such as credit, profitability, cost,
reputation, trust, operation, and competitive risks require instant indirect control through the
management of root-cause risk factors. Overall, management and leadership are the two
most important factors of risk management, and positive management tools as well as
coordination and communication between head offices and branches are key to reducing
risks in FHCs.
For the two Operations Management articles, one looks into considerable uncertainty
and risk that are involved in purchasing goods from China. This research examines the key
risk factors by investigating an individual case of purchasing strategy adjustment. After
literature review and expert interview, Delphi method was employed to achieve consensus
and further construct a research framework comprising 4 dimensions and 15 criteria. Finally,
Decision-Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory-based Analytic Network Process method
was applied to weight and rank the dimensions and criteria. They identified that the key
dimensions were “supply risk” and “environmental risk” and key criteria were “quality risk”
and “delivery risk.”
The other article explores the effects of supply chain relationship uncertainty on
corporate credit risk by evaluating American bond market data from year 2000 to 2008.
Their results show that the firm-customer relationship uncertainty is significantly and
positively related to bond yield spreads, whereas the firm-supplier relationship uncertainty
exhibits non-significant effects when controlling for other well-known bond yield
determinant variables. In addition, this research also finds that business cycle condition non-
significantly changes the FCRU effect on bond yield spreads. Finally, the results we acquire
by evaluating SCRU variables through other weighted methods or by controlling for
additional variables affecting cash flow variations are robust.
For the one article in the field of International Business, this article is aimed to propose
that the contributions from internationalization on performance may vary with the scale of
firms as previous studies have yet to obtain a consistent relationship between
internationalization and performance. By employing quantile regression to analyze the
influence of internationalization on the performance of Taiwan’s manufacturing firms, they
show that the relationship between internationalization and performance is non-linear.