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This article has been withdrawn as it was published elsewhere and accidentally duplicated. The original article can be seen here: 10.1108/00483480710716759. When citing the article, please cite: Bih-Shiaw Jaw, Ya-Hui Ling, Christina Yu-Ping Wang, Wen-Ching Chang, (2007), “The impact of culture on Chinese employeesʼ work values”, Personnel Review, Vol. 36 Iss: 1, pp. 128 - 144.

Any business activities may have impact on environmental to a certain extent. Enterprises must find appropriate approaches to measure the impact on these environmental aspects, which can be used as the basis to direct enterprises’ efforts to improve the environmental impact. The method used to evaluate significant factors in life cycle assessment standards is the one most commonly used by enterprises in general to measure environmental impact. By this method, the decisive factors of each environmental aspect are given scores according to the preset scoring standard of the organizaion. The scores are added up for each aspect and ranked to assess major environmental apsects. The drawback of this assessment method, that is, it ignores the degree to which each of these factors affects the environment, results in poor credibility. Therefore, this study attempts to solve some qualitative problems by applying to fuzzy theory, in particular, by identifying appropriate fuzzy numbers through fuzzy sets and membership function. Moreover, the study seeks to obtain a crisp value in the process of defuzzifization in order to make up for the shortfall of the original method in dealing with relative weight of decisive factors and thus increase its applicability and credibility. The department of light production of an electronics company is used as an example in this study to measure environmental aspects by employing both the traditional significant factor method and the fuzzy environmental impact assessment model proposed in this study. Based on verification and comparison of results, the model proposed in this study is more feasible as it reduces partiality in decision‐making by taking the relative weights of decisive factors into consideration.

The objective of this study is to evaluate the equipment risk before and after SEMI S2‐93A implementation, thus providing a guideline for safety improvement. Semiconductor Plant A located in Taiwan’s Hsinchu Science Based Industrial Park with 147 manufacturing machines was used for risk assessment. The study was carried out in three steps. First, a preliminary hazard analysis was conducted. A detailed process safety evaluation was conducted (Hazard and Operability Study, HAZOP); and finally, the equipment risk comparison before and after Semiconductor Equipment Manufacturing Instruction (SEMI S2‐93A) implementation. The preliminary hazard analysis results showed high risk in 21.77 per cent of the manufacturing machines under risk assessment at Plant A. The largest percentage existed in the Diffusion Department. The machine types specified by the hazardous work site review and inspection according to Article 26 of Labor Inspection Regulation (the machines that use such chemicals as, SiHi, HF, HCL, etc. and that are determined to be highly hazardous through preliminary hazard analysis) were added to the detailed process analysis and evaluation. In the third part of this evaluation, the machines at Plant A used for detailed process safety assessment were divided into two groups based on the manufacturing data before and after 1993. The severity, possibility, and actual accident analysis before and after SEMI S2‐93A implementation were compared. The semiconductor Equipment Manufacturing Instruction (SEMI S2‐93A) implementation can reduce the severity and possibility of hazard occurrence.

The 21st century is a new century of environmental protection. Environmental protection is one of the most important subject matters yet to come. Moreover, as the public pays more attention to environmental problems, enterprises should increase their investment in environmental management. Therefore, determining the investment level for environmental management and allocating the investment to associated environmental management activities has become a major task. The principal and agent theory and sales response functions are used for analysis in this research. The allocation of capital investment in environmental management is found to have significant impact on the aggregate sales response, aggregate profit and investment level. Therefore, in preparing the budget for environmental management, enterprises should focus on investment allocation decisions, determine the investment level and allocation method using integrated means, and apply submarket data in the allocation decision‐making process. In other words, in setting the investment level, executive management should take managers’ willingness into consideration. In allocating capital investment, managers should identify the optimal allocation method based on submarket characteristics.

This study develops an exploratory model to evaluate the relationship between origins of corporate competencies and business performance, which targets small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) in Taiwan, analyzes 36 competence items in four functional dimensions: marketing, product design and development, manufacturing, and human resources management. The results from 760 valid samples from managers of Taiwan’s SMEs reveal that in marketing competence and manufacturing competence were ranked high by Taiwan’s SMEs managers. Elements contributed to manufacturing competence regarding reducing the number of suppliers has not been emphasized by Taiwan’s SMEs managers. At the very top of the prevailing management competitive priority list are: (1) product or service quality, (2) timely delivery, (3) quality control improvement during the process, (4) increasing reliability of tranportation, (5) introduction of new concepts and continuous improvement, and (6) improving after‐sale services. The four competence dimensions are found highly correlated to business performance, which reflects the policy adjustments that Taiwan’s small and medium‐sized enterprises have made in the changing business environment to respond to the global market.

In the Knowledge‐based Economic Era, all of the enterprises are facing global competitive pressure. The activities of knowledge accessing, codifying, and application will ogviously become the main inner function on enterprise operation. Knowledge will be the primary competitive advantage; therefore, he who wants to hold the competitive advantage should do the knowledge management (KM) very well. In this study, we cconstruct the research dimensions and variances by the successful factors of KM, which had been practiced very well by big enterprises inside and outside our country, and which was recommended by the related scholars. In order to approach the differences between big enterprises and small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) towards implementing KM, this study takes the way of questionnaire investigation to do empirical analysis and to construct the model of KM by path analysis. The study found out when implementing KM, SMEs should highlight “leadership”, “library‐architecture”, and “corporate culture” these three aspects, while “information technology” and “performance evaluation” these two aspects show no remarkable influence. It shows that he who wants to construct KM might not too overweight on information technology to build the KM system. Therefore, we suggest when implementing KM enterprises should reinforce the corporate culture by sharing, organized KM process, learning environment for all employees, and highly authorization by top managers in order to reach the expectant success of KM. The result of this study offers practical thinking directions to reach the expectant success for the policy makers in SMEs, who are accessing to or evaluating to implement KM.

With the globalization of economy, industries are facing increasingly greater challenges. Business integration, both internally and externally, is undoubtedly an important topic. However, how does an enterprise create its own value will be the key to an enterprise’s success in the future. Therefore, this study bases on the evaluation of company value to assess the key factors and competitive strategies of an enterprise. Yet, only with stable enterprise performance can the company value be correctly evaluated. This will be an important issue for enterprise performance and business strategy. Subject of this study are mainly small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs). Model construction for SME value assessment is established through the sytem dynamics approach. Scholars’ opinions on literature validation and application of Delphi Method are explored through literature review on local and foreign studies, in order to compile the relevant perspectives and indices for enterprise value creation. Hence model construction of the value creation system is established, and the correlation between the perspectives and related factors is explored to understand the overall dynamics model of SMEs’ value creation system. Consequently, a research method based on the system dynamics perspective is provided for the study of enterprise value creation is provided, as policy reference for improvement of decision‐making and value creation.

Due to the global economic effect, Taiwan’s small and medium‐sized enterprise (SME) is much threatened by China. Since remarkable advances have being made in information technology, taking competition advantage for an enterprise has become a very important issue when facing rigorous global competition. However, the business of the enterprise starts with finding the customers’ demands, and ends with fufilling customers’ demands. Therefore, in order to increase competition advantage for SME, the customer management must be effectively strengthened, especially by increasing customer satisfaction and maintaining good relationship with the customer. This is the key for an enterprise leading to success. The purpose of this study is aiming to discussing the relationship analysis between customer and SME by viewing the four aspects of customer relationship management (CRM), which are relation marketing, customer service, customer value, and customer satisfaction. Moreover, this research will perform an empirical analysis on CRM for a typical small and medium‐sized company so as to grasp its real definition and enterprises’ demands. The conclusions will be drawn from our literature survey and practical experience as well as site investigation. Recommendations are evolved from discussing the interaction between customers and enterprises in improving their constructing factors and increasing benefits and values.

A life‐cycle assessment (LCA) is based on the attention given to the environment protection and concerning the possible impact while producing, making, and consuming products. It includes all environmental concerns and the potential impact of a product’s life cycle from raw material procurement, manufacturing, usage, and disposal (that is, from cradle to grave). This study assesses the environmental impact of the ultra pure water process of semiconductor manufacturing by a life‐cycle assessment in order to point out the heavy environmental impact process for industry when attempting a balanced point between production and environmental protection. The main purpose of this research is studying the development and application of this technology by setting the ultra pure water of semiconductor manufacturing as a target. We evaluate the environemntal impact of the Precoat filter process and the Cation/Anion (C/A) filter process of an ultra pure water manufacturing process. The difference is filter material used produces different water quality and waste material, and has a significant, different environmental influence. Finally, we calculate the cost by engineering economics so as to analyze deeply the minimized environmental impact and suitable process that can be accepted by industry. The structure of this study is mainly combined with a life‐cycle assessment by implementing analysis software, using SimaPro as a tool. We clearly understand the environmental impact of ultra pure water of semiconductor used and provide a promotion alternative to the heavy environmental impact items by calculating the environmental impact during a life cycle. At the same time, we specify the cost of reducing the environmental impact by a life‐cycle cost analysis.

The purpose of this research is to create an expert risk‐based piping system inspection model. The proposed system includes a risk‐based piping inspection system and a piping inspection guideline system. The research procedure consists of three parts: the risk‐based inspection model, the risk‐based piping inspection model, and the piping inspection guideline system model. In this research procedure, a field plant visit is conducted to collect the related domestic information (Taiwan) and foreign standards and regulations for creating a strategic risk‐based piping inspection and analysis system in accordance with the piping damage characteristics in the petrochemical industry. In accordance with various piping damange models and damage positions, petrochemical plants provide the optimal piping inspection planning tool for efficient piping risk prediction for enhancing plant operation safety.