Books by Hung-Hsin Chen

Technological cooperation is not only costly and time consuming, but also has a high attrition rate. Most literature on strategic cooperation focuses mainly on issues related to cooperation formation and the reasons why firms form these cooperative partnerships. However, a successfully formed cooperation is not always managed well enough to achieve a satisfactory performance. The knowledge of cooperative formation is necessary, but insufficient to achieve a satisfactory performance. The literature suggests that scholars know little about the underlying factors affecting cooperative performance.A comprehensive literature review was conducted to establish the possible effects of key factors on the performance of international technological cooperation, and the possible relations between key factors. A qualitative pilot study was implemented to verify the practical relevance of those 12 key factors, of which 6 factors have a relatively more significant effect on performance than the other 6 factors. By applying theoretical modeling techniques, the research framework was then constructed according to the postulated relations between 7 key factors (6 relatively more significant factors and the focal concept, performance). Strictly based on the definition of key factors, measurement items of each key factor were carefully reviewed and selected. Following the process of structural equation modeling, the structural equation model in this research was constructed. Unlike most previous cooperation studies, a structural equation model allows researchers to examine simultaneously all the relations amongst key factors. The data were collected from mangers who had experience in managing a technological cooperative project with foreign partners, and were then analyzed by LISREL, a longstanding and widely distributed structural equation modeling computer program.The result suggests that symmetric opinions, commitment, dependence, relationships, partner analyses, and rewards have effects on the performance of international technological cooperation, which confirms the results of the thorough and comprehensive literature review and of the qualitative pilot study. In addition, in the structural equation model of this research, relationships and rewards have effects on commitment, and partner analyses and rewards have effects on dependence, which are also consistent with the literature review. The findings have contributed to theory advancement in cooperation studies, and to the knowledge of international business. Managerial implications from the findings also provide advices, which managers can proactively take, to avoid the odds of success.

This research of corporate strategy analysis implements comparative analysis and benchmarking to analyse and examine the corporate strategy of the pharmaceutical sectors of 4 international pharmaceutical companies. This research adopts the hybrid approach of combining qualitative and quantitative methods in a two stages research design. Quantitative method is applied first to deal with the comparative figures, and then qualitative method is used to find out the problem. The design of this multiple research includes three phases: data collection, analysis, and reporting. The findings of this research can be divided into 4 parts: R&D/marketing, technology alliances, strategic acquisitions and merger, and manufacturing. The drug innovative projects are recommended being developed within the company's familiar therapeutic areas in order to take its marketing advantage. Through this comparative analysis, some of this type of problems of these international pharmaceutical companies is identified. A big pharmaceutical company forming alliances with some small biotechnology companies has become a trend within pharmaceutical industry since 1980s. For pharmaceutical companies, to take advantage of R&D through biotechnology is the main purpose of alliances with small biotechnology companies. It is important to note that most pharmaceutical acquisitions belong to the type of absorption with high resource transferring and low autonomy. Due to the high profit margin and the essential importance of R&D and marketing, the operation management of manufacturing of pharmaceutical industry is relatively poor. The low asset utilisation rate pointed out this problem. Academic researches have revealed that existing theories of operation management of manufacturing, such as action research, set-up reduction, teamwork, continuous improvement, collaboration, and involvement, are applicable and beneficial to pharmaceutical industry rather than waiting for the technology breakthroughs.