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In this dissertation we examine the relations between China and Brazil. Even though their partnership goes back almost five decades, their relationship has only now started to develop rapidly. The investigation already pursued on this topic is not of great amount and focuses rather on the economic field of research.This dissertation starts by examining the historical context of the Sino-Brazilian relations. Furthermore it explores the current most important aspects of the relationship. At first it examines the political sphere in the Sino-Brazilian relations. Then it moves on to the economical sphere. After that it investigates the cultural ties of the two countries and finally it also concludes the scientific and technological cooperation between China and Brazil.Due to the few amount of research pursued on the Sino-Brazilian relations and more exactly on the socio-cultural aspect of its ties, this dissertation aspires to contribute to the available research in this particular domain. In order to conduct this investigation we used three questions throughout the research. The first one was how important both China and Brazil thinks of one another. The second one was which specific domain in their relations do they think of as more significant. Finally the third question was about the image they hold of one another.In order to explore these matters national newspapers in the two countries were employed. For Brazil we examined the articles of Folha de S. Paulo in 2013 and for China we used the articles of Renmin ribao, also for the same period of time.To come to conclusions about the first question we added up the amount of articles the press released in 2013 about the partner. This study revealed that Brazil attaches a significant amount of importance to China, whereas China attaches fewer importance to Brazil.For the second question we explored each article for its specific domain. The results revealed that the Brazilian press released mostly economic articles ab...

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This study was designed to investigate what Chinese travellers talk about in online reviews after having stayed in a hotel and how they articulate themselves about their experiences. It will be compared with data that is obtained from reviews written by people from the western culture, to see if there are any cultural differences noticeable. With the help of the cultural dimensions of Hofstede, some hypotheses were established. These conceptualize the amount of notifications of a specific factor that one culture mentions. For example, do Chinese travellers talk more about the empathy of the staff than their western counterparts? Is it true that both cultures pay equally much attention to the material things of a hotel? It is pursued by some other research questions: which culture complains the most? About which factors do they complain the most? Is there a relationship between the variables of age or sex and complaining behaviour? This post-purchase behaviour forms the subject of this study. Data for this research is obtained from the review websites TripAdvisor and Dianping for respectively western and Chinese online reviews. 200 reviews (100 written by western travellers and 100 by Chinese) have been analysed. There has been made use of the five dimensions of SERVQUAL (tangibles, reliability, responsiveness, assurance and empathy) to subdivide the different factors people can talk about. The review is ascribed a 0 for a factor when it is not mentioned; when a certain factor is discussed, the review gets a 1 or -1 (depending on whether it is mentioned in a positive or negative way).The first chapter of this thesis talks about social media. Different classification schemes are discussed and the characteristics of review sites are analysed to see where they fit in. Later on, the situation of social media in China is reviewed. The second chapter talks about electronic word of mouth: what is it and is it to be trusted? The selection of the data sample happened partl...

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Gedurende de voorbije drie decennia heeft de wereldeconomie een fundamentele transitie ondergaan. Het voortdurende proces van globalisering heeft immers geleid tot een steeds grotere integratie van en interdependentie tussen verschillende nationale economieën. Hierbij worden obstakels voor internationale handel en investeringen almaar verder teruggedrongen. Een meer recent fenomeen betreft het toenemende gebruik van grensoverschrijdende fusies en overnames ('mergers and acquisitions' (M&A's) in het Engels) als vorm van buitenlandse directe investeringen (BDI). Ondanks de populariteit van deze modus, blijft het aandeel mislukte M&A's bijzonder hoog. De uitdaging om het bestaande personeel in het opgekochte bedrijf te behouden, vormt, als onderdeel van het integratieproces, één van de belangrijkste moeilijkheden waarmee acquisitiemanagers geconfronteerd worden. Vooral in China, waar nog een enorm potentieel is voor M&A activiteit, maar tegelijk ook een groot tekort aan gekwalificeerde arbeidskrachten, is het verloop en behoud van personeel van uitermate groot belang voor buitenlandse bedrijven.De literatuur omtrent M&A's enerzijds en het verloop en behoud van werknemers anderzijds is dan wel zeer omvangrijk, toch zijn er maar weinig onderzoeken voorhanden waarin beide aspecten samen belicht worden. Zelfs als dit al het geval is, gaat het bijna exclusief over het verloop van topmanagers in M&A's (Hayes & Hoag, 1974; Walsh, 1988 & 1989; Ivancevich & Stewart, 1989; Datta, 1991; Krug & Hegarty, 1997; Lubatkin et al., 1999). Bovendien houden deze publicaties te weinig rekening met de verschillende manieren om twee bedrijven met elkaar te integreren. De doelstelling van deze paper is dan ook om op basis van het werk van Haspeslagh & Jemison (1991) een onderscheid te maken tussen verschillende integratiestrategieën en het effect van de diverse strategieën op het vrijwillige verloop van werknemers te onderzoeken. Hiermee kunnen we een meer gedetailleerd en genuanceerd...

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