With 2012 drawing to a close, it is my privilege as General Editor to introduce the final batch of articles for this year in the pages that follow. I will also take this opportunity to offer a brief thematic overview of the topical and geographic coverage of the articles published in Asian Business & Management (ABM) over the past 3 years, in the hope that this exercise may prove useful to scholars for locating and leveraging pertinent articles. I will close with a brief outlook on 2013.

Current Issue

This final issue for 2012 includes five articles on a wide range of topics. All were accepted by Harukiyo Hasegawa, our founding General Editor, who has continued to handle articles submitted before 2012.

Leading off is a piece by Kyungmin Baek, Erin L. Kelly and Yong Suk Jang (2012) on work–family policies in Korean firms. It explores the interaction between the institutional environment of the firm and the presence of work–family policies.

The article by Philip Choi and XiangDong [sic] Ning (2012) explores how rational and relational trusts vary in their impact on inter-firm relationships. Drawing on a sample from the Japanese eyeglass industry, the article sheds light on how these differences are related to cooperation and performance.

The article by Saridan Abu Bakar et al (2012) takes us to the world of Malaysian SMEs in the biotechnology sector and explores how these firms survive market turbulence. It finds that strategic linkages, innovation and backward integration can prove helpful in this context.

The forth article, by Fan-Hua Kung and Chia-Ling Cheng (2012), examines why Chinese companies list abroad and identify political and corporate governance factors as key drivers. It further finds that H-share companies listed in Hong Kong tend to have better corporate governance than pure A-share companies listed in Shanghai.

Last but not least, the piece by Wen et al (2012) analyses the operating efficiencies of leading semiconductor manufacturers. It suggests that Japanese semiconductor manufacturers may be able to regain some of their lost competitiveness by adopting an ‘asset-light’ or outsourced business model.

Overview of Coverage in the Past 3 Years

Table 1 presents an overview of all articles published in ABM in the past 3 years, sorted first by topic area and then by economy. The topics follow the categorisation developed in Witt (2012b), augmented by two areas that have become particularly salient in ABM in recent years: CSR and internationalisation of Asian firms. I recognise that many articles could have been assigned to two or more categories. I chose the one that seemed most suitable and apologise to any author who may feel that his or her article was wrongly categorised.

Table 1 Overview of articles in Asian Business & Management, 2010–2012, by topic and geography
Full size table

The table clearly shows that our Journal has developed a special strength in CSR, followed by topics related to knowledge, learning and innovation. Moving forward, we continue to encourage articles on these and all other topics represented in Table 1. We would especially like to see more articles on the context of the firm and its interaction with firm-level phenomena, as laid out in my editorial at the beginning of this year (Witt, 2012a).

Outlook

Looking ahead, 2013 will kick off with a special issue on the internationalisation of Asian firms, edited by Asli Colpan and Takashi Hikino. As always, the articles for that and other forthcoming issues are available online on our website at http://www.palgrave-journals.com/abm/journal/vaop/ncurrent/index.html. Please take a look!

On behalf of everyone at ABM, may I take this opportunity to send our best wishes for the remainder of 2012 and the start of 2013.