If you would like to write for this, or any other Emerald publication, then please use our Emerald for Authors service information about how to choose which publication to write for and submission guidelines are available for all. Please visit www.emeraldinsight.com/authors for more information. About Emerald www.emeraldinsight.comEmerald is a global publisher linking research and practice to the benefit of society. The company manages a portfolio of more than 290 journals and over 2,350 books and book series volumes, as well as providing an extensive range of online products and additional customer resources and services.Emerald is both COUNTER 4 and TRANSFER compliant. The organization is a partner of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and also works with Portico and the LOCKSS initiative for digital archive preservation. AbstractPurpose -This paper aims to investigate relationship portfolio management in a Chinese context. It has an electronic component manufacturing company active in China's business-to-business markets as its focus. Design/methodology/approach -As the research was exploratory, a qualitative approach to data collection was taken. This involved taking a case study approach and conducting a number of individual depth interviews with a range of sales engineers and sales managers. Findings -The findings showed that although some of the relationship portfolio dimensions used in Western research were mentioned by the interviewees, the most important dimensions in a Chinese context are sales volume, customer's strategic importance, and trust. Additionally, emphasis on a network perspective is needed and it was found that although guanxi is important in a Chinese business context, it is a supporting factor rather than a dimension of customer assessment.Research limitations/implications -The research was exploratory in nature and the findings should not be generalised to the population as a whole. Practical implications -The findings stress the importance of considering cultural elements such as the importance of personal trust and understanding network effects when doing business in China. They also show that relationships portfolio analysis can be transferred to culturally dissimilar contexts. Originality/value -This research was conducted in mainland China among Chinese nationals and provides insight into the elements they consider important in business relationships.

This study seeks to investigate how rural migrants from less developed areas survive the hurdles of starting businesses in the host region in China from the perspective of mixed embeddedness. Based on 40 interviews via a snowballing survey strategy in Yuhuan City, Zhejiang Province, it is shown that rural migrant workers (RMWs) create their own enterprises through social and institutional embeddedness. Rural migrants can benefit from social embeddedness, particularly by developing relationships with local entrepreneurs and managers in local firms and other rural migrant entrepreneurs (RMEs) in their entrepreneurial activities. Further, it is also important for RMEs to embed institutionally in the host region in various ways. RMEs have been inspired by the local entrepreneurial tradition and culture of Yuhuan. In addition, the policies of both the host region and RMEs' hometowns have impacts on their entrepreneurial activities. Interestingly, RMEs can improve their institutional embeddedness by participating in the joint public governance on RMWs initiated by the hometown government.

Extant research pays little attention to unorganized migrant workers' skill accumulation/upgrading from the perspective of the labor supply. This paper takes China as an example to explore the factors influencing the skill accumulation of rural-urban migrant workers (RUMWs), with the purpose of discovering how to sustain or reshape regional competitive advantages by improving RUMWs' skill accumulation. Structured questionnaire surveys were adopted for data collection in Suzhou City, Jiangsu Province and Taizhou City, Zhejiang Province located in the Yangtze River Delta in eastern China. In total, 700 questionnaires were issued and 491 effective questionnaires were recovered. It takes the perspective of individual laborers, with special regard to the effects of localization on the laborers' skill accumulation within the context of globalization. It adopts a broad viewpoint including intra-firm skill-biased strategy (as a response to intense competition), inter-firm relationships, and the accessibility of local non-firm organizations. The findings indicate that firms' skill preference, which impacts employees' skills and innovation ability and stimulates them to learn with initiative, have a significant influence on RUMWs' skill accumulation. In terms of collective efficiency based on the co-competitive relationship between local firms, the more intensive interactions are, the more opportunities RUMWs are afforded for skill accumulation. The accessibility of local institutions and favorable policies also benefit RUMWs' skill accumulation. In addition, the place itself, as a synthesized space of a firm's internal labor-management relations and inter-organizational relations, also exerts an influence on and causes regional differences in RUMWs' skill accumulation.

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