12 November 2024, the Business School held the 105th Academic Lecture Series of Central University of Finance and Economics celebrating the 75th anniversary of its founding and the Twenty-sixth Lecture of the Business School Academic Excellence Lecture 2024 in the Conference Room 615 of the Central University of Finance and Economics (CUFE) South College Road Campus. Dr Zhou Quan from the University of Wollongong, Australia, was invited as the guest speaker. Faculty members, doctoral students and undergraduates attended the event.
The meeting was hosted by Associate Professor Mou Shandong of the Business School. Before the lecture started, Professor Mou introduced Dr Zhou Quan's biography in details. Dr Zhou Quan is a senior lecturer at the University of Wollongong, Australia, and received his PhD from the University of Auckland, New Zealand in 2016. He has worked at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, and Massey University, and his main research interests are in the area of nonprofit operations and supply chain and agricultural value chain research, and his dissertation research has been published in the top UTD journal Production, Supply Chain and Agricultural Value Chain.
His research has been published in UTD top journals such as Production and Operations Management and European Journal of Operational Research.
The topic of Dr Zhou Quan's lecture is ‘Market Entry of Agricultural Cooperatives under Open or Closed Membership’.
Distribution and marketing in agricultural supply chains are often dominated by large investor-owned firms (IOFs). In response to pricing pressures from IOFs, farmers may consider establishing a co-operative (co-op) to collectively process and market their products. With the co-op as a potential competitor, the IOF may adopt one of two strategies: deterrence or tolerance. This study analyses a two-stage game-theoretic model to examine IOF responses to the potential entry of two types of co-operatives: open membership co-operatives that do not limit membership size, and closed membership co-operatives that control membership size. The research model describes the entry conditions of the co-operatives and the deterrence strategies of the IOF, and the results suggest that open-ended co-operatives remain an attractive option for farmers, especially when it can generate considerable economies of scale.
After the sharing, in response to Dr Zhou Quan's lecture topic, the participating professors and students actively discussed the topics of research design, high-level paper publication, and topic selection, which further deepened the depth of academic research exchanges.
The ‘Academic Excellence Forum’ is an academic exchange platform set up by the School of Business to practice the mission of ‘contributing new knowledge in management’, focusing on the cutting-edge theoretical issues and organisational development dilemmas in business administration and China's corporate management practice, and gathering cutting-edge ideas and innovative perspectives at home and abroad, so as to contribute to the development of China's social and economic development. The programme brings together cutting-edge ideas and innovative perspectives from home and abroad to explore Chinese solutions for China's social and economic development.
