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on Economics of Strategic Management |
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Issue of 2010‒09‒03
eleven papers chosen by Joao Jose de Matos Ferreira University of the Beira Interior |
| By: | Tomohiro MACHIKITA (Inter-Disciplinary Studies Center, Institute of Developing Economies, Japan); Shoichi MIYAHARA (School of Economics, Aoyama Gakuin University, Japan); Masatsugu TSUJI (Graduate School of Applied Informatics, University of Hyogo, Japan.); Yasushi UEKI (Bangkok Research Center-Japan External Trade Organization, Thailand) |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the effects of internal and external sources of knowledge on the introduction of new products based on new technologies or information at firms which responded to a questionnaire survey conducted in four Southeast Asian countries. The results confirm that local firms make full use of locally available sources of new technology or information to achieve product innovation. On the other hand, foreign-owned firms depend mainly on internal R&D capacities and also possibly upon cooperation with local universities. These findings highlight the fact that local firms complement their lack of internal resources for product innovation with external knowledge sources. Foreign-owned firms utilize their international production networks to concentrate their resources on innovative activities. |
| Date: | 2010–08–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:era:wpaper:dp-2010-08&r=cse |
| By: | Jaya Prakash Pradhan |
| Abstract: | The liberalization of economic policies in the last two decades and intensifying market competition tend to be a cause of policy concern for the survival of SMEs in emerging economies like India. These SMEs account for the largest chunk of industrial units and employment in the national economy. Yet, most of them are competing with deeply inadequate resources, especially by means of weak technological capabilities. The present study has provided not only preliminary estimates on SME R&D investments in Indian manufacturing and their broad trends and patterns, but also contributed to the understanding of factors driving the SME in-house R&D activities. It shows that Indian SMEs continue to be vulnerable among all firms as they have the lowest incidence of doing in-house R&D and their R&D intensities have fallen in the last decade. Based on the results from three-step Censored Quantile Regression, this study has suggested a set of useful policy implications for enhancing SME R&D. |
| Keywords: | SMEs; R&D; Business Groups; Foreign Firms. |
| JEL: | L11 L22 F23 |
| Date: | 2010–08–14 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:eei:rpaper:eeri_rp_2010_14&r=cse |
| By: | Marianne Paasi |
| Abstract: | The paper analyses the European Research Area policy (ERA) from the innovation perspective. The Lisbon Treaty gives the Union the objective of free circulation of researchers, scientific knowledge and technology. The five ERA initiatives implement the ERA policy on the basis of voluntary cooperation. The ERA and innovation are linked through the business sector R&D investment. The economic value of the ERA comes from accelerated cross-European knowledge spillovers reducing the cost of inventing. In general, important obstacles hinder the knowledge spillovers making them largely intra-national. These obstacles arise due to the incentives in providing and sharing knowledge and to costs of capturing knowledge spillovers. Funding of knowledge from national budgets and uncertain benefits from knowledge circulation across the heterogenous member states complicates situation further. The analysis of Joint Programming and Better Careers and Mobility initiatives reveals multiple sources of obstacles to cross-European knowledge spillovers. Weak incentives in the member states and limited possibilities at the EU level block the implementation of ERA. In this constellation, the ERA initiatives need to support openness and competition in publicly funded research and universities as well as better models of scientific management to guarantee highest scientific quality. Accelerated (ERA) knowledge spillovers require extended and dynamic markets. |
| Keywords: | European Research Area (ERA), knowledge spillovers, innovation, incentives, voluntary cooperation |
| Date: | 2010–05–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rsc:rsceui:2010/40&r=cse |
| By: | Mili Shrivastava (Graduate College "The Economics of Innovative Change" and Entrepreneurship, Growth and Public policy group, Max Planck Institute of Economics, Jena, Germany) |
| Abstract: | Spinoffs firms are an important source of industry dynamics and innovation. While an emerging body of literature identifies strategic disagreements and ideas as determinants of spinoffs, neither of them can completely explain the spinoff process. Mere disagreements or brilliant flashes of ideas do not always lead to spinoffs. This study brings individual level determinants at the forefront in spinoff formation. Based on insights from the occupational choice theory, we argue that spinoff process is a distinctive class of entrepreneurial entrants and entrepreneurial talent is a major determinant in formation of spinoffs. Entrepreneurial talent modulates the impact of strategic disagreements and ideas on the decision to spi |
| Keywords: | Spinoffs, Entrepreneurship, Occupational choice, Disagreements |
| JEL: | D00 J24 L2 |
| Date: | 2010–08–25 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:jrp:jrpwrp:2010-059&r=cse |
| By: | Laure Latruffe |
| Abstract: | This report reviews the literature on competitiveness, productivity and efficiency in the agricultural and agri-food sectors. It clarifies concepts and terminology used in this area, and provides a critical assessment of approaches and indicators used in the literature to measure competitiveness, productivity and efficiency at sectoral and farm levels. It also discusses recent findings on productivity growth, changes in relative competitiveness between sub-sectors and countries, and determinants of competitiveness, in addition to identifying the major knowledge gaps. This report suggests that more attention should be paid to the agri-food sector, non-price factors of competitiveness, and the impact of government intervention on competitiveness. |
| Keywords: | productivity growth, agriculture, agri-food sector, comparative advantage, Competitiveness indicators, domestic resource costs, farm productivity, determinants of competitiveness |
| Date: | 2010–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:oec:agraaa:30-en&r=cse |
| By: | Rodrigues, S.B. |
| Abstract: | Business is becoming increasingly international. At the same time, governments are intervening more in the conduct of business. A further development is the growing significance of emerging economies, many of which have a tradition of active government involvement with business. Taken together, these trends make it imperative to understand the relationships between firms and their institutional contexts. Conventional theories adopt an over-rationalized view of these relationships international business. Their apolitical perspective misses the fact that in order to build and maintain international operations, firms need to develop political relations with governments and institutions in home countries and abroad. The aim of this lecture is to develop an alternative perspective with particular reference to the internationalization of firms, large and small. This considers how multinationals gain international positions through bargaining power with foreign governments. By contrast, SMEs face liabilities in dealing with foreign governments and instead often have to achieve internationalization through networking with other SMEs, with domestic communities and support agencies via various forms of social innovation. The lecture concludes that political and social innovation perspectives open new research avenues in the field of international business. |
| Keywords: | multinationals;small and medium enterprises;politics;markets;institutions;bargaining power;influence;social innovation;internationalization;evolution;co-evolution;environment |
| Date: | 2010–06–17 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dgr:euriar:1765020068&r=cse |
| By: | Michael Fritsch (School of Economics and Business Administration, Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena); Holger Graf (School of Economics and Business Administration, Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena) |
| Abstract: | We compare two leading regional innovation systems (RIS) in East Germany with two RIS in West Germany of about the same size and internal settlement structure. Our analyses show that differences in the performance between the regions cannot easily be related to the structural properties of the respective innovation networks because divergent general economic conditions in the two parts of the country as well as the integration of regions into their neighboring spatial environment play a rather dominant role. Overall, our analysis clearly shows that an analysis of RIS should account for the general economic conditions as well as for the position of a region in its spatial environment. Focusing just on the respective region is not enough. |
| Keywords: | Regional innovation systems, national innovation systems, innovator networks, gatekeeper, social network analysis |
| JEL: | O31 Z13 R11 |
| Date: | 2010–08–24 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:jrp:jrpwrp:2010-054&r=cse |
| By: | Tomohiro MACHIKITA (Inter-Disciplinary Studies Center, Institute of Developing Economies, Japan); Masatsugu TSUJI (Graduate School of Applied Informatics, University of Hyogo, Japan); Yasushi UEKI (Bangkok Research Center, IDE/JETRO, Thailand) |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the effects of information and communication technologies (ICTs) on business performance, using firm-level data obtained through a questionnaire survey in four ASEAN countries (Indonesia, The Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam). Sources of information and new technologies exchanged via ICTs by firms are also explored to investigate the mechanism behind ICT adoption. Empirical results verify that the introduction of ICT to reorganize business processes is significantly correlated with business performance, in particular the development of export markets and improvement of production management. ICTs facilitate access to information and technologies accumulated in in-house departments and joint-venture (JV) affiliates of the respondent firms. There are considerable differences between multinational companies (MNCs)/JVs and local firms. MNCs/JVs make use of information and technologies obtainable via ICTs from their own R&D departments, JVs established with local partners and foreign-owned suppliers/customers to improve factory management, mostly for product quality improvement and production cost reduction. In contrast, local firms interconnect their own R&D departments via ICTs to enhance their business performance in broader areas than MNCs/JVs, including the development of export markets. |
| Date: | 2010–08–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:era:wpaper:dp-2010-07&r=cse |
| By: | João Ferreira do Amaral,; João Carlos Lopes; João Dias |
| Abstract: | The external dependency of many industries and the corresponding low value added generated in production create high external deficits and growing debt to GDP ratios in several open economies. In this paper we propose an empirical method to assess the evolution of these vulnerabilities, based on a new treatment of interindustry production multipliers. The (gross) output growth potential given by the column sums of the Leontief inverse matrix (backward linkage indicators) results from three terms: interindustry consumptions, value added and imported inputs. After a convenient arrangement of these terms, the evolution of backward linkage indicators can be used to detect structural changes, particularly quantifying a (net) growth effect (more value-added generation) and an external dependency effect (more imported inputs), and to classify the productive sectors accordingly. An application to the Portuguese Economy is made, using input-output tables for the years 1980, 1995 and 2005. This method can also be useful as a simple, but suggestive, device to compare the evolution of two or more economies, along their development processes in time. |
| Keywords: | input-output linkages; external dependency; structural change; Portugal |
| JEL: | C67 D57 |
| Date: | 2010–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ise:isegwp:wp122010&r=cse |
| By: | Giuseppe Tattara |
| Abstract: | Vertical disintegration in most industries and the globalization of markets has led to significant changes in the pattern of international division of labour among manufacturing firms. At the same time increased competition from low cost producers, exchange rate constraints, the opening up of CEE countries have had huge consequences for the Italian industrial system. This paper deals with the Veneto footwear, furniture and refrigeraion industries and examines the effects of foreign direct investments and subcontracting in Romania. The reorganization of the division of labour, in the most dynamic suppliers induced a change in the “nature of subcontracting”, upgrading along the ladder of the value chain as more and more operations are offshored. |
| Keywords: | Foreign direct investment, International subcontracting. |
| JEL: | D82 F23 |
| Date: | 2010–08–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:eei:rpaper:eeri_rp_2010_09&r=cse |
| By: | Petrosyan, Leon A.; Zenkevich, Nikolay A. (Eds.) |
| Abstract: | The collection contains abstracts of papers accepted for the International Conference Game Theory and Management (June 28–30, 2010, St. Petersburg University, Russia). The presented abstracts belong to the field of game theory and its applications to management. The abstract volume may be recommended for researches and post-graduate students of management, economic and applied mathematics departments. |
| Keywords: | game theory, |
| Date: | 2010 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:sps:cpaper:159&r=cse |