Drawing on detailed data on some 150 foreign R&D establishments belonging to Sweden's 20 largest manufacturing enterprises, this paper tests a number of hypotheses as to the determinants of different types of such units. The relative importance of market-oriented R&D, i.e. R&D primarily...

By the end of the 1980s, the rapid and unbroken growth of Swedish industrial research and development (R&D) ended. The volume of industrial R&D performed in Sweden is now declining. Today, to an increasing extent, Swedish companies perform their R&D abroad. International decentralization of R&D...

This paper explores the influence of partner selection and the design of contracts and agreements on the chances for a collaborative R&D venture to 'succeed'. It is based on questionnaire data regarding 49 such ventures undertaken by companies based in four Nordic countries. The age distribution...

Macro-environmental trends such as technological changes, declining trade and investment barriers, and globalizing forces impacting both markets and production worldwide point to the heightened importance of international business (IB) and the relevance of IB research today. Despite this, a...

The paper reports a study of the post-acquisition integration process in three foreign acquisitions made by Swedish multinationals. Detailed interview data and questionnaire responses in both acquiring and acquired firms are presented. The sub-processes of task integration and human integration...

The quality of research is central to scientific organizations. But how to evaluate research practice and quality when managing research? There is not one standard for what “good research” is. In a recent study, we developed a model for evaluating research practice and quality and in this...

This paper argues for the important role of customers as a source of competitive advantage and firm growth, an issue which has been largely neglected in the resource-based view of the firm. It conceptualizes Penrose's (1959) notion of an 'inside track' and illustrates how in-depth knowledge...

This paper advances the understanding of absorptive capacity by disentangling its four distinct sub-dimensions. Most of the studies in extant literature have treated absorptive capacity as unidimensional concept and as a firm-level construct without paying due attention to its organizational...