Global trade in agriculture and food products is increasingly governed by an array of standards. A survey conducted in 2010 covering all operational firms in the nascent floriculture industry in Ethiopia revealed that only 36 per cent have managed to acquire certification for international...

Conventionally, standards are considered as a governance tool in the production system in a one-directional and hierarchical relationship between foreign trans-national corporations (TNCs) or global buyers on one hand and subsidiaries and producers on the other. They were considered as...

The product lifecycle model can be understood as a three-stage model of technological development associated with a particular product technology. In the explorative stage many different designs are developed, in the development stage products become standardized into a dominant design, and in...

Although there has been considerable research on firm-level technological capability building in the context of developing economies, there is a scarcity of studies which examine this issue in multinational enterprises socially motivated businesses located in less developed economies.This paper...

This paper focuses on the occurrence of high-growth firms in relation to human capital and innovation. High-growth firms are rather exceptional and temporary phenomena and occur in the upper tail of the conditional firm growth distribution. Using quantile regression we study how human capital...

Catching-up, leapfrogging and falling behind in terms of output and productivity in high-tech industries crucially depends on firms ability to keep pace with technological change. In fast changing industries todays specialization does not guarantee tomorrows success as changes in the...

Information about the success of a new technology is usually held asymmetrically between the research and development RD-performing firm and potential lenders and investors. This raises the cost of capital for financing RD externally, resulting in financing constraints on RD especially for firms...

This paper looks at the special characteristics of radical inventions. It tries to identify those variables that differentiate radical inventions from non-radical inventions. Since radical inventions are very important for the economy as a whole and for the individual firm performances,...

Although the literature converges regarding the reasons why and how networks of technology alliances are formed, there is still lack of agreement on what constitutes an optimal network structure, once it has been formed. The aim of this paper is to fill this void and to determine what...

This paper asks: what can governments of new member states do to encourage MNEs to invest in R&D? There are two types of MNE R&D. Innovation can be undertaken in order to adapt its existing products and services to local stimuli. This is 'demand-driven R&D'. Innovation can also be in stand-alone...