There is a growing literature exploring the increasing fragmentation of production processes and the evolution of internationally-dispersed but functionally-integrated economic activities. However, most of this literature appears to neglect an important part of the story, that is the form and...

Das Wachstum multinationaler Unternehmen (MNU) wird zunehmend durch Investitionen von Dienstleistungsunternehmen vorangetrieben. Die Produktion von Dienstleistungen unterscheidet sich allerdings in mehreren Aspekten von der Herstellung klassischer Industriegüter. Eine zentrale Eigenschaft ist...

Based upon the textual analysis of over 2000 Chinese and English web pages, as well as on the author's ethnographic observations with three Chinese multinational corporations, six operational strategies and three communication challenges on the Chinese companies' global outreach and expansion...

The purpose of this study is to identify key institutional determinants of firm emergence and growth. We do this using various types of data from Sweden. A characterization of a number of institutions and policy measures shows that they are likely to have contributed to an environment that...

Empirical evidence strongly suggests that R&D increases a firm's “absorptive capacity” (its ability to absorb spillovers from other firms) as well as contributing directly to profitability. We explore the theoretical implications of this. We specify a general model of the absorptive capacity...

In this paper we consider the case for subsidies towards firms which generate R&D spillovers in open economies. We show that in the presence of strategic behaviour by firms many expected results are overturned. Local R&D spillovers to other domestic firms may justify an R&D tax rather than a...

Traditional economic wisdom claims that - while global economic integration is beneficial for economic performance - a country's trade specialization pattern has no impact on its economic performance. In this paper, we seek to cast doubt on this aspect of mainstream economics using a very...

The "changing architecture" of European big business is significant in that it challenges traditional forms of industrial collective action in Europe. The creation of European-level big business organisations has allowed large companies to bypass long-established European as well as national...