In September 2009 General Motors' board of directors announces it would sell the majority of its European subsidiary Opel to a group led by Magna International Inc. But two months later it decides to keep Opel, upsetting German officials and workers and harming its reputation in Germany. Why did...

In recent years developing countries have emerged as significant participants in the OFDI (outward foreign direct investment) activities having the strategic asset seeking motive. Such OFDI which is assets exploiting cum augmenting involves potential two way cross border knowledge flows. This...

Multinational companies (MNCs) from emerging markets (EMs) are new and very dynamic actors on the global scene. Starting from the late 1970s a strand of literature flourished on Third World multinationals (Lall, 1983a). More recently, the increasing expansion abroad by multinationals based in...

Technological developments in developing countries are governed by the nature of socio-economic structure of the countries concerned, and depend on factors like technological absorption capacities, administrative and management efficiencies, prevailing technological base, available R&D...

Technology import raises industrial competitiveness through increased productivity and efficiency of the concerned units. Thus, it is necessary for developing countries to have liberal regimes in favor of technology import. Increases in productivity and efficiency lead to competitiveness....

The impact of foreign collaborations or international technology transfers in developing host countries has been a major bone of contention. Literature on this subject has varied views and the role of MNCs in and the sharing of the net benefits between the technology givers and technology takers...

This paper has made an attempt to identify the role of lead firms in mapping the activities related to upgrading. Upgrading refers to the process through which firms may move up the value chain. The literature identifies different types of upgrading such as product, process, functional and...

The paper opens by mapping the changes in the global auto industry in the 1990s, showing how the rapid growth in sales and production between 1990 and 1997 came largely from the emerging markets rather than the Triad regions (North America, the European Union and Japan). However, for some of...

This paper illustrates the upgrading experiences of the automotive and hard disk drive (HDD) industries in Thailand, chosen because of their outstanding export performance in the developing world. An understanding of their upgrading experiences can shed some light on the ongoing debate regarding...