institutional exceptions on global projects a process model this inductive study offers an examination of 23 cases in which informants from firms engaged in large scale global projects reported unforeseen costs after failing to comprehend cognitive cultural normative and or regulative institutions in an unfamiliar host societal context the study builds on the conceptual framework of institutional theory the findings which include propositions and a generic narrative model contribute to theoretical knowledge of how institutional exceptions arise how they are resolved and how they typically involve three general phases ignorance sensemaking and response the findings also articulate the kinds of institutional transaction costs that an entrant incurs in each of the three phases and the conditions that lead to the growth of these costs

on inventory control of product recovery systems subject to environmental mechanisms abstract the aim of this paper is to study the impact of inventory control in reducing the carbon footprint of an organization through a stochastic inventory model our research extends the traditional minimization cost problem by incorporating environmental legislation we consider a finite horizon closed loop system whereby decisions are subject to an emissions trading scheme and to random demand and returns demand can be satisfied by two sources the primary source is environmentally friendly but expensive whereas the second is cost effective but with negative environmental consequences the problem is formulated as a stochastic dynamic problem where replenishment and carbon management decisions must be made at each period the objective is to describe how replenishment and carbon management strategies are affected by environmental constraints in particular considering the computation restriction of dynamic programming in order to extend the results we propose a genetic algorithm to find near optimal solutions for larger instances a sensitivity analysis is performed to identify the impact of carbon allowance prices emission cap and other environmental factors in the decision making process the results indicate that environmental strategies and their factors have an impact on replenishment decisions there is an emission cap from which a company must focus on strategic decisions rather than on tactical and operational decisions in addition if the carbon allowance price is such that the environmental benefit absorbs the cost of less polluting technology a change in the inventory policy must be made

r d internationalization and growth of newly listed firms european evidence the initial public offering ipo is an important stage in the life cycle of privately held and entrepreneurial firms for innovative firms eager to capitalize on their technological advances an ipo represents a springboard for a rapid international expansion of sales however there is little research on the longer term post ipo strategic evolution of newly listed companies including their internationalization we build on international entrepreneurship and dynamic capabilities perspectives and examine interrelationships between r d exporting and growth of newly listed firms in the uk germany italy and france using panel data for 1110 ipos during the period 1985 2004 we found that r d intensity is an important antecedent factor for internationalization of sales both r d and export intensities have a positive effect on the sales growth of newly listed firms however r d intensity is path dependent and is determined by levels of accumulated intangible assets and debt in terms of time dynamics the growth of ipo firms is at its highest level just after the float whereas export intensity increases as ipo firms mature we conclude that managers and ipo investors need to take into account not only growth opportunities but also past innovation strategies and financial constraints on managers strategic choices

age size growth and survival uk companies in the 1980s this paper examines growth and survival amongst quoted and unquoted u k companies in the period 1975 85 and compares the results with earlier u k and u s studies an examination of death rates shows that smaller companies had higher death rates but the largest and smallest companies were least vulnerable to takeover careful attention is therefore paid to problems of sample selection bias it is shown that smaller companies grew faster than larger companies that gibrat s law does not hold amongst smaller firms that age is negatively related to growth and that these results are not an artifact of sample selection bias copyright 1994 by blackwell publishing ltd

learning across geographic space pro market reforms multinationalization strategy and profitability building on economic geography and knowledge based theory i argue that pro market reforms augment the profitability of firms by increasing their competitiveness and market knowledge however i propose that this effect is greater for firms that operate internationally firms that operate in more advanced markets and firms that become multinationals before reforms are implemented this is because such firms acquire market knowledge abroad that they can use when responding to reforms at home giving them a head start advantage over other local firms the analyses of a panel of the largest 500 latin american companies from 1989 to 2008 provide support for these arguments

emerging themes in international business research this study is motivated by two research questions 1 which recent contributions have been driving the research agenda in international business 2 which emerging themes in the literature are likely to set the stage for future work to examine these questions the study examined scholarly work in international business over the time period 1996 2006 in six leading international business journals journal of international business studies management international review journal of world business international marketing review journal of international marketing and international business review next a delphi study of the most prolific authors in these journals over the same time period was conducted to delineate a future research agenda in international business addressing these two research questions provides us with a more complete understanding of the progress made to date in international business research and provides a glimpse of the future

capabilities as a mediator linking resources and the international performance of entrepreneurial firms in an emerging economy this study investigates an under researched topic the relationships between capabilities resources and international performance among entrepreneurial firms in an emerging economy we combine the resource based view of the firm and the capability building perspective of rent creation to shed light on the crucial role of firm specific capabilities that transform key resources into performance outcomes employing a large sample of chinese entrepreneurial firms our investigation demonstrates that while the resources of institutional capital and managerial ties are important in the internationalization effort their effects on international performance are channeled through each firm s adaptive capability this adaptive capability is the firm s ability to coordinate recombine and allocate resources to meet the different requirements of foreign markets specifically our research is able to demonstrate support for the mediating role of capabilities in the relationship between resources and international performance the implications of these findings for theoretical development and future research are discussed

routine microprocesses and capability learning in international new ventures drawing on the distinction between the ostensive aspects abstract patterns and performative aspects specific actions of organizational routines the paper offers a micro level explanation of capability learning in international new ventures invs that is firms that internationalize actively from inception the paper argues that variability in the performative aspects of internationalization routines is associated with improvisational learning and new capability development whereas variability in the ostensive aspects is associated with trial and error learning and existing capability improvement furthermore psychic distance moderates these relationships low psychic distance facilitates both improvisation and trial and error learning high psychic distance frustrates learning of both types moderate psychic distance makes the success of both learning forms more likely but only for more experienced invs the paper also argues that social capital may mitigate the negative effects of high psychic distance it contributes to the extant literature by providing a micro level explanation of how invs accomplish capability learning and avoid wasteful learning efforts and by theorizing the moderating effects of psychic distance on the relationships between routine microprocesses and capability learning

bigger may be better but is older wiser organizational age and size in the new york life insurance industry the author explores the effects of organizational size and age on failure rates among new york life insurance companies between 1813 and 1985 theorists tend to agree that organizational growth and aging processes increase organizational inertia but they disagree on the effect of that inertia on failure rates he finds that organizational size affects failure rates nonmonotonically but over the actual range of sizes large size almost always lowers failure rates he also finds a strong liability of aging this runs counter to ecological theories of liabilities of newness and adolescence an empirical test of the relative effects of age during periods of environmental turbulence and calm indicates that organizational inertia is especially problematic during turbulent times this suggests that the liability of aging occurs more through obsolescence than senescence at least in the population of insurance companies he investigate

including sustainability criteria into inventory models research on sustainability performance has considerably enriched operations management literature in recent years however work with quantitative models is still scarce this paper contributes by revisiting classical inventory methods taking sustainability concerns into account we believe that reducing all aspects of sustainable development to a single objective is not desirable we thus reformulate the classical economic order quantity model as a multiobjective problem we refer to this model as the sustainable order quantity model then a multi echelon extension of the sustainable order quantity model is studied for both models the set of efficient solutions pareto optimal solutions is analytically characterized these results are used to provide some insights about the effectiveness of different regulatory policies to control carbon emissions we also use an interactive procedure that allows the decision maker to quickly identify the best option among these solutions the proposed interactive procedure is a new combination of multi criteria decision analysis techniques

transforming disadvantages into advantages developing country mnes in the least developed countries we analyze the advantages and disadvantages of developing country multinational enterprises mnes in comparison with developed country mnes developing country mnes tend to be less competitive than their developed country counterparts partly because they suffer the disadvantage of operating in home countries with underdeveloped institutions we argue that this disadvantage can become an advantage when both types of mne operate in countries with difficult governance conditions because developing country mnes are used to operating in such conditions the empirical analysis shows that although developing country mnes rarely appear among the largest mnes in the world they are more prevalent among the largest foreign firms in the least developed countries ldcs especially in ldcs with poorer regulatory quality and lower control of corruption

host country corruption and the organization of hq subsidiary relationships multinational enterprises mnes operating in more corrupt host than home countries face actual costs related to processing information for decision making and lack of local legitimacy and potential reputation and legal costs in case of corruption scandals drawing on the organizational perspective of corruption we argue that greater subsidiary autonomy helps minimize these costs however headquarter hq subsidiary communication weakens the autonomy based advantages for minimizing legitimacy costs and mnes experience in relatively corrupt countries weakens the advantages for minimizing information processing costs our analysis of 261 italian foreign subsidiaries in 25 host countries confirms most of our arguments except the moderating effect of mne experience our findings contribute to research on corruption and fdi weak institutional contexts and mne strategies as well as the literature on hq subsidiary relationship

the effect of emission permit trading with banking on firm s production inventory strategies abstract we investigate the effect of tradable emission permits with banking on the production inventory strategy of a firm in this paper the basis of the work is the well known arrow karlin dynamic production inventory model in which the inventory holding costs are linear and production costs are non decreasing and convex functions of the production level the cost of environmental protection is taken into account in the model we assume there is an emission trading program with which firms are able to purchase their emission rights or sell them and the rights are allowed to be deposited in intertemporal trading we compare the optimal production inventory strategies of this paper with those without emission permits

a review of research on the growth of multinational enterprises a penrosean lens abstract we provide a comprehensive review of the growth of multinational enterprises mnes based on a quarter century 25 years of scholarly international business publications we synthesize research insights on the determinants of the growth of mnes through the lens of penrose s theory of firm growth which is the most influential theoretical perspective on firm growth the review takes stock of the research findings on the facilitators constraints and the trajectory of growth of mnes and elaborates on the commonalities and differences between research on the growth of mnes that draws on penrose s theory and research that does not this comparison highlights the opportunity to build an internally coherent theory of the growth of mnes that is a theory that connects what an mne is to what determines an mne s growth it also indicates that past research placed a strong emphasis on exogenous factors e g cross country distances as key constraints on growth even though the penrosean lens suggests a close consideration of endogenous factors that drive international growth as well as endogenizing the ostensibly exogenous growth determinants the review highlights the importance of firm specific managerial knowledge and learning which shapes the direction of the growth of mnes and ensures its administrative coherence

asset specificity and behavioral uncertainty as moderators of the sales growth employment growth relationship in emerging ventures sales growth and employment growth are the two most widely used growth indicators for new ventures yet sales growth and employment growth are not interchangeable measures of new venture growth rather they are related but somewhat independent constructs that respond differently to a variety of criteria most of the literature treats this as a methodological technicality however sales growth with or without accompanying employment growth has very different implications for managers and policy makers a better understanding of what drives these different growth metrics has the potential to lead to better decision making to improve that understanding we apply transaction cost economics reasoning to predict when sales growth will be or will not be accompanied by employment growth our results indicate that our predictions are borne out consistently in resource constrained contexts but not in resource munificent contexts

when registration barriers fall who votes an empirical test of a rational choice model it is well known that those with higher ses characteristics tend to vote at higher rates in u s elections over the past several decades many proponents of eased voter registration requirements have predicted that liberalizing voter registration laws will significantly improve turnout especially among the least well educated and the poor in this article we offer a rational choice model of turnout that leads us to expect the greatest turnout gains from virtually eliminating voter registration costs will instead accrue to those with medium income and education we test this prediction longitudinally over the period 1972 1992 using a vast survey and a natural experiment comparing voters in states that adopted election day registration edr with those residing in states maintaining more traditional closing dates contrary to much of the literature citizens with medium education and medium income voted more under edr as the model predicts we conclude that the methods used here better capture and empirically identify the curvilinear relationship between voter registration laws and the turnout probabilities at various ses levels

variable risk preferences in new firm growth and survival we outline and test a decision making theory of new venture growth and survival building upon research in entrepreneurship and decision making under risk we hypothesize that entrepreneurs attention to survival and aspiration reference points changes based on venture age experience based learning size differences in decision complexity and performance decision domain examining a panel of 14 760 new ventures in the professional services sector our findings show how risk preferences change as a venture ages and increases in size this approach offers a more nuanced view of decision making under risk and provides a theoretical explanation for the common patterns of new ventures probability of exit and growth diminishing with age and size

tacitness learning and international expansion a study of foreign direct investment in a knowledge intensive industry this paper examines the impact of knowledge tacitness on a firm s propensity to establish plants in foreign rather than domestic locations our predictions build on knowledge based internalization and evolutionary theories of foreign direct investment we argue that the tacitness of technology has an inverted u effect on the propensity to undertake foreign investment we also expect that as a firm learns about a technology it will become more likely to make foreign investments we examine two forms of learning that which accumulates as a function of the number of plants previously built by the firm transfer based learning and that which accumulates as a function of time since the firm started using a technology time based learning we investigate empirical effects in a sample of investments in the memory segment of the semiconductor industry our predictions about the curvilinear effect of tacitness are supported the results also suggest that learning is a matter of taking time to become acquainted with the use of the technology and of gaining experience through successive foreign plant investments the study adds to the understanding of the effects of knowledge on corporate expansion

seeking commonalities or avoiding differences re conceptualizing distance and its effects on internationalization decisions past research established distance s key influence on internationalization however theoretical issues methodological challenges and inconsistent results hinder scholarship on why distance plays such an influential role to address these problems we draw from cognitive research on similarity comparisons to re conceptualize distance and test a model of internationalization decisions analyzing the verbal protocols of executives considering a series of internationalization opportunities we demonstrate that over and above objective distance indicators considerations that reduce distance commonalities and considerations that augment distance differences have distinct effects on decisions of where when and how to internationalize as such our study contributes new insights for understanding the nature and effects of distance across different dimensions of distance and internationalization decisions moreover internationalization theories have come to emphasize different theoretical rationales for explaining the influential role of distance on different decisions by integrating these rationales together with the notion that distance reducing commonalities and distance augmenting differences have distinct implications for internationalization decisions we introduce the notion that it is not only the addition of distance considerations that matters but also the directionality of such changes doing so our study points to new theoretical and methodological insights to help address prior criticisms and advance future research

creating value through mutual commitment to business network relationships a structural model of business relationship development in a business network context is formulated and tested on delta from the european international marketing and purchasing imp project the e

the downsian voter meets the ecological fallacy this paper presents evidence that voter participation does not depend on the probability that one vote is decisive an extensive summary of the empirical participation literature is provided which shows that most but not all studies have found that turnout in an electoral district is higher when the race is closer individual level vote regressions for the 1979 and 1980 canadian national elections are estimated using objective measures of closeness as opposed to self reported measures the main finding is that a citizen is no more likely to vote in a close election than in a lands lide election district level turnout regressions for the same elections are also estimated and a significant relation between closeness and turnout is observed this suggests that aggregation bias may generate a spurious closeness turnout relation in district level regressions

the relationship between firm growth size and age estimates for 100 manufacturing industries this study uses a sample of all firms operating in 100 manufacturing industries to examine some aspects of firm dynamics it finds that firm growth the variability of firm growth and the probability that a firm will fail decrease with firm age it also finds that firm growth decreases at a diminishing rate with firm size even after controlling for the exit of slow growing firms from the sample gibrat s law therefore fails although the severity of the failure decreases with firm size copyright 1987 by blackwell publishing ltd

the globalization of swedish mnes empirical evidence and theoretical explanations we define globalization as the geographical dispersion of multinational enterprises mnes value chain in combination with increased inter regional coordination and use detailed firm level data to show that 12 of sweden s 17 largest manufacturing companies indeed are global by developing a globalization process model we theoretically argue in contrast to much of the existing literature that globalization may evolve to a more general phenomenon the globalization process is tortuous as mnes have to develop dynamic capabilities which make them gradually more competitive and able to cope with varying institutional contexts empirical testing on globalization of mnes originating from other home countries is suggested

an organizational model for understanding internationalization processes we propose an organizational model for understanding internationalization processes we argue that these processes differ with the type of organization we compare the internationalization processes of three organization types the mass production organization the disaggregated production organization and the project based organization each organization type responds differently to critical elements of the internationalization process namely the focus of entry the degree of presence and physical presence requirements in the foreign market which in turn influence what modal forms are adopted as the process progresses consequently we observe different approaches to resource commitment in the foreign market over time

resource dependency and institutional theory perspectives on direct and indirect export choices this article develops and tests resource dependency and institutional theory arguments to explain two choices facing sme owner managers 1 the decision whether to export or not and 2 if the firm exports the choice between a direct to customers abroad and an indirect using another firm as intermediary export mode binomial logistic regressions on our sample of 871 dutch smes suggest that institutional theory perspectives owner managers perception of the increased international presence of their domestic competitors customers and suppliers and perceptions of increased use of foreign suppliers explain the decision to export while resource dependency theory arguments owner managers perception of the favorability of access to knowledge and technology of production costs and of access to capital in the home market guide the choice between direct and indirect export modes

dynamic parties and social turnout an agent based model1 the authors develop an agent based model of dynamic parties with social turnout built upon developments in different fields within social science this model yields significant turnout divergent platforms and numerous results consistent with the rational calculus of voting model and the empirical literature on social turnout in a simplified version of the model the authors show how a local imitation structure inherently yields dynamics that encourage positive turnout the model also generates new hypotheses about the importance of social networks and citizen party interactions

swinging a double edged sword the effect of slack on entrepreneurial management and growth resource slack represents a double edged sword simultaneously fueling and hindering growth drawing on penrose s growth theory and stevenson s entrepreneurial management theory we have developed and tested a conceptual model that provides a more nuanced account of the resource slack growth relationship using a large dataset spanning six years we have found that slack has a positive direct effect on growth but a negative effect on entrepreneurial management and that entrepreneurial management has a positive effect on growth our empirical and conceptual findings are important to the development of firm growth theory and explicate causal mechanisms transforming slack into firm level outcomes

turnout in gubernatorial and senatorial primary and general elections in the south 1922 90 a rational choice model of the effects of short run and long run electoral competition on relative turnout using data on non presidential year elections for governor and u s senators in eight southern states over the period 1922 1990 we provide a rational choice inspired model of the factors that should be expected to affect the relative levels of turnout in primaries as compared to general elections both v o key and anthony downs have argued that voters will be more likely to participate in the elections in which they can most expect to be decisive v o key 1949 proposed that when general elections are usually lop sided because of one party dominance of a state s politics the primary of the dominant party of the state should have a higher turnout than the general election downs argued that turnout should be higher in competitive elections our modelling combines these ideas we use as our dependent variable the ratio of primary to general election turnout in each year we posit that this ratio will increase 1 the greater the degree of within party competition in the primary especially that within the dominant party of a state if there is one and 2 the weaker the degree of between party competition in the general election in addition to election specific effects we also posit long run effects such that the ratio for the offices of governor and u s senator will be affected not merely by the degrees of competition within and between parties specific to any given election but also by the long run trends in party competition this hypothesis leads us to expect that 3 in the south with the rise of the republican party the ratio of primary to general election turnout should decline over time all of our expectations about the links between turnout and competition are strongly supported we argue that rational choice models of turnout perform quite well when we view them in a comparative statics perspective rather than using them to make predictions about who will and who will not vote in any given election

causes of the difficulties in internationalization we study the causes of the difficulties faced by firms when they internationalize in search of new markets we build on the resource based theory to argue that the difficulties in internationalization can be separated into three main sets based on their relationship to advantage loss of advantage provided by resources transferred abroad creation of a disadvantage by resources transferred abroad and lack of complementary resources required to operate abroad in each set we further distinguish difficulties that are specific to a firm from those that are common to a set of firms we argue that only a few of the resulting types of difficulties of internationalization are exclusive to the cross border expansion and propose solutions that address the root cause of each type

international expansion through flexible replication learning from the internationalization experience of ikea business organizations may expand internationally by replicating a part of their value chain such as a sales and marketing format in other countries however little is known regarding how such international replicators build a format for replication or how they can adjust it in order to adapt to local environments and under the impact of new learning to illuminate these issues we draw on a longitudinal in depth study of swedish home furnishing giant ikea involving more than 70 interviews we find that ikea has developed organizational mechanisms that support an ongoing learning process aimed at frequent modification of the format for replication another finding is that ikea treats replication as hierarchical lower level features marketing efforts pricing etc are allowed to vary across ikea stores in response to market based learning while higher level features fundamental values vision etc are replicated in a uniform manner across stores and change only very slowly if at all in response to learning flexible replication we conclude by discussing the factors that influence the approach to replication adopted by an international replicator

entrepreneurial growth the role of international knowledge acquisition as moderated by firm age in line with repeated recent calls for research on specific forms of growth rather than on an undifferentiated notion of total growth our study contributes to the understanding of entrepreneurial growth by this we mean growth through expansion into new geographic markets and or via the introduction of new products or services building on penrose s theory of the growth of the firm and on the research streams she has in part inspired we investigate the impact of knowledge acquisition from international markets on entrepreneurial growth both at home and abroad we further suggest that the effects of international knowledge acquisition on entrepreneurial growth will vary with firm age utilizing longitudinal data on 138 small and medium sized enterprises smes we find that the acquisition of knowledge from international markets fuels growth through market development and that this effect is stronger for international expansion than domestic expansion our results also show that firm age negatively moderates the relationship between international knowledge acquisition and entrepreneurial growth via the introduction of new products or services specifically international knowledge acquisition has a positive effect on growth via new products services development in young firms but a negative effect in mature firms we assume this reflects changes over time in how international knowledge is managed

environmentally responsible inventory models non classical models for a non classical era abstract mathematical models of inventory typically include the three inventory associated costs of surplus shortage and ordering these classic inventory models are then analysed so as to choose inventory parameters that usually minimise the total cost of operating the inventory system being investigated unfortunately classic inventory models do not provide a meaningful basis for analysing many real and increasingly important practical inventory problems and situations it is therefore not surprising that over recent years several authors have discussed these issues in broad terms and suggested that a new paradigm needs to be developed this paper develops some specific aspects of this discussion in particular the paper identifies a range of inventory problems that are not covered appropriately by traditional inventory analysis one of these is to design responsible inventory systems i e systems that reflect the needs of the environment the paper then examines the importance of inventory planning to the environment in greater detail for example packaging is important not only because of its costs and the protection that it provides to the inventory items but also because of its eventual effects on the environment in terms of the use of resources and potential landfill for similar reasons waste which can result from poor inventory management is highly important the location of stores is important because location affects transport costs thus the influence of the secondary aspects of most inventory models packaging waste and location are important but even more important are the inter relations with the total system in particular the location of the manufacturing plants and the effect that inventory planning has on the logistics chain potentially have considerable environmental implications inventory is part of a wider system however until the cost charged for an activity reflects the true environmental cost of that activity it is likely that decisions will be made on the basis of erroneous data in that situation we are faced with either determining the environmental cost of specific actions or to use environmental costs that are somewhat contrived in which case it may be more sensible to use very different performance measures and models the paper discusses these ideas and ways in which inventory policies may reassure us with our environmental concerns

optimal cognitive distance and absorptive capacity in this paper we test the relation between cognitive distance and innovation performance of firms engaged in technology based alliances the key finding is that the hypothesis of an inverted u shaped effect of cognitive distance on innovation performance of firms is confirmed moreover as expected we found that the positive effect for firms is much higher when engaging in more radical exploratory alliances than in more exploitative alliances the effect of cumulative r d turns out to be mixed it appears to increase absorptive capacity as expected but there is clear evidence that it also reduces the effect of cognitive distance on novelty value making it increasingly difficult to find additional novelty

international experience and fdi location choices of chinese firms the moderating effects of home country government support and host country institutions we examine the extent to which chinese government support of foreign direct investment fdi projects and host country institutional environments interact with prior entry experience by chinese firms and how this interrelationship affects fdi undertaken by chinese firms we hypothesize that home country government support and well established host country institutions enhance organizational capabilities to take risks in fdi as such they reduce the need to accumulate experiential knowledge and capabilities relating to entering host countries based on prior entry experience in a particular country when undertaking follow up investment projects using a unique hand collected panel data set of chinese publicly listed firms during 2002 2009 we find that home government support and well developed host country institutions reduce the importance of prior entry experience and significantly increase the likelihood of fdi entry into a host country further from our subsample analyses we identify differences between entering developed and developing host countries in terms of the impact of home country government support and quality of host country institutions our findings help explain the puzzle concerning why emerging economy firms have rapidly internationalized in a short period of time and do not follow the pattern predicted by classical ib theories

social desirability opportunism and actual support for farmers market organisations in ethiopia one of the striking issues in the literature on farmers market organisations fmos is that farmers generally report quite positive opinions regarding the services of their fmo while at the same

building capabilities for international operations through networks a study of indian firms in this study we seek to explain how firms from emerging markets build capabilities to operate in international markets through learning from parental networks the building of these capabilities is of particular interest as firms from emerging markets may not necessarily possess the monopolistic advantages commonly referred to in ib literature which allow a firm to succeed in international markets using lagged cross sectional regression models on a sample of 794 indian firms we found that firms draw on the international experience of their parental and foreign networks to build such capabilities findings also indicate that network scope is beneficial for increasing exposure to international markets only in the case of networks that are either small or medium sized additionally we found that firms lacking market power in their home market benefit through foreign partnerships when internationalizing operations

a theory of the early growth of the firm economic enterprise consists in the matching of resources and opportunities to create value growth processes of the new enterprise are here explored in a systems model inspired by penrose a sequence of phases in the early life of the firm reflects growth processes and problems solutions giving rise to new problems firms must access mobilize and deploy resources before they can generate resources for growth subsequent phases in which growth reinforcement and growth reversal forces content are not universal but are set in motion in an important minority of firms the major job creators beyond the early phases critical problems facing the firm are more diverse the growth of the firm is related to the building of the competence needed to respond to changing industrial opportunities copyright 1998 by oxford university press

adjusting to and learning from institutional diversity toward a capability building perspective this paper identifies two main dimensions institutional diversity and dynamism in the research stream that has substantively engaged with the important contribution of jackson and deeg j int bus stud 39 4 540 561 2008 taking into account their core criticism that institutional analysis in international business research is often de contextualized and building on these two dimensions we present two possible paths for institutional analysis that are sensitive to context the first is a methodological shift towards configurational analyses and specifically the analysis of counterfactual scenarios that could reveal new information about decision alternatives the second is a shift away from a focus on costs and towards the possibility of mnes building capabilities in an exploratory manner when confronted with institutional diversity both approaches build on an understanding of mnes as strategic actors that co evolve with their environments

limits to international entry mode learning in smes despite extensive research the literature is unclear about the circumstances under which a firm learns from its past foreign entry modes and how this experiential learning is related to future mode choices building on the internationalization process ip model and the idea that some experiential learning is location bound while other learning is non location bound we develop and test theory to explain how experiential learning about foreign operation modes and markets impact future mode choices in new foreign markets overall we argue that mode based experiential learning is limited through the repeated use of a specific operation mode firms develop routines and processes that are non location bound and can be replicated in new foreign markets leading to the use of this same mode type in new locations but when complemented by experiential learning about a target market region firms opt for operation modes with greater commitment in new foreign markets drawing on a sample of german smes and examining four different types of entry modes we find some support however we also identify a number of notable exceptions to our theory in this way we help provide unique new insights informing future ip model experiential learning and international entry mode research

organizational learning about new international markets exploring the internal transfer of local market knowledge this study examines the transfer of local market knowledge within the diversified firm as its divisions expand into a new host country within the u s based corporations in our sample both the nature of local market knowledge itself and differences in organizational structures significantly influence the extent of internal knowledge transfer among divisions the results suggest that as firms expand into new international markets their organizational learning processes differ significantly

experiential knowledge and cost in the internationalization process using a behavioral approach this study identifies and delineates components of experiential knowledge in the internationalization process three hypotheses are developed and tested they center ar

impact of ownership on the international involvement of smes this paper analyses the relationship between the internationalisation strategies of smes and types of ownership different types of ownership affect firms and this in turn will influence the internationalisation strategy adopted using a sample of spanish smes our results show that internationalisation is negatively related to family ownership and positively related to corporate ownership we have also observed that the presence of a corporate blockholder in family firms encourages internationalisation these results support the idea that ownership type influences the decision to internationalise

wholly owned subsidiary versus technology licensing in the worldwide chemical industry this paper empirically analyzes the determinants of the choice between wholly owned subsidiary and technology licensing as a strategy for expansion abroad we use a new and comprehensive database on worldwide plant level investments in the chemical industry during the 1981 1991 period we find that both cultural distance and the presence of other potential licensors favor the use of licensing as a strategy for expanding abroad whereas prior experience favors the choice of wholly owned subsidiary an implication of this study is that competition in the market for technology can foster the international diffusion of technology through the use of arm s length agreements

closing knowledge gaps in foreign markets knowledge and learning are ascribed pivotal roles in firms internationalization processes perceived market uncertainties namely knowledge gaps related to business environments in foreign markets may curb firms inclinations to commit resources to these markets this study explores whether knowledge gaps tend to increase or decrease with time when operating in the foreign market and it discusses which learning components narrow or widen the perceived knowledge gap a theoretical model is developed based on the internationalization process view and the more recent organizational learning perspective including such concepts as overconfidence and absorptive capacity the theoretical model is tested on a set of primary data covering danish and swedish firms and their foreign market operations the results suggest a more subtle relationship between experience and perceived knowledge gaps than the mechanical relationship portrayed by the internationalization process view a relationship in which absorptive capacity and in particular overconfidence play important roles

analyzing the turnout competition link with aggregate cross sectional data numerous papers by public choice oriented scholars and others have sought to test the hypothesis inspired by downs 1957 that ceteris paribus turnout should be higher when elections are close most look in cross sectional terms at variations in turnout at the constituency level for elections of a given type by and large the results have been disappointing see e g foster 1984 we are skeptical of these weak findings and argue that a complete portrait of the turnout competition link requires us to examine that link for at least three different types of turnout turnout among potential eligibles turnout among registrants and turnout for a given office relative to other offices such as top of the ticket and to take into account longitudinal changes in turnout for recent off year elections to the u s senate and also for off year elections to the u s house of representatives in states where there was no gubernatorial or senatorial contest on the ballot we find strong evidence for higher turnout among eligibles in close contests for these elections to the u s senate we also find evidence for an ecological effect that leads to turnout being maximized at values of competition other than 50 50 moreover when we look at turnout for office relative to top of the ticket voting in the california assembly and the u s senate in presidential years we again find some evidence for an ecological effect in which turnout is maximized at a value of republican vote share above 50 percent and find further strong evidence for a clear link between competition and turnout for office among those at the polls

internationalization and performance degree duration and scale of operations we assess the theoretical underpinnings and associated empirical findings of the three stage sigmoid curve relationship between degree of internationalization doi and performance by re examining the results reported in one of the prominent studies in the literature we further conduct our own analyses of 23 474 observations of 2 620 us manufacturing firms over the period 1976 2008 and account for self selection of firms into different degrees of internationalization by using a generalized propensity score estimator both sets of results show that the relationship between doi and performance conforms to a mostly negative sigmoid curve and does not support the three stage theorization further examination reveals that two major conceptual and empirical shortcomings underlie the disparity between the theoretical predictions of the three stage model and these empirical findings first whereas theory relies overwhelmingly on enhanced scale of operations as a causal mechanism through which internationalization contributes to performance empirical studies preclude proper identification of scale related benefits second theory and empirics tend to confuse temporary difficulties experienced upon entry into international markets with examining the benefits realizable at different levels of doi regardless of the firm s short term difficulties in realizing those benefits our empirical results show that correcting for each of these shortcomings contributes to diminishing the theory empirics gap

explaining the internationalization of ibusiness firms information and communication technologies have given rise to a new type of firm the ibusiness firm these firms offer a platform that allows users to interact with each other and generate value through user co creation of content because of this ibusiness firms face different challenges when they internationalize compared with traditional firms even those online in this article we extend existing internationalization theory to encompass this new type of organization we theorize that because ibusiness firms produce value through the creation and coordination of a network of users these firms tend to suffer greater liabilities of outsidership when expanding abroad and therefore concentrate on network and diffusion based user adoption processes as they internationalize based on a multi case investigation of a sample of ibusiness firms we develop new theory and testable hypotheses thus we make an important contribution by expanding internationalization theory to a new set of firms

fortune favors the prepared firm a critical factor in industrial competitiveness is the ability of firms to exploit new technological developments we term this ability a firm s absorptive capacity and argue that such a capability not only enables a firm to exploit new extramural knowledge but to predict more accurately the nature of future technological advances we develop a stylized model in which we focus exclusively on firms decisions to invest in their absorptive capacities we first examine a monopolist s investment decision analyzing the path dependence of its investment and the effect of uncertainty we then consider the effect of competition by modeling the impact of entry on an incumbent s investment behavior implications for management and public policy are then discussed

the effect of specificity of experience on a firm s perceived importance of institutional knowledge in an ongoing business we study how three types of firm experience ranging from the specific to the general influence the perceived importance of institutional knowledge in the ongoing business of internationalising firms based on a sample of 101 small to medium sized firms the three types of firm experiences are international country and ongoing business the results show that firm experience within the ongoing business and the experience from multiple past business deals in various countries develop institutional knowledge whereas experience from multiple past business deals in a specific country does not the theoretical contribution of this paper is that it establishes a link between different kinds of experience and managerial cognition in terms of institutional knowledge in addition it emphasises that firms develop institutional knowledge from multiple diverse country experiences and experience in the specific ongoing business rather than experiences at the level of the country

born global or born regional evidence from an exploratory study in the costa rican software industry this paper provides empirical evidence about born global firms in the software industry of a small developing country with an open economy costa rica the paper is based on data collected through interviews with ceos or founders of 40 costa rican software companies findings show that there are few born global firms among costa rican software providers we find that most companies followed a gradual approach to internationalization and they did not export immediately upon birth a careful analysis of firms that exported soon after they were born reveals that most firms are actually born regional

mimetic and experiential effects in international marketing alliance formations of us pharmaceuticals firms an event history analysis alliances are recognized as an indispensable tool for managers operating in a global business environment and as a fundamental stage of the internationalization process of the firm drawing on a co evolutionary framework this article investigates the mimetic and experiential effects in international alliance formation we focus on a critical unresolved issue in the literature what is the role of mimetic behavior and previous alliance experience in mitigating the uncertainty associated with engaging in cross border operations an event history analysis of 792 international marketing alliance formations initiated by 317 firms in the us pharmaceutical industry is employed to test the hypotheses the findings of two different hazard rate models reveal significant complex effects of density and cross border alliance experience on the propensity to engage in new international marketing alliances

customer involvement and service firm internationalization performance an integrative framework to overcome the costs of doing business abroad researchers have suggested either legitimacy or efficiency based solutions however both types of solutions still treat host country customers as external to the theory we highlight the role of customers in the international professional business service setting and argue that customer involvement is positively related to the perceived internationalization performance of multinational corporations mncs mncs with managers who perceive higher legitimacy pressures and greater needs for local knowledge tend to undertake greater efforts to build customer involvement furthermore we develop a configuration framework between perceived strategic needs and mncs capabilities specifically mncs that match relational capability with legitimacy needs and absorptive capacity with knowledge needs are more likely to engage in customer involvement our survey of 175 chinese mncs provides evidence that customer involvement is positively related to perceived internationalization performance when mncs relational capabilities are stronger the positive relationship between legitimacy pressure and customer involvement increases by contrast mncs with greater perceived market ambiguity improve customer involvement only when they have stronger absorptive capacity we conclude that mncs may simultaneously reduce legitimacy and efficiency costs through customer involvement after considering the fit between perceived environmental pressures and firm capabilities

managing carbon footprints in inventory management abstract there is a broad consensus that mankind must reduce carbon emissions to mitigate global warming it is generally accepted that carbon emission trading is one of the most effective market based mechanisms to curb the amount of carbon emissions this paper investigates how firms manage carbon footprints in inventory management under the carbon emission trading mechanism we derive the optimal order quantity and analytically and numerically examine the impacts of carbon trade carbon price and carbon cap on order decisions carbon emissions and total cost we make interesting observations from the numerical examples and provide managerial insights from the analytical results

the effects of emission trading on production and inventories in the arrow karlin model abstract the paper deals with the effect of introduction of tradable permits on the production inventory strategy of a firm it is assumed that the firm will minimize its costs the cost function consists of linear holding and convex production costs after introducing emission trading the cost function will contain a linear emission procurement selling cost we will compare the optimal production inventory strategy before tradable permits and thereafter the mathematical investigation is based on the well known dynamic arrow karlin model

evaluating export promotion programmes uk overseas trade missions and export performance this paper examines the extent to which firms knowledge and structural characteristics as well as firms behaviour in foreign markets following trade mission participation impacts upon trade mission success and export performance the findings suggest that 1 a diversification strategy in terms of export markets benefits future expansion into new foreign markets 2 specific knowledge about the targeted markets should be acquired prior to participating in the trade missions 3 communication with potential business partners should be established prior to participating in the trade missions and 4 the business relationships established before and during the trade missions should be cultivated through regular contacts using not only communication technology but also regular visits in summary overseas trade missions contribute to the generation of incremental sales in foreign markets by enhancing the relationship building process between business partners

do managers behave the way theory suggests a choice theoretic examination of foreign direct investment location decision making many empirical examinations of foreign direct investment location choice have relied on the use of secondary data and surveys on the choices made by firms about the form and location of overseas investment these studies have two inherent and related problems first they rely solely on the location choices made by different firms and assume that the domains of possible options considered were the same second there is an assumption about the rules used by firms to make these decisions yet the decisions are made by boundedly rational managers after reviewing the literature this study examines managers choices about foreign investment location through the use of structured experimentation the results show that in creating sets of investments to consider managers appear to follow fairly rational rules however the choice of actual investments appears less aligned to traditional models

the performance of rational voter models in recent presidential elections in an economic theory of democracy downs hypothesized that rational utility maximizing citizens would calculate the benefits from voting as opposed to abstaining altogether and then vote if this expected benefit exceeded voting cost this hypothesis is logically derived from economic principles of rational behavior but is counterintuitive even if the utility increment is plausibly large the probability of casting a pivotal tie breaking vote in any sizable polity is minute hence the expected benefit will be less than the time cost of voting and no rational person will vote nevertheless a number of statistical studies have found that voter turnout does respond to differences in the probability of casting a decisive vote even though that probability may be small this article uses data gathered at the state level from the 1968 1972 1976 and 1980 general elections to reestimate the relationship between voter turnout and the probable closeness of the election pooled data least squares dummy variable lsdv regressions are used whenever preliminary tests indicate that such pooling is permissible the empirical results suggest that the relationship between closeness and turnout is weak unstable or nonexistent in all of the models tested

experiential knowledge and costs in the internationalization process using a behavioral approach this study identifies and delineates components of experiential knowledge in the internationalization process three hypotheses are developed and tested they center around the lack of knowledge in the areas of foreign business foreign institutions and firm internationalization as well as the effect that this lack of knowledge has on managers perceived cost in the internationalization process with the help of a lisrel based structural model the three hypotheses are tested on a sample of 362 service firms the analysis shows that lack of internationalization knowledge has a strong impact on the lack of both business and institutionalization but there is no direct effect of lack of internationalization knowledge on perceived cost of internationalization

tradable permits and production inventory strategies of the firm abstract the paper deals with the effect of introduction of tradable permits on the production inventory strategy of a firm the basic model of arrow and karlin 1958 production over time with increasing marginal costs in arrow k j karlin s scarf h eds studies in the mathematical theory of inventory and production stanford university press stanford pp 61 69 assumes that the firm minimizes the sum of linear holding and convex production costs these costs depend explicitly on time after introducing emission trading the cost function will contain linear emission procurement selling cost we compare two optimal production inventory strategies of a firm to examine changes of optimal strategies the first strategy is the optimal solution of the arrow karlin model then we analyze this model extended with costs of tradable permits

experience imitation and the sequence of foreign entry wholly owned and joint venture manufacturing by south korean firms and business groups in china 1987 1995 the evolution of foreign entry in the form of joint ventures and wholly owned manufacturing operations is examined as a staged process shaped by experience and imitation dynamics at the firm group and industry levels of analysis the expansion of south korean firms into china between 1987 and 1995 lends support to the staged view of foreign entry over time technology intensive firms are more likely to abandon joint venture entry modes owing to contractual hazards firms in the same business group are found to imitate each other s choice of joint ventures and wholly owned plants firms in the same industry mimic each other s choice of wholly owned plants though not of joint ventures

creative tension the significance of ben oviatt s and patricia mcdougall s article toward a theory of international new ventures the article by oviatt and mcdougall threw the spotlight on international entrepreneurs on international new ventures and on their importance in the globalising world economy recognising the rich theoretical implications of this phenomenon they mounted a challenge to received internationalisation process theories and established a new and exciting research theme that of international entrepreneurship this article reviews the impact of their contribution and discusses new research themes raised by their challenge to the process theories of internationalisation

foreign direct investment and local linkages this paper analyses the pattern of local linkages in foreign direct investment fdi treating such local linkages as an investment in local relationships using taiwanese manufacturing firms investing abroad as the sample for our case study we find that the local linkage intensity of a foreign subsidiary differs by fdi location entry mode firm size and the nature of the production network in which an investor is embedded more local linkages will be pursued by an investor if it is in search of distinctive and inimitable resources as opposed to homogeneous and reproducible resources investment in local linkages always begins with the linkage that carries the lowest risk to the original business network for manufacturing firms the sequence of such linkages is workers components and parts subcontracting and finally sources of r d

the uppsala internationalization process model revisited from liability of foreignness to liability of outsidership the uppsala internationalization process model is revisited in the light of changes in business practices and theoretical advances that have been made since 1977 now the business environment is viewed as a web of relationships a network rather than as a neoclassical market with many independent suppliers and customers outsidership in relation to the relevant network more than psychic distance is the root of uncertainty the change mechanisms in the revised model are essentially the same as those in the original version although we add trust building and knowledge creation the latter to recognize the fact that new knowledge is developed in relationships

can multinational enterprises light up developing countries evidences from the access to electricity in sub saharan africa summary this paper examines the role that multinational enterprises mnes and foreign direct investments fdi can have in enhancing the access to electricity for local communities in developing countries based on the quality of home and host institutions access to electricity is a marker for development but it is far from being universal in developing countries the shortage of electricity is mainly the consequence of inability of governments in planning financing and developing necessary electricity infrastructure in this context investments from other actors can be essential particularly we focus on the role of fdi and mnes we claim that when mnes invest in developing countries they are incentivized to solve the lack of electricity infrastructure mainly for two reasons to guarantee their business activities and to gain legitimacy with their local stakeholders in addition we argue that mnes and fdi from institutionally underdeveloped countries will be more prone to develop infrastructure for the provision of electricity to local population as generally they suffer from a negative stereotype for this study we rely on 1 547 observations composed of pairs of 83 home countries and 15 host countries in sub saharan africa observed from 2005 to 2011 due to the nature of the database we adopt panel data techniques i e system gmm and corrected least square dummy variable estimators we find that fdi promotes access to electricity in developing countries with weak institutions and this is more likely true when fdi come from institutionally underdeveloped countries these results are far from obvious as they controvert common idea among institutional scholars that a regulatory authority is essential in the provision of infrastructure in conclusion with this paper we partially rehabilitate the image of mnes investing in developing countries by demonstrating that under certain conditions they could contribute to energy poverty alleviation of local population

prior conditions and early international commitment the mediating role of domestic mindset our study investigates why some firms engage in low international commitments such as exports in the early phases of internationalization whereas others leapfrog the internationalization process and start with high international commitments in the form of foreign direct investment fdi process models of internationalization propose that firms start with low commitment activities and gradually increase their commitments to international markets however recent empirical evidence has shown that many firms make high international commitments from the start our findings suggest that domestic resources and competitive action propensity affect early international commitments indirectly through domestic mindsets a domestic mindset refers to the knowledge structures of the top management team prior to starting international activities based on their managerial experience and learning in domestic markets our results suggest that knowledge and learning gained in domestic markets through diverse resource and competitive activities may be crucial in early international commitments

the internationalization of small and medium sized firms this paper contributes to the existing research by integrating the notions of organizational learning and entrepreneurial orientation into the body of international entrepreneurship our primary framework combines learning theory and the new venture theory of internationalization to study the extent to which small and medium sized companies engage in international activities we found that the firms international learning effort and entrepreneurial orientation are positively associated with internationalization intent whereas domestic learning effort is negatively related with internationalization intent overall our results suggest 1 that intensive knowledge renewal and exploitation regarding foreign markets and the internationalization process itself may increase internationalization by affecting the perceptions of opportunities offered by further international expansion and 2 that firms with an entrepreneurial mindset may be more likely to develop a long term substantial presence in the international arena compared to firms that are more reactive or conservative

rational choice and turnout turning out to vote is the most common and important act of political participation in any democracy voting is also less well understood and explained empirically than other political acts engaged in regularly by citizens turnout however presents a special problem for rational choice theories of politics for it is taken to be the paradigmatic example of the problem of collective action in which although all may benefit from voting it is rarely in the individual s self interest to vote this paper begins by examining the problem of explaining turnout a basic form of rational choice models of turnout is developed basic in the sense that it is common to all such models this basic model is shown to be incomplete and the two most important models the calculus of voting and the minimax regret model are illustrated as alternative ways to complete this basic model along with mention of game theoretic models their strengths and weaknesses are then assessed the remainder of the paper argues that rational choice accounts of turnout are possible the first step is to argue that turnout is not an especially problematic version of the collective action problem because it is for many a low cost low expected benefit decision a strategic politicians account of turnout and campaigns is examined next a reinterpretation of the intrinsic benefits of voting is then considered and is used to examine the most important substantive problem in the turnout literature its decline these steps i argue make theories of ordinary political decisions at once both more political and more integrated into the politics of the larger system

accounting for endogeneity when assessing strategy performance does entry mode choice affect fdi survival firms choose strategies based on their attributes and industry conditions therefore strategy choice is endogenous and self selected empirical models that do not account for this and regress performance measures on strategy choice variables are potentially misspecified and their conclusions incorrect i highlight how self selection on hard to measure or unobservable characteristics can bias strategy performance estimates and recommend an econometric technique that has been developed to account for this effect although this concern applies to a wide range of strategy questions to demonstrate its effect i empirically examine if entry mode choice acquisition versus greenfield influences foreign direct investment survival in specifications that do not account for self selection i find that greenfield entries have survival advantages compared to acquisitions this confirms previous findings however the significance of this effect disappears once i account for self selection of entry mode in the empirical estimates the results confirm that estimates from models that do not account for self selection of strategy choice can lead to incorrect or misleading conclusions

entrepreneurial proclivity capability upgrading and performance advantage of newness among international new ventures in spite of a notable interest surrounding the learning advantages of newness lan centered on the emergent international entrepreneurship literature we have only limited understanding of how young international new ventures invs acquire learning advantages and avoid the liabilities of newness and foreignness in order to achieve lan related performance from early internationalization in this article two related but conceptually distinct capability upgrading constructs knowledge capability upgrading and network capability upgrading are identified to serve as mediating mechanisms that link entrepreneurial proclivity and lan related performance our findings from a sample of 436 young invs from china provide supporting evidence for the mediating effect of capability upgrading particularly among relatively larger new ventures and those operating with cost price advantages in the international marketplace this study fills a gap in the under researched area of literature surrounding invs from emerging economies and demonstrates how young international venturing firms can leverage the entrepreneurial dynamics of learning to achieve growth opportunities from early internationalization

learning from age difference interorganizational learning and survival in japanese foreign subsidiaries this paper extends research on experiential learning of foreign subsidiaries by exploring the temporal conditions under which a foreign subsidiary can benefit from the experience of its sister subsidiaries building upon organizational evolution and learning literature we propose that differences in entry timing among sister subsidiaries provide structural conditions that bound the opportunities for inter subsidiary learning we argue that different entry cohorts of sister subsidiaries are beneficial to a focal subsidiary as they provide non redundant complementary experience from their different operational stages and ignite the motivation to learn our empirical analysis of japanese foreign subsidiaries provides strong evidence that survival is enhanced by the experience of different entry cohorts of sister subsidiaries but not by that of similar cohorts qualitative evidence also shows that multiple channels of experience exchange across sister subsidiaries lead to actual learning we further show that the survival benefit derived from different cohorts is contingent on the level of environmental change as well as on the level of experience of the focal subsidiary and its parent firm our research highlights the importance of temporal heterogeneity in the internationalization process and offers implications for the temporal strategy of multinational companies

internationalising in small incremental or larger steps we argue that companies may enter foreign environments either incrementally as suggested by long established theory or by taking larger steps that may result in lower initial performance but through learning and experience lead to increased performance in future expansions this idea is corroborated by the experience of dutch companies entering into central and eastern europe we also find that expansion steps may be too large thereby limiting the exploration of foreign environments our study suggests that sequential internationalisation strategies do still matter and that companies have to balance exploitation and exploration in internationalisation

a time to grow and a time to die growth and mortality of credit unions in new york city 1914 1990 one vision of organizational evolution suggests that old and large organizations become increasingly dominant over their environment a second suggests that as organizations age they become less able to respond to new challenges in this article the authors investigate which of these visions best characterizes the evolution of state chartered credit unions in new york city from 1914 through 1990 by analyzing the effects of organizational age size and population density on rates of organizational failure and growth the authors find evidence that old and small institutions are more likely to fail while young and small organizations have the highest growth rates

is there a risk of growing fast the relationship between organic employment growth and firm exit growing firms are the drivers of economic dynamics while the existing literature often focuses on the average effect of growth on firm survival we investigate how survival rates vary across the growth distribution using dutch longitudinal firm level data 1999 2012 we theorize and find a u shaped relationship between organic employment growth and subsequent exit due to firm death in various model specifications low positive growth increases survival too much growth could be harmful for some subgroups of firms and the steepness of the u shape depends on firm age size and industry

environmental safety stock the impacts of regulatory and voluntary control policies on production planning inventory control and environmental performance abstract this paper analyzes the impacts of different pollution control policies on a firm s decisions of production planning and inventory control based on a stochastic model with both demand and environmental uncertainties we derive the optimal policies of production planning and inventory control under both regulatory and voluntary pollution control approaches and investigate their operational and environmental effects we establish that the conventional wisdom which suggests that reduction of environmental waste at the end of a production process also decreases the stock and throughput levels of a production system is not necessarily true rather a regulatory environmental standard that limits the total amount of waste may induce the firm to raise its planned stock level which would lead to a higher expected amount of environmental wastes before the standard is enforced as well as environmental risks at other stages of the production process the additional planned stock level which is termed environmental safety stock can be reversed by using the voluntary control approach that provides the firm with the flexibility to occasionally exceed the environmental standard we also conduct numerical experiments to analyze the effects of different values of model parameters under different control approaches the analytical results provide new insights to the impacts of a firm s production and inventory decisions on the natural environment as well as to the choices of pollution control approaches by decision makers in both the private and public sectors

speed of the internationalization process the role of diversity and depth in experiential learning by analyzing internationalization as a dynamic process we attempt to explain the speed of international operations in terms of learning acquired in the course of past international activities we consider that the speed of the internationalization process depends on the type of experiential learning that results from decisions implicit in the internationalization process choice of location and modes of operation firms develop two types of learning activities with respect to the selection of foreign markets and modes of operation diversity and depth of accumulated international activities we propose that depth of international activities has an inverted u shaped impact on the speed of the internationalization process while diversity of international activities has a u shaped influence on the speed of internationalization process the results of our longitudinal study of 889 firms over 23 years 1986 2008 suggest that diversity of international activities promotes long term learning by exposing the firm to richer experiences although such learning only takes place over time depth of international activities may accelerate the internationalization process in the short term but it eventually restrains its potential for development in the long term our research highlights the short term vs long term consequences of different types of decisions related to the internationalization process

multi item production planning with carbon cap and trade mechanism abstract carbon emission control becomes a challenge in recent years and carbon emission trading is an effective way to curb carbon emission this paper investigates the multi item production planning problem with carbon cap and trade mechanism in which a firm uses a common capacity and carbon emission quota to produce multiple products for fulfilling independent stochastic demands and the firm can buy or sell the right to emit carbon on a trading market of carbon emission a profit maximization model is proposed to characterize the optimization problem the optimal policy of production and carbon trading decisions is analyzed and an efficient solution method with linear computational complexity is presented for solving the optimal solution the impacts of carbon price carbon cap on the shadow price of the common capacity production decisions carbon emission and the total profit are investigated the comparisons of the carbon cap and trade policy and the taxation policy are given to show the effectiveness of the policies numerical analyses are presented for illustrating our findings and obtaining some managerial insights and policy implication

innovation organizational capabilities and the born global firm we investigate born global firms as early adopters of internationalization that is companies that expand into foreign markets and exhibit international business prowess and superior performance from or near their founding our explication highlights the critical role of innovative culture as well as knowledge and capabilities in this unique breed of international entrepreneurial firm case studies are analyzed to better understand the early internationalization phenomenon and reveal key orientations and strategies that engender international success among these innovative firms case findings are then validated in a survey based study despite the scarce resources typical of young firms our findings reveal that born global firms leverage a distinctive mix of orientations and strategies that allow them to succeed in diverse international markets findings have important implications for the internationalization of contemporary firms