theory and behavior of multiple unit discriminative auctions this paper reports the results of controlled experiments designed to test the harrisraviv generalization of the vickrey theory of bidding in multiple unit discriminative auctions the paper also discusses further development of the theory in a way suggested by the experimental results to include bidders with distinct risk preferences in a well known paper vickrey 20 formulated a nash equilibrium model of bidding by risk neutral economic agents in single unit auctions this analysis was subsequently extended in numerous papers vickrey 21 generalized his original model to include multiple unit auctions in which each of n risk neutral bidders can bid on one out of a total of q homogeneous items up for auction where 1 c q n in both of the vickrey papers individual values for the auctioned object s were assumed to be drawn from a uniform distribution holt 12 and riley and samuelson 19 for single unit auctions and harris and raviv 11 for multiple unit auctions have extended the vickrey model to the case in which valuations are from a general distribution function and all agents have identical concave utility functions this paper reports the empirical properties of individual bidding behavior and seller revenue for a group of 28 laboratory experiments designed to test the harris raviv generalization of the vickrey hereafter vhr model of nash equilibrium behavior in multiple unit discriminative auctions in section i we summarize briefly the theoretical results of the vhr model which form the basis for the hypotheses that we test section ii describes the experimental design that we use section iii describes the experimental results and various tests based on the bidding behavior of individual subjects and on aggregate market seller revenue data the results from six of the ten n q parameter designs reported

catch up cycles and changes in industrial leadership windows of opportunity and responses of firms and countries in the evolution of sectoral systems this study proposes a framework that aims to explain why successive changes in industry leadership called also the catch up cycle occur over time in a sector in catch up cycles latecomer firms and countries emerge as international leaders whereas incumbents lose their previous positions new leaders are then dethroned by newcomers to identify factors at the base of catch up cycles this article adopts a sectoral system framework and identifies windows of opportunity that may emerge during the long run evolution of an industry this study proposes three windows related to the specific dimensions of a sectoral system one dimension is related to changes in knowledge and technology the second dimension pertains to changes in demand and the third includes changes in institutions and public policy the combination of the opening of a window technological demand or institutional policy and the responses of firms and other components of the sectoral system of the latecomer and incumbent countries determines changes in industrial leadership and catch up sectors differ according to the type of windows that may open and the responses of firms and other components of systems empirical evidence of catch up cycles is presented from six sectors namely mobile phones cameras semiconductors steel mid sized jets and wines

what s theoretically novel about emerging market multinationals we review the classic theory of the mne and past attempts to use it to understand the internationalization of firms from emerging markets we offer two criteria to determine whether emnes modify classic theory or not 1 establishing appropriate theoretical reference points and 2 distinguishing between theoretical constructs and empirical variables we suggest that the literature can benefit from moving beyond comparing emnes to dmnes and focusing instead on more fruitful issues specifically emerging markets offer the opportunity to observe the origin of the capabilities of mnes in general and the development of the institutional ecosystem that supports internationalization

home country supportiveness unfavorableness and outward foreign direct investment from china what drives the outward foreign direct investments ofdis by emerging market firms emfs drawing on a strategy tripod framework this article proposes a theoretical model to predict ofdi by emfs from china specifically we use institution and industry based views to examine two facets of home country environment namely the supportiveness from home government and unfavorableness from home industry as important determinants of ofdi and compare the relative strength of these effects further we use the resource based view to argue that the effect of the home country environment is contingent on the international experience portfolios of emfs

foreign locals a cautionary tale on the culture of mnc local employees multinational corporations mncs rely heavily on local employees when conducting their international operations yet the international business literature provides few instances of true focus on these employees the commonly used label host country nationals hcns confers them an identity strongly related to the culture of their country prompting both researchers and practitioners to know them through the knowledge about the local culture this paper provides evidence that a more sophisticated view of the culture of hcns is needed through an ethnographic exploration of hcns working in local subsidiaries of american mncs in romania i reveal that hcns are not always culturally interchangeable with the rest of the host country population hcns can display a variety of cultural profiles more or less reflective of the national culture depending on their enacted stance towards the native culture and the cultural landscape of the mncs themselves the findings call for further specification of theories relying on the assumed localness of hcns and should contribute to the ongoing conversation on the interplay between the cultures specific to the mnc and its host countries

optimal threats many conflicts ranging from biblical strife to modern superpower confrontations are significantly affected by the threat of retaliation we analyze the policy of tit for tat in a threat game based on chicken in which each player can initially choose any level of preemption or non cooperation if one player is more preemptive than the other the less preemptive player can retaliate if the players preempt at the same level neither can retaliate after these choices the game terminates with the players payoffs based on both the payoffs of chicken and their levels of preemption and retaliation an analysis of nash equilibria shows the deterrence equilibrium neither player preempts but both threaten to retaliate if preempted to be the most compelling solution to this game a player s choice of his strategy associated with this equilibrium renders any level of preemption by his opponent costly deterrence equilibrium strategies entail in some cases more than proportionate threats of retaliation against low levels of preemption and less than proportionate threats against high levels we consider the optimality of such threats in light of existing prescriptions and evidence on different conflicts especially those that occur in the international arena and may involve nuclear threats

technological regimes catching up and leapfrogging findings from the korean industries abstract this paper examines the experiences of selected industries in korea to identify the stylized facts in the process of technological capability building and thereby to sort out the conditions for the catching up to occur to explain the process we have built a model of technological and market catching up a special attention has been given to the question of whether there has been a case of leapfrogging in any industry in korea and if so what are the conditions for its incidence in our framework we first measure the degree of catching up in terms of market shares in the world then we focus on catching up in technological capabilities in explaining the different record and prospects of korean industries in market catching up in the model technological capability is determined as a function of both technological effort and the existing knowledge base as determinants of technological effort we look at the technological regimes of the industries such as cumulativeness of technical advances fluidity predictability of technological trajectory and the properties of knowledge base using this model we explain the different technological evolution of the selected industries in korea including the d ram automobile mobile phone consumer electronics personal computer and machine tool industries we find three different patterns of catching ups path creating catching up cdma mobile phone path skipping catching up d ram and automobile and path following catching up consumer electronics personal computers and machine tools we interpret the first two case of catching up as leapfrogging unlike the argument by perez and soete perez c soete l 1988 catching up in technology entry barriers and windows of opportunity in dosi et al eds technical change and economic theory pinter publishers london we find that important r d projects except automobiles where only private r d was involved involved both private and public capacities and that entry was not driven by endogenous generation of knowledge and skills but by collaboration with foreign companies

dynamic entry reverse auctions and the purchase of environmental services this research uses economic experiments to examine the effectiveness of reverse auction institutions in an endogenous dynamic entry setting induced values are used to compare behavior in dynamic and static auction structures past research on this topic has understudied dynamic elements such as strategic entry and endogenous bidder selection that arise in a dynamic environment the results suggest complex behavioral patterns in which some sellers overenter early and others strategically wait this affects the owners abilities to extract rents in a dynamic setting this result impacts policy effectiveness because previous work overlooking these dynamic elements likely understates auction cost effectiveness

when does public information undermine the efficiency of reverse auctions for the purchase of ecosystem services abstract government agencies that conduct reverse auctions related to the payment of ecosystem services pes traditionally provide a significant amount of public information about past auction results this information includes not only the amount of money spent by the government but also can include various information about the accepted bids this research uses induced value experiments to evaluate the effect of past auction information on seller landholder rent seeking results suggest that sellers use this public information and learn how to secure higher rents however when sellers are given information only about the buyer s government agency s budget they secure lower rents results also suggest that relative budget size affects rents and that budget stochastic variability in the presence of market information diminishes the effect thus in the presence of public information and equivalent total outlays variable budgets are more likely than stationary budgets to achieve auction fiscal efficiency the measure of whether the auction achieves the greatest pes benefits given its limited budget finally this research finds that auctions with greater heterogeneity in seller opportunity costs are likely to be less fiscally efficient than when the distribution is more homogeneous

catching up by hiring the case of huawei hiring experts in centers of state of the art technology is an important way in which a multinational enterprise mne can gain competitive advantage and yet use of this mechanism remains under researched this study uses the case of a chinese mne that recently achieved a leading position in the telecommunications market huawei technologies taking the perspective of huawei s offshore hires i find that greenfield investments contributed to overcoming liabilities of origin and outsidership in the global telecommunications industry nevertheless even now that huawei has caught up with industry incumbents its output capabilities remain dependent on the innovation capabilities of its offshore experts

assessing the performance of conservation auctions an experimental study this work uses controlled laboratory experiments to investigate the budgetary and the economic performance of competitive tenders for allocating conservation contracts to landholders experiments have been replicated in two different countries to check for robustness of results we find that auctions outperform the more traditional fixed price programs only in the one shot setting with repetition the auctions quickly lose their edge the budget constrained auction performs similarly to the target constrained in the one shot setting but appears more robust to repetition our results suggest that previous estimates of conservation auction performance are too optimistic and we propose a method for improving such estimates

taiwanese it firms offshore r d in china and the connection with the global innovation network abstract although it is evident that technology is becoming increasingly globalized resulting in the expansion of r d internationalization by firms despite this discernible trend the substantial body of literature in this area is based mainly on the experience of the developed country this paper aims to contribute to the understanding of this issue by examining the r d internationalization of a newly industrializing country taiwan being a prime example and its connection with the global production network we begin with an examination of the literature on r d internationalization and globalization based upon which we propose a conceptual framework adapted from dunning s eclectic paradigm in doing so we set out to develop arguments based not only on the reasons why cross strait r d internationalization may be undertaken by taiwanese information technology it firms but also the likely patterns of their r d portfolios across the strait drawing on an original questionnaire survey and firm level interviews the paper presents and discusses empirical data on the cross strait r d deployment of taiwanese it firms it then goes a stage further using the smiling curve to put forward a holistic view of the cross border innovation network in the it hardware industry in order to determine what cross strait r d internationalization means to the global production network

linking the insights of smith marx young and hirschman on the division of labour implications for economic integration and uneven development this article distinguishes between two types of division of labour discussed by smith the final product specialisation type has been adopted as the basis of mainstream trade models that champion the benefits of free trade the division of production operations type can be extended through the works of marx transition to modern industry based on forms of manufacture young industrial differentiation and hirschman linkages through this some countries started reaping more benefits from increasing returns engendering incipient uneven development that aggravates under unrestricted economic integration between them and the trailing countries in the modern era the leading countries trans national corporations have further shaped the international division of production operations resulting in different forms of enclave development when their activities are unregulated under recently reached multi lateral agreements that limit the use of subsidies and investment measures and strengthen the protection of intellectual property rights uneven development would be sustained some future research directions are considered

overcoming distrust how state owned enterprises adapt their foreign entries to institutional pressures abroad state owned so enterprises are subject to more complex institutional pressures in host countries than private firms these institutional pressures arise from a weak legitimacy of state ownership in some countries which arises from a combination of ideological conflicts perceived threats to national security and claimed unfair competitive advantage due to support by the home country government these institutional pressures directed specifically at so firms induce them to adapt their foreign entry strategies to reduce potential conflicts and to enhance their legitimacy testing hypotheses derived from this theoretical argument for subsidiaries of listed chinese firms we find that so firms adapt mode and control decisions differently from private firms to the conditions in host countries and these differences are larger where pressures for legitimacy on so firms are stronger these findings not only extend institutional theory to better explain differential effects on different entrants to an organizational field but demonstrate how foreign investors of idiosyncratic origins may proactively build legitimacy in host societies

5 information impact and allocation rules in auctions with affiliated private values a laboratory study in affiliated private value auctions each bidder has perfect information regarding his her own value for the object at auction but higher values of the item for one bidder make higher values for other bidders more likely we report on a series of experiments examining three key implications of these auctions i in a first price auction public information about rivals values increases expected revenue ii an english auction increases expected revenue compared to a first price auction and iii a second price auction is isomorphic to an english auction in examining these issues we compare predictions of some ad hoc bidding models with nash equilibrium predictions in the first price auction experiments nash equilibrium bidding theory organizes the data better than either of two ad hoc bidding models public information about others valuations does increase average revenue but the increase in revenue is smaller and less reliable than predicted under risk neutral nash equilibrium bidding lower average revenue might be attributed to risk aversion while the high variability is attributed to a sizable frequency of individual bidding errors relative to the theory bidding theory precisely organizes english auction outcomes after a brief initial learning period the dominant strategy equilibrium does not organize second price auctions nearly as well as market prices persistently exceed predicted prices the difference between english and second price outcomes is attributed to effects of different information flows inherent in the structure of the two institutions on eliminating bidding errors revenue impacts of these two institutions relative to a first price auction are examined in light of observed bidding patterns

systems integration a core capability of the modern corporation many of the world s leading firms are developing a new model of industrial organization based on systems integration rather than performing all productive tasks in house companies are building the capabilities to design and integrate systems while managing networks of component and subsystem suppliers this article illustrates how systems integration evolved from its military engineering based origins in the 1940s and 1950s to a modern day strategic capability across a wide variety of sectors taking a resource based view of the firm the article shows how systems integration capabilities underpin the way high technology companies compete by moving selectively up and downstream in the marketplace through the simultaneous twin processes of vertical integration and disintegration systems integrators of capital goods move downstream into service intensive offerings to expand revenue streams and increase profitability by contrast producers of high volume components and consumer goods use systems integration capabilities to exploit upstream relationships with input suppliers in both cases strategic options and capabilities are shaped by the life cycle of each product the article develops a clearer understanding of systems integration arguing that it now represents a core capability of the modern high technology corporation

international expansion of emerging market enterprises a springboard perspective in this article we present a springboard perspective to describe the internationalization of emerging market multinational corporations em mnes em mnes use international expansion as a springboard to acquire strategic resources and reduce their institutional and market constraints at home in so doing they overcome their latecomer disadvantage in the global stage via a series of aggressive risk taking measures by aggressively acquiring or buying critical assets from mature mnes to compensate for their competitive weaknesses we discuss unique traits that characterize the international expansion of em mnes and the unique motivations that steer them toward internationalization we further delineate peculiar strategies and activities undertaken by these firms in pursuit of international expansion as well as internal and external forces that might compel or facilitate their propulsion into the global scene we finally explain the risks and remedies associated with this international springboarding strategy and highlight major issues meriting further investigation

evaluating conservation auctions with unknown bidder costs the scottish fishing vessel decommissioning program as an alternative to the more traditional fixed price schemes governments can run auctions to purchase environmental services from private agents governments have so far chosen the discriminatory price dp over the uniform price up format theoretical and experimental studies have concluded that the dp usually performs better than the up in terms of cost effectiveness using field data from two fishing vessel decommissioning auctions in scotland we find ambiguous results regarding relative dp and up performances a novel approach for estimating the underlying bidder costs shows that bid shading and cost heterogeneity can each determine relative auction performance jel q22 q28

knowledge diffusion market segmentation and technological catch up the case of the telecommunication industry in china abstract this paper examines the growth of technological capability in the telecommunication industry in china we apply a modified version of lee and lim s lee k lim c 2001 the technological regimes catch up and leapfrogging findings from the korean industries research policy vol 30 model of technological learning and catching up using the three cases of the shanghai bell the cit led r d consortium and indigenous companies such as huawei we analyze how the catching up in the telecommunication industry occurred we find that the important factors in the catch up are the strategy of trading market for technology the knowledge diffusion from shanghai bell both to the r d consortium and to huawei and industrial promotion by the government as a condition for successful catch up the paper points out that the technological regime of the telephone switches is featured by a more predictable technological trajectory and a lower cumulativeness these conditions and strategies helped the chinese firms to achieve a stage skipping catch up namely by skipping the stage of analogue electronic switches to jump to digital electronic switches

the global business revolution the cascade effect and the challenge for firms from developing countries the global business revolution since the 1980s has witnessed an unprecedented degree of industrial consolidation and concentration of business power at a global level firms with powerful globally recognised technologies and or brands constitute the systems integrators at the apex of extended supply chains this paper examines the supply chains in four different sectors aerospace telecommunications automobiles and beverages it finds that these sectors have striking similarities in the way in which the core systems integrators have stimulated industrial concentration across the whole supply chain this cascade effect has profound implications for firms from developing countries in catching up at the firm level

a retrospective and agenda for future research on chinese outward foreign direct investment our original 2007 journal of international business studies article the determinants of chinese outward foreign direct investment was the first theoretically based empirical analysis of the phenomenon it utilised internalisation theory to explain the internationalisation of chinese state owned enterprises this paper showed that we had failed to ask sufficiently challenging questions about the effects of home country institutions on outward foreign direct investment ofdi this retrospective builds on the extensive subsequent research to show the importance of context in constructing satisfactory theoretical explanations of ofdi building on these foundations we propose research challenges for the next decade on chinese ofdi that transcend the chinese context and have wider theoretical applicability examining alternative forms of social and economic organisation allows the creation of special theories of foreign direct investment nested within the general theory following such a strategy would enable international business research to make a contribution across the social sciences

a laboratory comparison of uniform and discriminative price auctions for reducing non point source pollution auctions allow regulators to identify land management changes with substantial environmental benefit and low opportunity cost this paper reports an experiment in which seller subjects compete in sealed offer auctions to obtain part of a fixed budget allocated by the experimenter regulator to subsidize pollution abatement one treatment employs uniform price auction rules whereas another treatment employs discriminative price auction rules we find that most offers in the uniform price auction are within 2 of cost whereas most offers in the discriminative price auction are at least 8 greater than cost nevertheless the discriminativeprice auction has superior overall market performance

governance and trade in fresh vegetables the impact of uk supermarkets on the african horticulture industry production of fresh vegetables for export has grown rapidly in a number of countries in sub saharan africa over the last decade this trade brings producers and exporters based in africa together with importers and retailers in europe large retailers in europe play a decisive role in structuring the production and processing of fresh vegetables exported from africa the requirements they specify for cost quality delivery product variety innovation food safety and quality systems help top determine what types of producers and processors are able to gain access to the fresh vegetables chain and the activities they must carry out the control over the fresh vegetables trade exercised by uk supermarkets has clear consequences for inclusion and exclusion of producers and exporters of differing types and for the long term prospects for the fresh vegetables industry in the two major exporting countries studied kenya and zimbabwe

local regional or global quantifying mne geographic scope this paper proposes a multidimensional index of regional and global orientation that can be used in confirmatory studies with econometric methodologies unlike extant measures the index is objectively scaled and controls for home country orientation and market size differences the index is shown to be consistent with models of internationalization that incorporate different assumptions about investment choice and global competition preliminary results show that large multinationals follow home region oriented internationalization paths although much of the regional effect reported by previous studies in fact reflects strong home country biases

stability and centrality of legislative choice in the spatial context majority rule spatial voting games lacking a core still always present a near core outcome more commonly known as the copeland winner this is the alternative that defeats or ties the greatest number of alternatives in the space previous research has not tested the copeland winner as a solution concept for spatial voting games without a core lacking a way to calculate where the copeland winner was with an infinite number of alternatives we provide a straightforward algorithm to find the copeland winner and show that it corresponds well to experimental outcomes in an important set of experimental legislative voting games we also provide an intuitive motivation for why legislative outcomes in the spatial context may be expected to lie close to the copeland winner finally we show a connection between the copeland winner and the shapley value and provide a simple but powerful algorithm to calculate the copeland scores of all points in the space in terms of the modified power values of each of the voters and their locations in the space

equilibrium in sealed high bid auctions there is a voluminous theoretical literature on sealed high bid auctions auctions in which bids are sealed and the high bidder pays his bid see for example vickrey 1961 myerson 1981 riley and samuelson 1981 milgrom and weber 1982 matthews 1983 maskin and riley 1984 holt 1980 cox smith and walker 1988 a critical property on which this literature relies is the existence of equilibrium in which buyers bidding strategies are monotonic in their types this enables the analyst to perform comparative statics as the distribution of types changes and to compare the welfare properties of the high bid auction with those of other auction institutions one case in which the existence of monotonic equilibrium is readily established is that in which buyers types are distributed smoothly independently and symmetrically in this case there exists a symmetric equilibrium one in which all bidders share the same bidding behaviour as a function of their valuations and this bid function is the solution to a first order differential equation

cooperation among egoists in prisoners dilemma and chicken games axelrod has developed an evolutionary approach to the study of repeated games and applied that approach to the prisoners dilemma we apply this approach with some modifications in the treatment of clustering to a game that has the prisoners dilemma and chicken as special cases to analyze how the evolution of cooperation differs in the two games we find that the main barrier to the evolution of cooperation in chicken is that cooperation may not always be correctly thought of as socially optimal but that strong forces do push the players toward socially optimal action we derive some of the results on mixed populations for any game with pairwise interaction

qualitative research for international business qualitative research in international business has been rare the main research streams of the field relying more on quantitative methods this paper first outlines why qualitative research has been scant it then presents areas such as theory building where qualitative research could make a substantial contribution third it reviews approaches to high standards of qualitative research and criteria for evaluating qualitative research finally some possible research areas where qualitative research might prove fruitful are suggested

recruiting for ideas how firms exploit the prior inventions of new hires when firms recruit inventors they acquire not only the use of their skills but also enhanced access to their stock of ideas but do hiring firms actually increase their use of new recruits prior inventions our estimates suggest they do quite significantly in fact by approximately 219 on average however this does not necessarily reflect widespread learning by hiring in fact we estimate that a recruit s exploitation of her own prior ideas accounts for almost half of the above effect with much of the diffusion to others being limited to the recruit s immediate collaborative network furthermore although one might expect the recruit s role to diminish rapidly as her tacit knowledge diffuses across her new firm our estimates indicate that her importance is surprisingly persistent over time we base these findings on an empirical strategy that exploits the variation over time in hiring firms citations to the recruits premove patents specifically we employ a difference in differences approach to compare premove versus postmove citation rates for the recruits prior patents and corresponding matched pair control patents our methodology has three benefits compared to previous studies that also examine the link between labor mobility and knowledge flow 1 it does not suffer from the upward bias inherent in the conventional cross sectional comparison 2 it generates results that are robust to a more stringently matched control sample and 3 it enables a temporal examination of knowledge flow patterns this paper was accepted by kamalini ramdas entrepreneurship and innovation

agri environmental policies in the eu and united states a comparison abstract agri environmental policies aeps in the united states and the european union are examples of payments for environmental services that pay farmers to reduce the negative externalities of agricultural production while serving as a means to transfer public funds to farmers we show that despite similar origins aeps in the two regions differ both in their specific objectives and in their implementation for example aeps in most member states of the eu 15 have the additional objective of using agriculture as a driver for rural development this objective is achieved by compensating farmers for the private delivery of positive public goods such as attractive landscapes produced by agriculture the rationale is market failure and there is empirical evidence that europeans are willing to pay for such positive externalities no comparable provision exists in u s policy by contrast u s aeps focus almost entirely on reducing agriculture s negative externalities such as soil erosion second we find that u s programs are more targeted than their eu counterparts and take opportunity cost into account the eu programs on the other hand address a wider range of externalities and are focused more on the paying for a particular farming process than reducing specific negative externalities the eu takes a broader view of aeps than does the united states both in terms of type of activity that can be funded and by using less targeting by land characteristics and so the european program could be more easily used as a mechanism for transferring income to producers despite this we find evidence that many of the amenities targeted by the programs are demanded by the population

rational retaliation superpower response to crisis 1948 1979 using a modified version of chicken referred to as the threat game brams and kilgour 1987a 1987b have developed a theoretical model of rational retaliation in superpower crises they derive explicit thresholds for sufficient retaliation against provocations to deter them in the first place when the retaliating move meets or is more coercive than a threshold value it is rational for the adversaries to prefer to desist from conflict whereas a response that is too cooperative will not provide the same incentive

auctions and bidding a primer maybe the contractor was right to think bid jobs are different but it is more likely that he suffered from too simple a view of what is involved in preparing a competitive bid our analysis will show that even an experienced estimator working in familiar terrain can lose money if he doesn t understand the subtleties of competitive bidding the phenomenon experienced by the painting contractor known as the winner s curse is just one of the surprising and puzzling conclusions that have been turned up by modern research into auctions another is the theoretical proposition supported also by some experimental evidence that for example a sealed bid treasury bill auction in which each buyer pays a price equal to the highest rejected bid would yield more revenue to the treasury than the current procedure in which the winning bidder pays the seemingly higher amount equal to his own bid there are also subtle results that demonstrate the equivalence of such apparently different institutions as the standard sealed bid auction in which the auctioneer seller sells the goods to the highest bidder for a price equal to his bid and the dutch auction in which the auctioneer seller begins by asking a high price and gradually lowers the price until

threat escalation and crisis stability a game theoretic analysis we develop a model of crisis stability based on a deterrence game players are assumed to be able to choose any level of initial cooperation or noncooperation the more cooperative player if there is one may then choose to retaliate in a crisis players are assumed to have escalated their conflict and desire to stabilize it before it explodes players can by threatening their opponent stabilize the new status quo in addition points of threat escalation are identified at which neither player can prevent the opponent from escalating further without threatening the opponent more severely than before the crisis erupted thereby heating up an already tense situation crisis stabilization is aided by being close to the full cooperation position though paradoxically both players may benefit from having created a crisis that only escalating threats may resolve we discuss ways of avoiding threat escalation and the increased risk of war that it entails especially in conflicts between the superpowers

the cost effectiveness of conservation payments international donors invest billions of dollars to conserve ecosystems in low income nations the most common investments aim to encourage commercial activities such as ecotourism that indirectly generate ecosystem protection as a joint product we demonstrate that paying for ecosystem protection directly can be far more cost effective although direct payment initiatives have imposing institutional requirements we argue that all conservation initiatives face similar challenges thus conservation practitioners would be well advised to implement the first best direct payment approach rather than a secondbest policy option an empirical example illustrates the spectacular cost savings that can be realized by direct payment initiatives

legitimizing leveraging and launching developing dynamic capabilities in the mne multinational enterprises mnes face simultaneous pressures for global integration and local responsiveness while the extant literature acknowledges that most mnes are neither entirely geared towards achieving global integration nor local responsiveness scarce attention is given to how mnes develop organizational flexibility to address multiple and shifting strategy pressures over time in this paper we draw on the dynamic capabilities literature to explore how the mne develops the capabilities needed to achieve this flexibility through a qualitative longitudinal case study spanning 12 years we identify three recombination capabilities legitimizing leveraging and launching capabilities through which the mne develops organizational flexibility we find that these recombination capabilities improve the mnes ability to sense and seize new opportunities and enable the mne to overcome organizational impediments to achieve flexibility our study offers a process perspective that shows how the three capabilities together nourish the mnes resilience to continuously balance between global integration and local responsiveness our findings have managerial implications illustrating that launching new strategic initiatives may fail if the mne does not have the capabilities to legitimize the new initiatives and to ensure that existing organizational strengths are properly leveraged to support the new initiatives

globalisation and industrial policy the case of china after a quarter of a century of industrial policy china s objective of nurturing a group of globally competitive state owned enterprises appears to have succeeded beyond most expectations however china s soes are far from catching up with the world s leading firms protection through state ownership in a massive fast growing economy has permitted china s soes to earn large profits and achieve high market capitalisations but this is not the same thing as building globally competitive firms the fact that china s industrial policy has been unsuccessful after a quarter of a century of intense effort demonstrates how difficult it is to construct an industrial policy in the era of capitalist globalisation which has produced intense global industrial concentration across large parts of the global value chain although the detailed content of the next stage of reform of china s large state owned enterprises is unclear china s determination to build a group of globally competitive large companies remains undimmed

from a distance and generalizable to up close and grounded reclaiming a place for qualitative methods in international business research journal of international business studies 2011 42 573 581 doi 10 1057 jibs 2011 19 it is exhilarating to write the introduction to this special issue as it presents an important opportunity for qualitative research to reclaim its position as an integral part of international business ib research the field of ib was founded on a rich qualitative research legacy e g bartlett 1979 crozier 1965 fayerweather 1969 johanson vahlne 1977 kindleberger 1956 prahalad 1975 wilkins 1970 1974 over time however such methods have been progressively marginalized in our field as quantitative methods have become the norm this shift in emphasis has mirrored the broader trend toward more positivistic empirical methods in the social sciences the field of ib is multidisciplinary in scope and interdisciplinary in content and methodology statement of jibs editorial policy however as our respective home disciplines came under growing pressure to solidify their legitimacy as scientific endeavors that merit scholarly attention it is not surprising that we began to take on the norms propagated within our own academic communities that typically equated quantitative data with hard science while there are clear merits associated with quantitative methods the multi cultural multi dimensional and dynamic nature of the field of ib lends itself to a broad range of research methodologies qualitative methods being one of them in order to understand the complexities of emergent and evolving phenomena scattered over distance and the differentiated contexts typical to many topics under investigation in ib it is often inappropriate to engage in large scale cross sectional studies or reductionist methods in the absence of well developed theory rather thick description exploratory research and comparative case analysis that focus on inductive theory building and hypotheses generation may be more suitable

springboard internationalization by emerging market firms speed of first cross border acquisition according to the springboard perspective emerging market multinationals seek strategic assets aggressively from the outset in this paper we investigate the role of firms institutional embeddedness in terms of age and affiliation to business group on their aggressive internationalization pursuits an issue which has remained less explored in international business scholarship this study based on 8163 indian listed firms over 18 years identifies a trend that younger firms founded in the liberalized era post 1991 and unaffiliated firms are more likely to pursue aggressive internationalization by conducting their first cross border acquisition cba faster among affiliated firms younger ones are relatively faster in conducting their first cba furthermore the evidence signals a moderating impact of inter group heterogeneity in terms of group level assets and foreign investments on the relationship between firm age and aggressive internationalization

a general theory of springboard mnes the springboard view has become one theoretic lens to analyze emerging market multinationals emnes in the past decade a decade after its first introduction in 2007 new developments offer keen insights on these firms and mnes in general that aggressively engage in critical asset seeking we compare this view with other ib theories highlighting their differences as well as complementarity we articulate unique strengths and weaknesses of emnes including their vulnerability and complexity caused in part by home country institutions we discuss amalgamation ambidexterity and adaptation advantages that differentiate springboard mnes from more established advanced country mnes and explain why and how springboard acts should be analyzed along with global competitiveness augmentation we introduce an upward spiral concept to advance our understanding of linkages between springboard and post springboard activities and explain some critical cross cultural and human resource management issues in the process to help continued research on springboard mnes we highlight macro and micro management issues that are particularly worth exploring

accessing vs sourcing knowledge a comparative study of r d internationalization between emerging and advanced economy firms research and development r d internationalization is on the rise for advanced economy multinationals amnes as well as emerging economy multinationals emnes we study emne r d internationalization by comparing it to that by amnes in the context of an emerging knowledge intensive industry we find that these two are fundamentally different processes while the internationalization of amnes r d activities can largely be explained in terms of the twin strategies of competence exploitation and competence creation emne r d internationalization is rooted in the firms overall catch up strategy to get on par with industry leaders an in depth comparison of knowledge flows reveals that within amnes headquarters often serves the primary source of knowledge for r d subsidiaries in contrast within emnes headquarters accesses knowledge from r d subsidiaries in advanced economies for innovation catch up within this dichotomy the innovative capabilities of emne headquarters develop more slowly and with greater difficulty than those of amne subsidiaries

crisis stability in the nuclear age in the logic of crisis stability first strike advantages may still be destabilizing although even a successful first strike cannot protect a state from a terribly costly retaliatory second strike if there is an advantage to striking first and if war seems sufficiently likely launching a preemptive first strike may seem to be the least of evils i reconsider the logic of crisis stability by studying games that are completely stable although there are first strike advantages four general conditions ensure stability identifying these conditions refines our understanding of crisis stability by also identifying the potential sources of instability and this more refined understanding shows that the logic of crisis stability focuses attention too narrowly on first strike advantages stability results from a more subtle interaction of several factors of which a first strike advantage is only one

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

learning from global buyers an increasing number of developing countries engage in contract manufacturing for a decreasing number of global buyers this constellation characterises many labour intensive export sectors the positioning of developing country enterprises in such buyer driven chains is central to research concerned with identifying the winners and losers from globalisation this study contributes to this debate by seeking answers to two questions first what can researchers learn from global buyers about the relative strengths and weaknesses of developing country producers second what can these producers learn from global buyers and what circumstances facilitate or constrain such learning