The visible and the invisible hand: Resource allocation in the industrial sector

The standard economic analysis holds that resource allocation in the industrial sector is primarily a market process operating through the capital markets. The current political resurgence of free market economics has popularized this approach. Contrary to this approach the authors demonstrate that: (1) trends in the size, diversity and administrative complexity of firms; (2) structural features of the capital markets; and (3) the emergence of the state as a major source of capital in developed countries imply that internal organizational and political/ ideological considerations are also vital to understanding resource allocation in the economy.     

Institutions and business networks: A comparative analysis of the Chinese, Russian, and West European markets

The paper analyses business networks originating from three markets: Chinese, Russian, and West European. So far, little attention has been given to the fact that business networks in particular markets may be dissimilar because of differences among institutions. The paper advances a model where institutions are assumed to influence five major characteristics of business; (1) the processual aspects of the network, (2) the structural aspects of the network, (3) the function of firms and relationships in the network, (4) the meaning of strategy and planning, and (5) social relationships in the context of inter-firm relationships. The analysis builds on three types of substances of institutions — cognitive, normative, and regulative, which in turn are specified according to different aspects. The cognitive substance of business networks is explored through the aspects of self, time, and causality. The normative substance is explored through the aspects of achieved versus ascribed status, inner versus outer direction, universalism versus particularism, and trust. The regulative substance is specified as an authority system and a sanction system. The analysis demonstrates that, as institutions differ in these three markets, the business among them also differs in terms of the five characteristics, and this variation calls for different strategies for firms operating in these markets.     

Don't adapt,shape! Use the crisis to shape your minimum viable system – And the wider market

In addition to being resilient and adaptive, firms should also utilize shocks such as COVID-19 to generate new business opportunities. Two processes make markets and other economic systems more malleable during times of crises: (1) as the stasis of the market system is interrupted, it forces the system “into movement” - and it requires less effort to nudge an already moving system in a specific direction; and (2) as deeply-rooted mental models are challenged during crises, any market-shaping initiative which promises a credible end to current instability with a new equilibrium will appeal to the natural human craving for stability. This malleability, in turn, creates multiple opportunities for firms to shape their markets and hence drive the market's development in favorable directions. We outline a generic process of market-shaping, comprising eight steps: (1) determining whether to act now or actively wait, (2) deciding whether to be a shaper or a supporter, (3) developing a scalable vision for the future market, (4) recognizing the minimum viable system linked to this vision, (5) driving changes in market-level properties, (6) securing that value is quantified and shared, (7) inviting actor engagement for implementation, and (8) defending against possible retaliations from threatened market systems.     

The impact of entrepreneurial orientation on B2B branding and business growth in emerging markets

This study examines the relation between entrepreneurial orientation and brand orientation in industrial small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and the extent to which the two contribute to business growth in emerging markets. The authors develop and empirically test a structural model using data collected from Hungary, a country that has undergone a political and economic transition during the past two decades since the fall of the iron curtain. The results show that entrepreneurial orientation has a positive effect on business growth in emerging markets, whereas brand orientation has an adverse effect. Furthermore, the study examines whether there are differences (1) between B2B firms and B2C firms operating in emerging markets and (2) between B2B firms operating in emerging markets (Hungary) and in developed markets (Finland). The results from comparative analyses suggest that while B2B firms and B2C firms do not differ significantly from each other, there are notable differences between emerging markets and developed markets. Specifically, the study finds that although brand orientation does not contribute to business growth in Hungarian B2B firms, it has a positive effect on growth in B2B firms operating in Finland.     

Commercial exploitation of new technologies arising from university research: start-ups and markets for technology

The creation of start-up firms is an important method of commercializing new technologies arising from R&D at universities and other research institutions. Most research into start-ups presumes that these firms develop products or services. However, start-ups may operate through markets for technology by selling or licensing rights to use their technology to other firms – typically established firms – who develop and sell new products or services based on the technology. In this study of 57 public start-up firms created to commercialize the results of university research, we find evidence that (1) operating through markets for technology is a common approach to commercialization, (2) start-ups that operate in markets for technology can be effectively distinguished in practice from start-ups operating through product markets, and (3) there are substantive differences in the business activities of firms depending on whether they operate through product markets or markets for technology.     

Market frictions and the competitive advantage of internal labor markets

Research summary : We show that frictions in labor and capital markets can be a source of competitive advantage for affiliates of corporate groups over stand‐alone firms in environments where benefits from internal markets' flexibility are high. We argue that the advantage of flexibility in changing labor inputs is related to how difficult it is to change capital inputs. We predict that if substituting labor with capital is difficult, the group advantage of flexibly changing labor would be stronger in countries with high levels of financial development. Consistent with this prediction, we find a stronger competitive advantage for group affiliates in countries with rigid labor markets but flexible capital markets. In these environments, group affiliates are more prevalent and outperform stand‐alone firms in terms of growth and profitability. Managerial summary : This research shows that the capacity to redeploy workers across internal units of the firm can be a source of competitive advantage in countries that impose strict employment protection laws. We show that the strategic advantage of labor flexibility is affected by how difficult it is to change capital inputs and that labor flexibility is a stronger source of competitive advantage in countries where developed financial markets allow for more flexible capital adjustment. In these settings, strategies designed to lower costs of internal mobility (e.g., locations of greater geographic concentration between units and in regions with less competitive external markets), development of corporate culture supportive of frequent change, and personnel development through internal rotation can result in substantial financial payoffs. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Strategic factor markets,scale free resources,and economic performance: The impact of product market rivalry

This paper analyzes how scale free resources, which can be acquired by multiple firms simultaneously and deployed against one another in product market competition, will be priced in strategic factor markets, and what the consequences are for the acquiring firms' performance. Based on a game‐theoretic model, it shows how the impact of strategic factor markets on economic profits is influenced by product market rivalry, preexisting competitive (dis)advantages, and the interaction of acquired resources with those preexisting asymmetries. New insights include the result that resource suppliers will aim at (and largely succeed in) setting resource prices so that the acquiring firms earn negative strategic factor market profits—sacrificing some of their preexisting market power rents—by acquiring resources that they know to be overpriced. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Telecommunication in the US: From Regulation to Competition (Almost)

Alfred E. Kahn was an observer and practitioner of telecommunications regulation as technology changed the industry from a natural monopoly to a platform-based oligopoly among telephone, cable, satellite, and wireless carriers. Regulation and legislation were slow to recognize these changes, and large welfare losses occurred, some of which could have been avoided if regulators, legislators and economists had followed Fred’s economic advice: Prices must be informed by costs; the relevant costs are actual incremental costs; costs and prices are an outcome of a Schumpeterian competitive process, not the starting point; excluding firms from markets is fundamentally anticompetitive; a reliance on imperfect markets subject to antitrust law is preferable to necessarily imperfect regulation; and a regulatory transition to deregulation entails propensities to micromanage the process to generate preferred outcomes, visible competitors, and expedient price reductions.     

Overcoming Institutional Voids: A Reputation‐Based View of Long‐Run Survival

Research summary : Emerging markets are characterized by underdeveloped institutions and frequent environmental shifts. Yet, they also contain many firms that have survived over generations. How are firms in weak institutional environments able to persist over time? Motivated by 69 interviews with leaders of emerging market firms with histories spanning generations, we combine induction and deduction to propose reputation as a meta‐resource that allows firms to activate their conventional resources. We conceptualize reputation as consisting of prominence, perceived quality, and resilience, and develop a process model that illustrates the mechanisms that allow reputation to facilitate survival in ways that persist over time. Building on research in strategy and business history, we thus shed light on an underappreciated strategic construct (reputation) in an undertheorized setting (emerging markets) over an unusual period (the historical long run). Managerial summary : Why are some firms able to persistently survive in challenging, uncertain, and underdeveloped business environments? To explore this question, we analyze in‐depth interviews with leaders of emerging market firms that have survived over decades and even centuries. We find that firm reputation is a key strategic driver, and propose new ideas about the ways through which reputation facilitates survival. We elaborate how a favorable reputation allows a firm to more fully utilize its existing resources by decreasing uncertainty. We also propose that reputation has offensive and defensive properties that make it valuable to firms during both positive and negative economic cycles. Finally, we discuss why a reputation‐based source of competitive advantage is hard to imitate, and outline three general approaches for building reputation. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Business groups in developing capital markets: Towards a complementarity perspective

Prior research suggests that business groups (BGs) in developing economies have emerged as alternatives to poorly developed economic institutions in these countries. In this paper, we argue that this does not imply they are always substitutes. Specifically, we consider the case of capital markets, a key economic institution: while the absence of well‐developed capital markets may indeed have stimulated the emergence of business groups, we propose that BG affiliation and the scrutiny that maturing capital markets impose on firms that participate actively in them nevertheless can play a complementary role in influencing a firm's performance. We find support for our predictions in a novel longitudinal data set of Indian firms that contain both listed and unlisted BG affiliated as well as unaffiliated firms. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Diaspora and trade facilitation: The case of ethnic Chinese in Australia

Using a sample of 135 Australian firms with operations in Greater China (Mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan), this paper seeks to examine whether members of an ethnic diaspora can facilitate trade between Australia and their countries of origin. Specifically, it found that companies that are owned by immigrants and/or hired immigrants in key decision making positions (immigrant effect or IE, in short) were (a) more likely to resort to a higher resource commitment when entering into the target market; and (b) used more extensively in target markets where there are greater variations in customer behavior. There was no significant difference (a) in the deployment of immigrants between Australian firms operating in Mainland China vis-à-vis those in Hong Kong/Taiwan; (b) where there were variations in product life cycle stages between the home and target markets; (c) based on the length of operations in the target market; and (d) in performance between firms with IE and those without in the target markets. The influence of firm size, overall international business experience, variations in political-legal, economic, and competitive environments between the home and target markets, and industry type were also examined. The findings of the study with implications for theory and practice are discussed.     

内部资本市场、关联交易与公司价值研究——基于我国上市公司的实证分析

本文认为探究我国内部资本市场(ICM)有效性时应综合考虑关联交易(RPT)问题。因此文章在对内部资本市场和关联交易理论分析的基础上,着重探究内部资本市场中的关联交易对我国公司价值的影响。实证研究发现:总体上我国内部资本市场成员间的关联交易表现为促进公司价值提升,这种促进作用主要来自公允的内部资本市场关联交易,尤其表现为内部资本市场关联流入;我国内部资本市场配置低效的结论主要与非公允的关联交易相关;外部资本市场的金融抑制状态,使得国内企业通过内部资本市场中的关联交易实现降低交易成本和市场风险、放松融资约束、提升公司价值的目的。     

CUSTOMER POWER,STRATEGIC INVESTMENT,AND THE FAILURE OF LEADING FIRMS

Why might firms be regarded as astutely managed at one point, yet subsequently lose their positions of industry leadership when faced with technological change? We present a model, grounded in a study of the world disk drive industry, that charts the process through which the demands of a firm's customers shape the allocation of resources in technological innovation—a model that links theories of resource dependence and resource allocation. We show that established firms led the industry in developing technologies of every sort—even radical ones—whenever the technologies addressed existing customers' needs. The same firms failed to develop simpler technologies that initially were only useful in emerging markets, because impetus coalesces behind, and resources are allocated to, programs targeting powerful customers. Projects targeted at technologies for which no customers yet exist languish for lack of impetus and resources. Because the rate of technical progress can exceed the performance demanded in a market, technologies which initially can only be used in emerging markets later can invade mainstream ones, carrying entrant firms to victory over established companies.     

A comparative analysis of the internationalization of Chinese and Japanese firms

This paper integrates institution-, industry-, and resource-based views of internationalization and demonstrates that industrial characteristics, firm resources, and institutional factors can significantly explain the differences and similarities of international expansion of Chinese and Japanese multinational enterprises (MNEs). In particular, this paper maps the growth of Chinese MNEs since economic reforms in 1978 and that of Japanese MNEs after World War II. We illustrate the similarities and differences between Chinese and Japanese MNEs with two case studies: foreign direct investment (FDI) of Haier and Matsushita. We suggest that how firms internationalize, in addition to being influenced by industry- and resource-based considerations, is inherently shaped by the domestic and international institutional frameworks governing these endeavors.

State ownership of Chinese firms and their outward foreign direct investment: Political and economic contingencies

The extant literature offers inconsistent predictions and conflicting evidence regarding the relationship between state ownership and the internationalization of emerging market firms (EMFs). Drawing on institutional theory, we examine the moderating roles of political and economic institutions at the subnational and national levels in the link between state ownership and EMFs’ outward foreign direct investment (OFDI). Based on a sample of 1421 OFDI projects involving 286 Chinese listed firms in 115 host countries between 2003 and 2016, we find that state ownership can scale up OFDI when Chinese firms are headquartered in subnational regions with high institutional development or low economic development, or when political relationships between home and host countries are amicable or market growth in a host country is slow; otherwise, state ownership hinders OFDI. These findings offer new insights into the relationship between state ownership and the internationalization of EMFs.

     

Sorting things out: valuation of new firms in uncertain markets

New business models combined with a lack of objective operating data result in significant information asymmetry and uncertainty in the valuation of new firms in emerging markets. Information asymmetry increases the risks of both adverse selection and moral hazard. When traditional differentiators of firm quality are lacking, such as in emerging economic sectors, markets may turn to secondary information sources to filter and sort firms. We investigate the roles played by observable corporate governance characteristics as indirect indicators of new firms' potential qualitative differences. Markets may sort firms based on such characteristics because they are perceived to be correlated with desired but unobservable characteristics and actions and they lower the risks of both adverse selection and moral hazard. Our study of publicly traded U.S. Internet firms found that firm market valuation was strongly associated with corporate governance characteristics (e.g., executive and director stock‐based incentives, institutional and blockholder stock ownership, board structure, and venture capital participation). In addition, firm age moderated how markets used some quality proxies to determine firm valuation during the post‐IPO period. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Research among copycats: R&D,spillovers, and feedback strategies

We study a stochastic dynamic game of process innovation in which firms can initiate and terminate R&D efforts and production at different times. We discern the impact of knowledge spillovers on the investments in existing markets, as well as on the likely structure of newly forming markets, for all possible asymmetries in production costs between firms. While an increase in spillovers may improve the likelihood of a competitive market, it may at the same time reduce the level to which a technology is developed. We show that the effects of spillovers on investments and surpluses crucially depend on the stage of technology development considered. In particular, we show that high spillovers are not necessarily pro-competitive as they can make it harder for the laggard to catch up with the technology leader.     

Endogenous Mergers of Complements with Mixed Bundling

This paper studies endogenous mergers of complements with mixed bundling, by allowing both for joint and separate consumption. After merger, partner firms decrease the price of the bundled system. In addition, when markets for individual components are sufficiently important, partner firms find it strategically advantageous to raise the prices of stand-alone products, thus making substitute ‘mix-and-match’ composite products less attractive to consumers. Even though these effects favor the profitability of mergers, merging is not always an equilibrium outcome. The reason is that outsiders respond by cutting their prices to retain their market share, and mergers can be unprofitable when competition is intense. From a welfare analysis, we observe that the number of mergers that are observed in equilibrium may be either excessive (when markets for individual components are important) or suboptimal (when markets for individual components are less important).     

Development of Trust: A Study of Interfirm Relationships in Vietnam

The radical political and economic reforms sweeping through former socialist countries during the last decade have opened rich opportunities for privately owned businesses to emerge and develop. Since the market institutions and infrastructures in these countries are largely underdeveloped, private firms in transition economies rely extensively on interfirm partnerships. This raises the question of how—in the absence of institutions that legitimate markets, contracts, and private property—managers of new business ventures develop new relationships. This paper addresses this issue through analysis of multiple subcontracting relationships formed at a private garment company in Vietnam. This analysis suggests that firms in transition economies develop interfirm trust in ways that are quite different from their counterparts in more highly developed economies.