Competing successfully in a global economy

This commentary discusses the need for an internationalist approach in today's competitive global markets. Albert C. Bersticker, Chairman and CEO of Ferro Corporation, a US multinational in operation since 1919, draws upon his experience at the helm of a successful and growing manufacturing operation and gives several important lessons for strategic and competitive management of an international corporation. Bersticker elucidates the challenges facing today's global business manager, and puts the overall mission of any company doing business overseas into an appropriate context. Being aware of both the risks and benefits of competing in an ever-changing world is the key to success in the global economy according to the author. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Productive and harmful entrepreneurship in a knowledge economy

This paper develops an endogenous growth model with productive entrepreneurial activities and rent-seeking. Our purpose is to link contributions to the entrepreneurial and the endogenous growth literature. We deal with complementarity between productive entrepreneurship and harmful rent-seeking activities leading to potentially multiple equilibra in the economy. The degree of rent-seeking is endogenous in our model and is influenced by the economy’s legal and institutional framework as well as capital market imperfections. Policy which establishes the legal environment and financial institutions dealing with capital market imperfections together decides which of the potentially multiple equilibria is chosen by the economy. This institutional choice implies the solution to a trade-off between high economic growth on the one and a high level of productivity on the other hand.     

Customer-based execution strategy in a global digital economy

Multinational corporations (MNCs) are continuing to invest more in expanding into new markets around the world. These firms are faced with determining the optimal go-to-market strategy in these heterogeneous new markets to attract and retain profitable customers. This paper provides an organizing framework to help firms develop profitable customer-level strategies across countries in the digital environment. We start by providing a summary of the marketing literature on a customer-based execution strategy. Next, we discuss how the evolving digital landscape is affecting firms’ relationships with customers and describe some of the current digital product and process innovations in the marketplace. We discuss boundary conditions for how these digital product and process innovations might affect profitable customer strategies in a global context. In addition, we discuss implementation challenges that MNCs will likely face in deploying these customer-level strategies and other stakeholders (outside of customers) that will likely play a role in the execution of these customer-level strategies. Finally, we summarize set of research questions to guide future research on customer-level strategies in a global digital context.     

Bi-sourcing in the global economy

In organizing production, many firms conduct bi-sourcing, i.e., acquiring the same set of inputs both by buying from external suppliers (outsourcing) and carrying out in-house production (insourcing). We show that, by adopting the bi-sourcing strategy, firms can use the payoff from one supplier as a backup option in negotiating with the other supplier (the cross-threat effect). When firms conduct bi-sourcing in the global economy consisting of the high-waged North and low-waged South, they need to make the location choice for both insourcing and outsourcing. We find that the low wage in the South can encourage investment by component suppliers (the cost effect). However, firms may achieve a better cross-threat effect by relocating overly strong component supplier from the cost-advantageous South to the cost-disadvantageous North (the balancing effect). The optimal bi-sourcing strategy is determined by the interplay of the cost effect and the balancing effect.     

Fair wages, unemployment and technological change in a global economy

This paper analyzes the effects of global and national technological change on employment and relative wages in an integrated two-country world (“Europe” and “America”), where both countries are characterized by equilibrium unemployment due to fair wage constraints. The asymmetry between the countries arises from country-specific preferences towards wage inequality, with Europe's preferences being more egalitarian. Furthermore, we look at integration between this two-country world and a third country (“low-wage south”). We derive an analytical tool, the Virtual Integrated Equilibrium, that allows us to adapt Dixit and Norman's Integrated Equilibrium approach to a situation where both countries have endogenous unemployment levels.     

Slow recovery in the global economy

The weakness of the world economy continued even after the end of the Iraq war, with demand and output showing only modest signs of improvement. Will the expectations of recent months, which have again become distinctly more optimistic, prove to be exaggerated? Or is the global economy, thanks to highly expansive monetary policies in many countries, on the brink of sustained recovery? Is a synchronised upswing probable, or will an economic growth engine again be needed to lead the way forward?     

Marketing in the global economy: Creditworthiness

The importance of accurate credit information on potential clients and customers is even more critical when doing business overseas—a thorough check before committing resources is always a good idea.     

Localized advantage in a global economy: The case of Bangalore

This article examines how and why firms in Bangalore, a city in southern India, have achieved success in the global software industry. We use Porter's “diamond framework” to analyze information obtained from secondary sources and interviews with engineers, managers, and top executives from software firms and officials involved in Bangalore's development. While we found some aspects of the case conform to Porter's framework, many other elements tend to diverge from the model. Thus, the article contributes to the Porter's diamond model literature by extending its application to assessing the development of successful regions in knowledge‐based industries in developing economies. The discussion in the article would be of value to officials interested in creating such successful regions, as well as international business executives interested in the opportunities afforded by locating in these regions. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Exploring knowledge management to organizational performance outcomes in a transitional economy

The Eastern European Economies offer many major business opportunities but due to the transitional nature of their economies, these are highly complex and fraught with the socialist cultural disposition. There is a dearth of research into the nature of these opportunities/complexities, especially in regard to knowledge management and subsequent organizational outcomes. Our study of firms in Croatia suggests that knowledge management positively affects organizational outcomes of firm innovation, product improvement and employee improvement. Moreover, our empirical research illustrates the importance of the management of knowledge and not just the presence of knowledge as our model results indicate insignificant results between employee knowledge-based capability and the organizational outcomes.     

Latin American firms competing in the global economy

As part of a cooperative effort between the Journal of Business Research (JBR) and the Business Association of Latin American Studies (BALAS), this special issue brings updated research on the Latin American business environment. Out of 226 papers submitted to the BALAS 2012 conference, which was hosted by the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio), 22 were pre-selected to run for publication in this special issue — and only 14 actually were accepted after the demanding three rounds of a double blind review process that was run after the conference. This introduction to the special issue of the JBR on the BALAS 2012 conference brings an overview of the changes that have taken place in the business environment of Latin America, the evolution of the internationalization behavior of Latin American firms and the changes in their strengths to compete both domestically and abroad.     

广东外经贸全面迎接挑战

广东经济,在改革开放21年来已奠定了相当的物质基础。经济的发展、技术的发展也有相当的基础。广东一个省的贸易总量相当于俄罗斯全国,相当于印度的两倍;去年广东的 GDP9500多亿元,全国排第一位;总税收1900多亿元,占全国1/7;进出口总额一直是全国第一,占30%多,出口总额也是多年来居全国第一,去年占36.9%。广东外经贸,完全有实力、有能力参与全球竞争。     

Spiders and snakes: Offshoring and agglomeration in the global economy

Global production sharing is determined by international cost differences and frictions related to the costs of unbundling stages spatially. The interaction between these forces depends on engineering details of the production process with two extremes being ‘snakes’ and ‘spiders’. Snakes are processes whose sequencing is dictated by engineering; spiders involve the assembly of parts in no particular order. This paper studies spatial unbundling as frictions fall, showing that outcomes are very different for snakes and spiders, even if they share some features. Both snakes and spiders have in common a property that lower frictions produce discontinuous location changes and ‘overshooting’. Parts may move against their comparative costs because of proximity benefits, and further reductions in frictions lead these parts to be ‘reshored’. Predictions for trade volumes and the number of fragmented stages are quite different in the two cases. For spiders, a part crosses borders at most twice; the value of trade increases monotonically as frictions fall, except when the assembler relocates and the direction of parts trade is reversed. For snakes the volume of trade and number of endogenously determined stages is bounded only by the fragmentation of the underlying engineering process, and lower frictions monotonically increase trade volumes.     

2004年全球经济回顾与展望

"过山车"式的油价波动和外汇市场上的风云变幻对2004年世界经济形成了现实的重大冲击,仅高油价就导致2004年世界经济增长率足足损失了0.5个百分点;但2004年世界经济的增长仍然十分强劲,且增长相当广泛,从美国、欧盟、日本等发达国家到东亚新兴     

浅议知识经济对会计的影响

作为继农业革命、工业革命之后的第三次经济革命,知识革命将给人类带来全面和深远的影响,大到国家、政府,小到企业、个人都将受其影响,经济活动、传统观念、管理方法等各方面都面临着改进与创新的现实问题,会计也不例外.笔者针对这种影响从会计理论和会计实务两个方面进行了分析.     

知识经济对管理的影响

伴随着经济全球一体化和知识经济的到来,知识作为当今最重要的资源发挥着越来越重要的作用.知识将成为推动社会发展的关键因素,成为获得利润的主要手段,企业处在知识化、信息化的社会环境中,面对急剧增长的知识和信息,将面临一种以知识为基础的更高形态的竞争.企业的兴衰成败、实力强弱已小再取决于拥有物质、资本,而首先在于知识的拥有和创新能力,取决于是否善于进行知识管理和积极推进管理创新.     

Is the global market economy broken?

Governments are reeling. Companies are foundering. People are worrying. The global market economy is stressed to levels not seen in a long time. Des Dearlove has been asking people if the world's economy is broken. He quickly discovered that it's not a yes-or-no question.