Industrial Clusters and Corporate Social Responsibility in Developing Countries: What We Know,What We do not Know,and What We Need to Know

This article provides a review of what we know, what we do not know, and what we need to know about the relationship between industrial clusters and corporate social responsibility (CSR) in developing countries. In addition to the drivers of and barriers to the adoption of CSR initiatives, this study highlights key lessons learned from empirical studies of CSR initiatives that aimed to improve environmental management and work conditions and reduce poverty in local industrial districts. Academic work in this area remains embryonic, lacking in empirical evidence about the effects of CSR interventions on the profitability on local enterprises, workers, and the environment. Nor do theoretical frameworks offer clear explanations of the institutionalization and effects of CSR in local industrial districts in the developing world. Other key limitations in this research stream include an excessive focus on export-oriented industrial clusters, the risk that CSR becomes a form of economic and cultural imperialism, and the potential for joint-action CSR initiatives in clusters of small and medium-sized enterprises to offer a new form of greenwashing. From this review, the authors develop a theoretical model to explain why CSR has not become institutionalized in many developing country clusters, which in turn suggests that the vast majority of industrial clusters in developing countries are likely to engage in socially irresponsible behavior.     

Productivity Spillovers from FDI in Malaysian Manufacturing: Evidence from Micro‐panel Data*

Using an establishment‐level panel dataset for the Malaysian manufacturing industries for 2000–2004, we argue that differences in the proxies and degrees of foreign shareholdings in measuring foreign presence lead to opposite signs and/or significance of spillover effects. The results show significant evidence of positive productivity spillovers to local establishments in the same industry, based on a broad measure of foreign presence. However, there is no evidence of positive spillover when employment share is used as a proxy for foreign presence. Furthermore, significant negative spillover effects are related to higher employment shares of wholly foreign‐owned establishments. Although there is no significant difference in labor productivity between wholly foreign‐owned and locally‐owned establishments, both majority and minority foreign‐owned establishments have significantly lower levels of labor productivity than locally‐owned establishments in Malaysia.     

Place,space, and foreign direct investment into peripheral cities

Perspectives drawn from the economic geography literature are increasingly used to generate insights into locational issues in international business. In this paper, we seek to integrate these literatures further by investigating the locational determinants of foreign direct investment (FDI) into peripheral cities within an emerging economy. Peripheral cities in emerging economies are attracting a growing proportion of global FDI flows, but the international business literature lacks a framework for understanding subnational determinants of FDI, particularly into non-core locations. We draw on the core-periphery model to build and test theory on how spatial interdependencies between subnational locations impact on the distribution of FDI inflows into a large and heterogeneous country China. Our results show that whilst peripheral cities tend to have a negative effect on FDI, this effect is positively moderated by proximity to core cities. The results highlight the importance of considering interactions between place and space when investigating locational issues in international business.     

China's New Role in the International Financial Architecture

The rise of China is challenging the international financial architecture in a number of ways. This paper highlights three that are of critical importance: the challenge of absorbing massive Chinese savings; the incorporation of China into a cohesive global financial safety net; and the organisation of China's participation in funding the demand for international investment projects. The global financial architecture needs to be reformed. But what role should China play? The paper defines the options open to China and the opportunities and barriers it will face. We argue that China can work with the established economic powers in reforming the existing architecture. At the same time, China seeks cooperation in building new institutions and organisations that fill gaps in the existing arrangements. But no matter how international financial diplomacy plays out in the near term, deep financial and economic reform at home will alone deliver China a central role in the international financial architecture. Domestic reform could also attend to some of the challenges that currently plague China's impact on the system. The success or failure of these domestic reforms will be at the crux of the strength or fragility of the international financial architecture in the years ahead.     

The impact of more complex family structure upon marital earnings premiums

This article employs a unique data set from Trinidad and Tobago to examine the impact of their more complex family structures upon marital earnings premiums. While family structure includes the single married couple structure common in the US, families in Trinidad and Tobago often have more adults living in the household, multiple married couples living in the same family, and multigenerational families. Marital premiums for family members most likely to invest in labor market production are estimated to increase with more complex family structure. In contrast, estimated marital premiums for members most likely to invest in home production are decreased with more complex family structure. Results suggest that specialization within the larger family help explain the existence of marital premiums.     

Performance implications of customer-linking capabilities: Examining the complementary role of customer orientation and CRM technology

This study examines how technology and complementary resources are bundled to form capabilities that foster durable customer relationships. Drawing from the literature in marketing, strategic management, and information systems, the first outcome is a theoretically grounded conceptualization of CRM technology capability comprised of three complementary resources: technology, business, and human resources. The second key finding is that CRM technology capability and customer orientation have a positive association with the development of durable customer relationships. These resources also have a positive interactive effect on customer-linking capability, highlighting the importance of aligning strategic business and technology resources. Finally, the authors find that customer-linking capability has a positive relationship with customer relationship performance and that the rapidity of changes in the external environment moderates this relationship. This study addresses these research questions in a cross-sectional study of 215 organizations using a partial least squares modeling approach.     

Estimating Olympic‐related investment and expenditure

The analysis of the impact of mega events has included frameworks that evaluate different impacts under different criteria, for example, separating impacts according to whether they occur before, during or after the event itself. Analysis of the economic impacts of such events has shown that the distributional effects between the host city and the rest of an economy can be important, and can have opposite signs. This paper introduces frameworks to show the origin of the economic scale, that is, Olympic‐related investment and expenditure, and shows how the frameworks can be used with reference to the Beijing 2008 Olympics. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

International Knowledge Flows: Evidence From Patent Citations

This paper explores the patterns of citations among patents taken out by inventors in the U.S., the U.K., Francc. Germany and Japan. We find (I) patents assigned to the same firm are more likely to cite each other, and come sooncr than other citations; (2) patents in the same patent class are approxinlatcly 100 titlles as likely to cite each other as ydtents froin different patent classes, but there is not a strong time pattern to this effect; (3) patents whose inventors reside in the same country are typically 30 to 80% more likely to cite each other than inventors from othcr countrics, and these citations come sooner; and (4) there are clear country-specific citation tendencies, e.g., Japanese citations typically come sooner than those of othcr countries.     

Investment in human capital and gender wage differences: evidence from the NLSY

This paper uses data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) to investigate gender differences in returns to various forms of human capital. Since the NLSY includes relatively detailed information regarding on- and off-the-job training, we place special emphasis on measuring gender differences in the incidence of and returns to formal post-school training. Also considered is the role of nonhuman capital factors such as industry and occupation in explaining the wage gap. It is found that about 60% of the gender wage gap in the sample is explained by mean differences in individual characteristics and market circumstances. This suggests a smaller role for discrimination in explaining the wage gap than previous research has found. The research indicates that training does not affect the gender wage gap. Also it is found that there is no statistically significant difference in the rate of return to other measures of human capital for women versus men. Our research suggests that the largest factors contributing to the wage gap are differences in the stocks of human capital for men and women, and differences in the distributions of men and women across industries and occupations.