Home Country Taxation and the Theory of International Production

This paper addresses the taxation of foreign source income from the perspective of a multinational firm. It demonstrates how differences in home country fiscal regimes of multinational firms can lead to variations in the cost of transferring cash resources across the borders of national jurisdictions. In the framework of international production theory, it shows how the home country fiscal regime can be a source of ownership advantage when the firm creates an appropriate network of assets, liabilities and equity. Taxation is the link between some financial decisions to the theory of international production. Observations are taken from the tax calculations of three hypothetical multinational firms.     

Impact of system culture on West and East German Managers: A new topic of intercultural management research

The transformation from socialism to capitalism and from a socialist planned economy to a social market economy in the new Federal States of the Federal Republic of Germany confronts the affected people with a new life and working world. On the level of the enterprises, it is especially human resource management that is faced with integrating the different preceding experience, qualifications, and cultural values of their managers from the new Federal States into the company. In order to carry out this task adequately, human resource management needs an appropriate detailed analysis. Intercultural management research offers a suitable framework, as it is familiar with management in the context of different cultures and societies. © 1993 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

The liberalization in the EC’s telecommunications sector and its effects

The telecommunications sector is a powerfully growing market which is expected to play a key role in the EC of the future. This article offers a survey of the liberalization measures envisaged in this formerly heavily protected sector followed by an analysis of their economic effects on both EC member states and third countries.     

Beyond the Boundary

Much has been written about information gatekeepers, mostly describing how gatekeepers function within organizations. There has been less consideration of the gatekeeper's activities beyond the organization's boundary, though the gathering of external information is fundamental to gatekeeping. Stuart Macdonald and Christine Williams examine gatekeeping from an information perspective, starting with external information and following it into the organization. With only primitive networking and a range of occasional contacts in the outside world, the gatekeeper is something of a scavenger of external information. The gatekeeper certainly transfers information from the external environment to colleagues within the organization, but primary interest is in personal use of the information gathered. Seniority within the organization may allow the gatekeeper the latitude to function in ways that would not be tolerated in more junior employees. The article is wholly concerned with informal gatekeeping and concludes that organizations may condone or even inhibit such activity, but are constrained by the nature of information, and of organization itself, from encouraging it.     

Does country matter?

Previous studies have explored the predictors of business unit performance in multiple‐business firms and investigated the extent of the effect of industry, corporate, and business unit on the performance of a business unit. These studies have focused almost exclusively on examining performance differences within a single country, thus treating country effects as external to business unit performance. In contrast, this study focuses on multinational corporations and examines the extent to which country effects explain the variation in the performance of foreign affiliates. Our findings show that country effects are as strong as industry effects, following affiliate effects and corporate effects. Our results also suggest that corporate and affiliate effects tend to be more critical in explaining the variation in foreign affiliate performance in developed countries, whereas country and industry effects are more salient in developing countries. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Evaluating inventive activity: the cost of nineteenth-century UK patents and the fallibility of renewal data

It has long been recognized that counting patents offers a poor gauge of the extent and value of inventive activity, not least because the quality of patented inventions varies enormously. The Schankerman-Pakes model provides a valuable alternative gauge that utilizes the data from renewal fees which are regularly paid to keep a patent in force. This article suggests, however, that the model's application to nineteenth-century UK patents may underestimate the value of Victorian inventive activity because many patentees lacked the financial resources to implement the rational choice that the model assumes. Focusing on steam-engineering patents, it explores further problems with renewal data and the increasing rate of lapsed applications.