Severe carry-over phenomena in 1,200 MTPD methanol plant

Malfunction of a perforated plate installed above the demister in the steam drum caused severe carry-over of sodium phosphate.     

China and Global Macroeconomic Interdependence

China is transitioning towards more inward‐focussed growth, causing adverse changes in the product and financial terms of trade in the advanced economies. At the same time, international financial markets tussle between tightening forces associated with the US recovery on the one hand and unconventional monetary expansion in Europe and Japan on the other. The way these shocks interact is examined in this paper using a global macromodel with national portfolio rebalancing and asset differentiation and a representation of unconventional monetary policy. Results are found to be sensitive to the contributions of productivity and capital accumulation to China's growth. When these are offered in realistic combination, the effects are deflationary in the United States and China, militating against contractionary US monetary policy. Monetary responses in the United States and China then combine with price targeting regimes in the EU and Japan to expand liquidity globally, amplifying impacts on financial markets and the global distribution of real investment.     

Technologies,products and firms' strategies part 1—a framework for .analysis

This article examines, the character and significance of ‘strategies’ formulated within the R&D function of a business, and their relatzonship to the broader business strategy of the parent company. The discussion forms a basis for the analysis of case studies of three large UK companies, which will be published later as Part 2 of this article Part 1 of the article identifies three foci of innovation studzes: first, that of the innovations themselves; secondly, that of patterns of innovation within discrete industrial sectors; thirdly, that of the innovating firms and their strategies. The discussion focuses on the third topic nad explores two aspects of the tehnological components of innovation strategies. First, the shape of the prorgolio of products under development, the technical and market specificities they possess, and secondly, the structure of the portfolios of technologies required and used in those products. These dimensions of strategy combine both firm-specific and public-domain tecnoligical competenes. These competences affect both the competitive position and the strategic direction of firms. Finally, the article proposes some analytical devices for making sense of technology strategies in the thre firms studied. Part 2 of the article presetns the substance of the case studies, and reviews the lessons which they reveal.     

Budgetary Stewardship,Innovation and Working Culture: Identifying the Missing Ingredient in English and Welsh Local Authorities’ Recipes for Austerity Management

Drawing on fieldwork with 70 local authorities in England and Wales, this paper builds on previous studies of austerity management by highlighting the importance of organisational cultures to achieving strategic objectives. It finds that, in line with their prevailing ‘belief system’ of budgetary stewardship, local authorities in both countries are holding down input costs to deal with austerity. However, the scale of funding cuts means that this strategy is unlikely to be successful over the longer term. Instead, they need greater freedom to generate revenue, in order to facilitate innovation and develop more sustainable business practices and service models.     

Beyond learning by experience: The use of alternative learning processes by incrementally and rapidly internationalizing SMEs

How firms learn about foreign markets and internationalization processes is an important theme in the literature on SME internationalization, evidenced by the Uppsala model’s emphasis on experiential learning as an explanation for incremental internationalization, and attempts to explain how early and rapid internationalization can be facilitated by alternative modes of learning, especially congenital learning. Yet, the learning processes used, and the content and source of learning, have not been compared systematically, especially with respect to how these evolve as firms become increasingly internationalized. This paper reports the findings of a retrospective longitudinal analysis of the learning processes, sources and foci of four New Zealand-based SMEs that internationalized incrementally, and four that internationalized rapidly. The findings demonstrate that while experiential learning is important, both incrementally and rapidly internationalizing firms use other learning modes at different stages of their internationalization, and that there are differences in the content and source of learning. Thus, the relationship between internationalization and learning processes may be more complex than the literature currently suggests, inviting further exploration of the multiple ways that SMEs learn, and the contingent factors that might influence this.     

ENTRE-U: An entrepreneurial orientation scale for universities

The development of a new scale, ENTRE-U, that measures the entrepreneurial orientation of university departments is described. Governments, industry, and funding organizations challenge universities to become more "entrepreneurial", often in the context of increasing the commercialization outcomes of publicly funded research. The extant literature on corporate entrepreneurial orientation (EO) suggests this orientation is beneficial when organizations face dynamic or hostile environments. However, the EO concept and related empirical research focus on firms in competitive markets. Little is known about the nature of EO in other organizational contexts. ENTRE-U was developed to facilitate empirical research on EO within public universities. Interviews and a follow-up focus group with faculty members from departments in computer science, health science, and engineering at Canadian Universities elicited items for the new scale. A survey of university department heads provided data for statistical development of the scale. ENTRE-U consists of four dimensions – research mobilization, unconventionality, industry collaboration, and perception of university policies – that successfully predict department involvement in commercialization activities. Implications of the findings and opportunities for research using the ENTRE-U scale are discussed.     

Quantifying Foreign Direct Investment Productivity Spillovers in China: A Computable General Equilibrium Model

For the purposes of this study, we will construct a static monopolistically‐competitive computable general equilibrium model to quantify the endogenous productivity spillovers from foreign and domestic firms, using the Chinese economy as a case study. Our simulation results indicate: (i) that the net spillover effects are positive in terms of national total output, GDP and welfare; (ii) that both state‐owned and privately‐owned firms benefit, but that private firms benefit more; (iii) that industries with large volumes of foreign direct investment (FDI) do not necessarily observe the largest spillover effects; and (iv) that the spillover effects become more prominent when the initial market structure is more concentrated.     

Measuring technological capability and performance

The relation between technological capability and firm performance is more complex than what is generally assumed. Researchers have not been able to consistently find empirical support for this apparently 'simple' relation. The objective of this study is to illustrate the theoretical and empirical complexity of this relation and explain why the use of different measures can lead to dramatically different results. In this study, we analyse the technological capability–performance relation in 201 large US public manufacturing companies. A variety of patent statistics and a measure of research & development (R&D) intensity are used as indicators for technological capability. The following six measures of performance are used as dependent variables: return on assets, return on equity, return on sales, market value, market value added, and economic value added. The results vary substantially, depending on which measures are used for the independent and dependent variables. A detailed understanding of precisely what each measure represents and the shortcomings of each measure is needed to explain why these differences exist. We conclude by discussing the effectiveness of a variety of technological capability measures using patent citations, and illustrate why a measure of R&D spending and the total number of patents are usually not valid measures of a firm's technological capability.