Interplay between internal investment and alliance specialization in R&D and marketing

A firm's efforts to build its technological and marketing capabilities are not limited to internal investments but can be extended to include external knowledge acquisitions. We examine the interaction between a firm's specialization in R&D or marketing through its internal investments and its alliances in two different industrial contexts. Our results, based on secondary data sources such as Compustat and SDC Platinum from 1985 to 2009, show that the interaction effects of internal specialization and alliance specialization are contingent on the types of tasks (i.e., R&D and marketing) and the industrial context (i.e., high- and low-tech industries). Our findings indicate that a firm in a high-tech industry is able to achieve greater gains by complementing its internal focus on R&D with its external focus on marketing or by focusing on R&D both internally and externally. In contrast, a firm in a low-tech industry is able to achieve greater performance when R&D and marketing complement each other, without regard for how they are aligned through internal investments and alliances. The firm is also able to improve its performance by focusing on marketing both internally and externally. These findings provide new insights into the complementarity between internal investments and alliances.     

New roles of NPOS and partnership with government and/or business in China

In order to cater to the globalization trend, a general governmental institution reform has taken place in the world, and the aim of the reform is to limit governmental power and promote governmental efficiency. The force of the reform comes from both the domestic press and oversea press. On a national level, the request for legality of governmental power and controllability of governmental decision‐making is becoming more urgent on a daily basis. On an international level, globalization has urged cooperation and rapid response from every countries in the world. Most countries focus on limiting governmental power and power dispersion.     

The rise and fall of Spain (1270–1850)1

Two distinctive regimes are distinguished in Spain over half a millennium. The first one (1270s–1590s) corresponds to a high land–labour ratio frontier economy, which is pastoral, trade‐oriented, and led by towns. Wages and food consumption were relatively high. Sustained per capita growth occurred from the end of the Reconquest (1264) to the Black Death (1340s) and resumed from the 1390s only broken by late fifteenth‐century turmoil. A second regime (1600s–1810s) corresponds to a more agricultural and densely populated low‐wage economy which, although it grew at a pace similar to that of 1270–1600, remained at a lower level. Contrary to pre‐industrial western Europe, Spain achieved its highest living standards in the 1340s, not by mid‐fifteenth century. Although its death toll was lower, the plague had a more damaging impact on Spain and, far from releasing non‐existent demographic pressure, destroyed the equilibrium between scarce population and abundant resources. Pre‐1350 per capita income was reached by the late sixteenth century but only exceeded after 1820.     

Strategizing Environmental Policy and Compliance for Firm Economic Sustainability: Evidence from Taiwanese Electronics Firms

This study aims to examine whether the compliance of environmental policies can sustain firm economic performance, and whether a timing issue is relevant to firm economic sustainability in pursuit of eco‐friendly efforts. Offering models predominantly based on the institutional theory, this study tests hypotheses using data from 284 companies in the electronics sector in Taiwan during the period from 1997 to 2010. The findings reveal that the execution of environment policies mostly improves firm economic sustainability and some joint green efforts can even strengthen such sustainability; however, firms aiming to sustain their economic performance should not hasten to undertake eco‐friendly efforts, implying that first movers may not be guaranteed firm economic performance. Thus, managers should carefully strategize their green efforts to comply with environmental policies, and execute them in due course to prevent disadvantages, such as market uncertainty and complexity of green practices, while conquering organizational inertia. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment     

FDI,openness and income

This is an empirical study of the impact of foreign direct investment (FDI) on income. It presents cross-country evidence that inward FDI is positively correlated with income. In addition, an instrument for FDI is constructed to address the issue of endogeneity. The results show that instrumental-variables (IV) estimates of the impact of FDI on income are positive and greater than OLS estimates, similar to the findings on trade in Frankel and Romer (). The evidence in this paper suggests that inward FDI contributes to higher income, and favours the argument of Irwin and Terviö () that trade openness is subject to measurement error – in particular, trade is an imperfect proxy for many income-enhancing interactions between countries.     

Career Tournaments

This paper studies a model of career concerns where (besides agents having different ability levels) principals are heterogeneous. Two types of heterogeneity are considered: principals can differ in their productivities, and in the visibility of the agents working for them. Productivity differences result in convex wage profiles and generate assortative matching between principals and agents. Visibility differences, on the other hand, affect the mobility and career prospects of agents, and can generate nonassortative matching. We characterize the equilibrium in this market, derive implications for the behavior of agents, and examine the incentives to invest in increasing productivity and visibility.     

The complexity of food choices in an everyday context

This study aims to understand the complexity of food choices in an everyday household context. The qualitative data are based on homemakers’ (n = 18) context‐specific accounts of their choice of milk brand, i.e. milk varieties with different fat contents (noted in a 4‐day qualitative food diary and a semi‐structured interview based on the diary). These accounts were considered an approximation of real food choices in households. The necessity of making compromises between contradictory expectations makes food choices, as well as milk brand choices, problematic. The homemakers' accounts involve various levels affecting household activities. At the individual level, the most important motive of choice is the taste and practical use of a product. At the level of households, the traditions stemming from one's childhood and the social aspect of acknowledging other family members’ taste preferences are important. The influence at the level of society and culture leads towards healthier choices, e.g. by providing examples of new, healthier food habits. Here, the special nature of everyday knowledge is emphasized as context dependent. This provides a complementary view to the more traditional, cognitive views of studying the relationship between knowledge of nutrition and food choices. Choices are determined not only by stimulus, cognition or societal structures, but are also constrained by everyday conditions, as well as by the activities of other people.     

Evaluating the operational performance of knowledge-based industries: the perspective of intellectual capital

Performance evaluation is more than a quantitative concept but should also take industrial characteristics into account in order to form an accurate evaluation. In the past, evaluations of the operational performance of knowledge-based industries have missed out a significant factor, which is intellectual capital (IC). By adopting data envelopment analysis (DEA), a multiple-objective decision making method, this study aims to construct an efficiency evaluation model for the Taiwanese digital content industry based on the perspective of IC. The empirical results suggest that the scale of the digital content companies does play an important role in influencing the operating efficiency. The firms have a small amount of capital can still attain optimal efficiency, from the perspective of IC. In addition, human resource capital and customer capital are the most significant influential factors that deserve digital content firms’ attention. It is suggested that enterprises in the digital content industries should focus more on managing their IC. DEA can provide the semiconductor firms’ operations with insights into resource allocation and competitive advantage as well as help with strategic decision-making.