International Technology Transfer by Small and Medium Sized Enterprises

This paper attempts to summarize the key issues involved in the international transfer of technology by small and medium-sized enterprises. All the evidence suggests that small and medium-sized enerprises will not, in aggregate, be the major suppliers and transferrers of technology in the world economy, but they can fill crucial niche roles. The success of these niche roles will be partly determined by the key relationship between firm size and industry size and by small and medium sized enterprises being able to ride the dynamics of the industry.     

Using Technology to Encourage Critical Thinking and Optimal Decision Making in Risk Management Education

This article draws a link between the risk management failures in the financial services industry and the educational philosophy and teaching constraints at business schools. An innovative application of prediction market technology within business education is proposed as a method that can be used to encourage students to think about risk in an open and flexible way. This article explains how prediction markets also provide students with the necessary experience to critically evaluate and stress‐test quantitative risk modeling techniques later in their academic and professional careers.     

Housing and the Economy: Popular Myths

This paper identifies and tries to clarify the effects of a number of changes in the system of delivering mortgage credit and housing subsidies. First, we examine the trends in housing and mortgage market data and policy. This review highlights the perceived relationships of these sectors to the rest of the economy. We then focus on and develop the relationship between four issues that have been fundamental stumbling blocks to the development of effective policy. The issues are: (1) homeownership affordability, (2) measures of housing needs, (3) the costs of cycles in housing production, and (4) the effects of federal mortgage credit programs.     

International Business Versus International Management? International Strategic Management from the View of point of Internalisation Theory

This article examines the theoretical bases of both international management and the internalisation approach to international business. Similarities include: attention to the ‘make or buy’ decision, interaction between locational and organisational variables and attention to internal control mechanisms. International management pays particular attention to the specific constraints on the firm's strategy arising from its history, dominant culture and leadership and to the process of management. The two approaches are used to analyse a single problem: the management of research and development, and it is found that important differences in emphasis remain. The approaches contrast but do not conflict.     

Market servicing by multinational manufacturing firms: Exporting versus foreign production

The foreign market servicing behaviour of multinational manufacturing firms evolves over time as a result of the firms' reaction to internal and external pressures. The interplay of immobile ‘location factors’ with internal ‘ownership factors’ under the control of individual enterprises exercises a powerful influence on the choice between exporting and foreign investment. Plant economies of scale encourage exporting, whilst firm level economies of scale, such as the internalization of the fruits of research, may predispose the firm towards foreign investment. Socio-political and cultural elements arising particularly from the nationality of ownership of the firm also influence market servicing strategy.     

Towards an understanding of international city break travel

This paper explores city break tourism and, in particular, the distinctive characteristics of this form of travel. The city break is examined and compared with other types of trips. The research follows a sequential mixed methods approach involving both a visitor survey and in‐depth interviews. The findings show the international city break trip to have a number of distinctive characteristics. These are summarised into five main areas (5 Ds) — duration, distance, date flexibility, discretionary nature and destination travel party. These distinguishing features provide a useful insight into one of the most important yet least examined travel segments in tourism research. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.