The Role of Productivity and Financial Frictions in the Business Cycles of a Small Open Economy: Hong Kong 1984–2011

This paper analyzes the business cycle properties of the Hong Kong economy during the 1984–2011 period, which includes the financial crisis experienced in 1997/98 and the economic crisis of 2008–2010. We show that the volatility respectively, of output, of the growth rate of output and of real interest rates in Hong Kong are higher than the corresponding average volatility among developed economies. Furthermore, interest rates are countercyclical. We build a stochastic neoclassical small open‐economy model estimated with a Bayesian likelihood approach that seeks to replicate the main business cycle characteristics of Hong Kong, and through which we try to quantify the role played by exogenous total factor productivity (TFP) shocks (transitory and permanent), real interest rate shocks and financial frictions. The main finding is that financial frictions, jointly with the assumption that the country spread is endogenous, seem important in explaining the countercyclicality of the real interest rates.     

Success Factors for Service Innovation: A Meta‐Analysis

Service sectors form a considerable part of the world economy. Contrary to the logical assumption that service innovation research should represent a significant share of all innovation research, the vast majority of innovation studies focus on products as opposed to services. This research presents a meta‐analysis of the antecedents of service innovation performance conducted on 92 independent samples obtained from 114 articles published between 1989 and 2015. This research contributes to our understanding of service innovation in three major ways. First, this is the first meta‐analysis that specifically assesses the relative importance of antecedents of service innovation performance, while also pinpointing the differences in meta‐analytic findings between antecedents of service and product innovation performance. Although there are some universal success factors that transcend the boundaries between services and products, the presence of marked differences implies that it would be wrong to treat the development of new services and new products as the same. Second, the meta‐analysis demonstrates that the antecedents of service innovation performance are contingent on the sector context (i.e., explicit versus tacit services). Comparing results between products and services, and between tacit and explicit services, there appears to be a continuum where explicit services sit interstitial between tacit services on one side and products on the other. Third, the meta‐analysis compares and contrasts the antecedents of two dimensions of service innovation performance (i.e., commercial success and strategic competitive advantage). Previous meta‐analyses treated these two dependent variables collectively, which falls short of identifying issues that may affect management decisions when faced with different objectives. Additionally, this research investigates the effect of several other moderators (i.e., culture, unit of analysis, journal quality, and year of publication) on the relationships between the antecedents and service innovation performance. The results are discussed in relation to their implications for research and managerial practice.     

The globalisation of research in the pharmaceutical industry: A case of uneven development

The paper discusses different conceptualisations of the term globalisation of research. From this discussion five dimensions of globalisation of research are identified. Using three different type of data, the paper goes on to examine the extent, motivations and mechanism for the globalisation of research along these five dimensions among leading European and US pharmaceutical multinational companies (MNCs). The evidence for the period 1975-1998 shows that the general process of international expansion of research activities varied significantly between leading US and European MNCs. It is also clear that the development of the process of globalisation has proceeded unevenly along the five dimensions studied. The data also show the increasing concentration of both US and European research investment in the USA.     

Managerial Ownership and Intellectual Capital Efficiency： Evidence From Poland

This article contributes to the corporate governance and intellectual capital literature and examines the relationship between managerial ownership and intellectual capital efficiency （ICE）. The results were obtained by investigating a sample of 1,057 firm-year observations and 292 companies listed on the Warsaw stock exchange between 2008 and 2013. Since the data span covers six years, panel data analysis （fixed-effects model） is employed. The empirical analysis indicates that managerial ownership is negatively related to human capital efficiency （HCE）, which is partly consistent with some previous studies. As such, it indicates the entrenchment effect of insider ownership. Moreover, the study concludes that these and previous results on the relationship between managerial ownership and IC efficiency are not robust due to ICE measures, which now are employed in research.     

Environmental awareness and initiatives in the Swedish and Polish hotel industries—survey results

Despite its importance, environmental stewardship is not always the top priority in the hotel industry in Europe. This study investigates the influence of the geo-political, economic and socio-cultural context of a country on the environmental attitudes and pro-ecological initiatives incorporated in this sector. To illustrate the differences, hotels in Sweden and Poland were targeted and a total of 349 hoteliers participated in an e-mail-based survey. The study reveals that hotel operators generally recognize the need for environmental protection and are involved in a number of activities. The economic situation and pro-environmental efforts initiated by the government were found to have an impact on certain aspects of hoteliers’ attitudes and actions. The survey has further indicated the two major directions that need to be followed when introducing environmental sustainability into the hotel industry. The first involves incorporating responsible technical and behavioural practices in the sector. The second highlights the necessity of initiating greater demand for “green” practices from the customers.     

When should workers embrace or resist new technology?

The question of how workers might respond to new technologies has lurked behind many debates on the subject. It has not been posed directly, in part because of concerns about the determinism of asking about the effects of a technology. A preliminary is to set aside these concerns by showing that effects can be identified without determinism. The main argument is that technologies can be assessed on six dimensions: intended or unintended effects; direct and indirect effects; degree of reconstitution in use; immanence; degree of success and degree of discontinuity with the past. These dimensions can then be used to pose questions about any one technology. Three illustrations suggest how such questions can be posed in concrete conditions. Technologies can be challenged so that alternatives to extant systems of work organisation can be considered.     

Hybrid Corporate Governance and its Effects on Innovation: A Case Study of AstraZeneca

This case study looks at the relationship between the UK/Swedish pharmaceutical firm, AstraZeneca, and its shareholders from the point of view of its effects on innovation. It uses a theoretical framework on corporate governance and innovation that differentiates sectors according to the novelty, visibility and appropriability of technological change. High novelty requires a corporate governance system with strong industry-specific expertise; low visibility requires good firm-specific perceptiveness. High appropriability favours shareholder supremacy as against stakeholder inclusion. The pharmaceutical industry appears to be high in all three, and this (according to accepted stereotypes) should favour the outsider-dominated corporate governance system of the UK as against the insider-dominated Swedish system. It is found that the corporate governance that resulted from the merger could indeed be described as hybrid, but that (following the building up of one major US shareholding) it was a UK/Swedish/US hybrid. In spite of the apparent similarity of the UK and US ‘outsider-dominated’ systems, the US element made a crucial difference, in giving engagement by a strong and well-informed shareholder who had some influence on other shareholders. This in turn helped to protect the firm to a significant extent from short-term pressures within the UK stock market, and thus to allow it to maintain its emphasis on long-term innovation.     

The Role of Absorptive Capacity in Acquisition Knowledge Transfer

This article examines the role of absorptive capacity in acquisitions. We propose that absorptive capacity is an important determinant of acquisition knowledge transfer. Also, we identify antecedents of absorptive capacity in the specific context of acquisitions. These include contextual (national cultural differences), individual (employee withdrawal), and organizational design level (integration process communication, knowledge processing system) antecedents. We test our hypotheses on a sample of domestic and foreign acquisitions conducted by Finnish companies. This study contributes to the acquisition literature by elaborating on the role of absorptive capacity in acquisitions and to the general absorptive capacity literature by highlighting the importance of previously underexplored antecedents and outcomes of absorptive capacity. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Scopes of intervention and evolutionary paths for argentinian universities transfer offices*

ABSTRACT

The majority of researches on knowledge and technology transfer from universities focused on the topic of processes which can improve the efficiency of the commercialization of R&D results. Furthermore, the different channels of transfer have been studied mainly independent of each other. This article develops a more strategic approach and proposes an integrated view of 16 channels of transfer organized around four core competences and considering their main form of governance. The empirical analysis is based on data gathered through a survey and an interview on a sample of 29 Argentinian National Universities publicly funded. The findings highlight four types of strategies – integral, network, entrepreneurial and undetermined – and two main types of potential evolutionary paths. The ability to differentiate the scopes of the intervention of universities transfer activities has implications for universities as well as for policymakers.     

Pension funds and IPO pricing. Evidence from a quasi-experiment

We exploit a quasi-experiment arising from the government-forced changes to the assets under management and investment policy of the Polish pension funds. We test whether this new regulation and its resultant demand shock on the investors' side, leads to changes in the IPO pricing and the subsequent stock's performance. We report material and a statistically significant decrease in the IPO proceeds (IPO size) in the post-treatment period equal to over 107 million PLN (34 million USD). We find no empirical evidence that the treatment had a significant effect on the first-day IPO underpricing or on the long-term underperformance. We conclude that the demand shock resulting from the pension system reform that primarily aimed at solving fiscal problems effectively eliminated the so-called ‘pension premium’ of higher IPO valuations. Thus, it indirectly impaired companies' power of raising money in the public stock market. Furthermore, we report a decrease in the average first-day IPO returns among big issuers that is consistent with the book building literature.