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This paper aims to examine the relationship between environmental factors, risk perception and decision-making in risk management. Specifically, using attribution theory, the authors study the influence of macro-level logistical capabilities of a host country on a firm’s actual and perceived supply chain risk, and examine if this country-level factor and the firm level perception of risk affect a firm’s decision-making in risk management.

This study uses a combination of primary data from 932 manufacturing firms from 22 countries and secondary data from the logistics performance index (LPI), and empirically tests the conceptual framework using partial least squares structural equation modeling.

Key results reveal that a country’s logistical capabilities, measured using LPI, have a significant impact on managers’ risk perception. Firms located in countries with high LPI perceive lower risk in their supply chain both in the upstream and downstream, and therefore do not invest much in external integration, compared to firms in low LPI countries, and hence are exposed to high risk.

This is one of the first empirical studies linking a country’s logistical capabilities with supply chain risk perceptions, objective supply chain risk and supply chain risk management efforts of a firm using the International Manufacturing Strategy Survey database.

The purpose of this commentary is to outline an extension of the position of the focal article regarding importance of location‐based advantages, and to provide a critique related to conceptual development of country‐level supply chain capability (SCC).

The paper takes the form of a commentary and a critique of the country‐level SCC concept.

The author sees this study by Alam and Bagchi as a good starting point for research on the mechanisms of resource picking at national level to develop national‐level capabilities.

It will be interesting to see how capabilities at country level lead to emergence of unique, country‐specific advantages around specific industries or industry clusters.

The commentary emphasizes how climate change concerns and environmental proactivity are emerging as important drivers of location‐specific advantages related to local production and logistics environment. Furthermore, this commentary raises important questions regarding country‐level capability development.

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the association between economic activity in a country, as measured by the gross domestic product (GDP) and the control of the COVID-19 pandemic outcomes, as measured by the rate of incidence and mortality increase per 100,000 population in different countries using up-to-date data, in the light of public health security capacities including prevention, detection, respond, enabling function, operational readiness, as measured by the 2019 State Party self-assessment annual reporting (SPAR) submissions of 100 countries.

For this analytical study, multiple linear regression analyses were performed for each variable with the COVID-19 incidence and mortality rates, while controlling for Human Development Index (HDI) and GDP.

Countries with higher income levels were significantly more likely to have a higher incidence and mortality rate per 100,000 population. Among the public health capacity categories, prevention of the infectious disease and detection of the pathogens were significantly associated with lower incidence and mortality of the COVID-19 pandemic. The country-level income was found to be an important negative predictor of COVID-19 control.

These findings present to decision-makers in organizing mitigation strategies to struggle emerging infectious pandemics and highlight the role of country-level income while trying to control COVID-19. In order to determine the priority settings for the fight against pandemic, national policy-makers and international organizations should notice that countries in a high-income group had better health security capacities than that of other income groups, particularly in low- and lower-middle-income groups. The results of the capabilities of health security by the income group can assist health policy makers and other international agencies in resource allocation decisions and in mitigating risk with more informed resource planning.

The income level of countries may have a positive effect on public health strategies to mitigate the risk of infection of COVID-19. This study may assist the local public authorities to gain a better level of understanding on the relationship country-level income and COVID-19 outcomes in order to take appropriate measures at the local level. The results also highlighted the importance role of public health security capacities for the pandemic control policy.

Although previous studies have examined to assess the public health capability by country-level and to describe cases and deaths by continent and by country, very limited studies have evaluated the rate of incidence and mortality of COVID-19 by country-level income and by health expenditure using the data on the health security capacities with analytical and practical approaches.

This study aims to examine, which dynamic capabilities (DC) are used by companies from post-socialist emerging markets (PSEM) during their internationalization.

The paper uses a DC perspective together with the new internalization theory to examine the internationalization of companies from PSEM. It uses qualitative data from the interviews with 7 PSEM experts and the 16 cases of the multinational companies from PSEM.

PSEM companies develop particular DC while expanding abroad whereby innovation capability helps them internationalize beyond neighboring countries and overcome the stigma of being less competitive than advanced economies. Adaptability is the DC that helps private companies, which differ from state-owned PSEM firms, overcome the uncertainties of the changing environment. Innovation capability and absorptive capability help PSEM firms surmount their geographical position. Alliancing activity is the DC that is used at the initial stages of internationalization to boost technological development.

The study contributes to the body of knowledge on the internationalization of companies from transition economies and sheds light on the nature of DC for the successful international expansion of PSEM firms. It attempts to address the lack of empirical studies on DC. Methodological value is in the combination of case studies’ analysis and interviews with experts, which adds novelty to the studied subject.

The purpose of this paper is to identify factors which influence participation of developing countries in the global value chains (GVC) and to present a mathematical modeling technique to calculate a “National Participation Index of a developing country in the GVC” (hereinafter referred to as G-NPI).

The paper identifies 17 factors, encompassing both country-specific and firm-specific considerations that influence a developing countries’ participation in the GVCs. These factors have been grouped into four sets of enablers, namely, macroeconomic, geo-economic, strategic and geopolitical. The national participation index (G-NPI) has been calculated using the graph theoretic modeling approach.

Besides identifying the factors of a developing country’s participation in the GVC and grouping them as enablers, the paper considers the case of India as an example and assesses the level of interactions within (i.e. among various factors of a given enabler) and among these enablers (leading to a G-NPI value) using graph theory.

The findings can be used to calculate G-NPI for different countries to ascertain their potential for participation and also to find the factors(s) which may be deterring their participation in the GVCs.

This paper can help in policy advocacy to enhance the competitiveness of developing countries and consequently to improve the life of their consumers.

This paper introduces the concept of G-NPI and presents a unique way of assessing a developing country’s participation in the GVCs through a mathematical modeling approach.

The focus is on determining the long-term relationship in explaining how technological capabilities interact with trade and global value chain (GVC) participation to aid in the upgradation process using a panel auto-regressive distributed lag (ARDL) model. The results suggest that export of both low-skill and medium-skill technology-intensive manufactures and patents by residents positively and significantly impact GVC participation.

This paper examines the dynamic linkages between GVC participation and technological capability of major Asian countries in a comparative (1995–2018) perspective.

This implies that certain sectors enable greater integration into GVCs in the long-run, supported by critical learning variables. Further, with the help of the panel causality test, a bi-directional flow between GVC participation and export of high-technology manufactures and import of labour-intensive technology manufactures is witnessed. Even a one-way flow from research and development (R&D) intensity to GVC participation is seen.

The technological capabilities are found to be characterising the initial structure of local enterprises in trade and GVCs, as well as the extent to which emerging-market firms may harness knowledge flows and migrate into high-tech industries.

To investigate the association between country-level differences in childcare enrollment, the presence of affirmative action policy, and female parliamentary representation and individual-level conflict between work and family.

This study applies data from the 2002 International Social Survey Program (n = 14,000 + ) for respondents in 29 countries and pairs them with macro-level measures of childcare enrollment, the presence of affirmative action policy, and female parliamentary representation. I estimate the model using hierarchical linear modeling (HLM 7) and also assess cross-level interactions by gender and parental status.

The models show that female parliamentary representation has a robust negative association with individual-level reports of work–family and family–work conflict. These associations do not vary by gender or parental status. Also, mothers report less family–work conflict in countries with more expansive childcare enrollment, indicating that this welfare policy benefits the intended group.

This research implies that greater female parliamentary representation has widespread benefits to all citizens’, rather than just women’s or mothers’, work–family and family–work conflict. Additional longitudinal research would benefit this area of study.

This research suggests that increasing female parliamentary representation at the country-level may promote work–life balance at the individual-level. It also indicates that public childcare enrollment benefits women through lower family–work conflict which may encourage continuous maternal labor force participation and reduce economic gender inequality.

This chapter builds on an emerging area of work–family research applying multilevel modeling to draw empirical links between individual work–family experiences and macro-level structural variation.

The data communications protocol supporting the internet protocol version 4 (IPv4) is almost 40 years old, and its 32-bit address space is too small for the internet. A “next-generation” internet protocol version 6 (IPv6), has a much larger, 128-bit address space. However, IPv6 is not backward compatible with the existing internet. For 20 years, the internet technical community has attempted to migrate the entire internet to the new standard. This study aims to address important but overlooked questions about the internet’s technical evolution: will the world converge on IPv6? Will IPv6 die out? or will we live in a mixed world for the foreseeable future?

The research offers an economically-grounded study of IPv6’s progress and prospects. Many promoters of IPv6 sincerely believe that the new standard must succeed if the internet is to grow, and assume that the transition is inevitable because of the presumed depletion of the IPv4 address resources. However, by examining the associated network effects, developing the economic parameters for transition, and modeling the underlying economic forces, which impact network operator decisions, the study paints a more complex, nuanced picture.

The report concludes that legacy IPv4 will coexist with IPv6 indefinitely. IPv6 is unlikely to become an orphan. For some network operators that need to grow, particularly mobile networks where the software and hardware ecosystem is mostly converted, IPv6 deployment can make economic sense. However, the lack of backward compatibility with non-deployers eliminates many network effects that would create pressure to convert to IPv6. A variety of conversion technologies, and more efficient use of IPv4 addresses using network address translation, will support a “mixed world” of the two standards for the foreseeable future.

The authors’ conceptualization and observations provide a clearer understanding of the economic factors affecting the transition to IPv6.

This study aims to develop an artifact to measure the level of manufacturing competitiveness of a country in the global context and provide a suitable interpretation mechanism for the measured values, and to provide prescriptive solution where necessary so that the country can develop an actionable plan of program to move from the current level of global competitiveness to another such that they could provide more economic opportunities for their citizenry.

A manufacturing competitive index (MCI) was developed which includes relevant variables to capture a country’s manufacturing activity level in an economy with a balanced perspective. Reliable international sources were used. Ward algorithm was used to identify clear clusters of performance upon which competitive gaps were measured and improvement projects were identified and prioritized to obtain the best value for cluster transitional plan.

This study shows that the case country is not doing as well as it wants to believe, even when the relevant technology import measures were included in the expanded metric, but also, the next level of competitiveness is achievable within the national budget if proper prioritization is done.

The paper presents a cocktail of indexes that is more exhaustive of MCI, including both research capacity and technology import variables. It also uses clustering mechanism to provide a proper context to interpret the MCI scores in the context of peer nations. It presents a gap determination methodology and shows how priority projects could be logically selected to close measured gaps based on anticipated value from budget expenses

Foreign direct investment (FDI) from developing economies has increased sharply since the beginning of the 2000s. While most investment flows correspond to firms from large economies, small developing economies have also witnessed the increase of outward investment flows from their domestic companies. The literature on outward FDI (OFDI) from developing economies has focused mainly on large emerging countries, such as China and India. In the case of small developing economies, for which there is scant empirical evidence, firms willing to invest abroad face a different business environment with several barriers such as a small domestic market to achieve economies of scale and a limited supply of specialised resources. In this setting, the purpose of this paper is to examine firm-level strategies and the home-country effects in a small developing economy.

A research case study is conducted through a representative sample of Costa-Rican firms investing abroad. Costa Rica makes a strong case since it stands out among small developing economies investing abroad in terms of both the number of operations and the amount of OFDI.

The main findings are: outward investment is not only for large and mature firms, as medium and small-sized firms are actively investing abroad; most firms pursue a market-seeking strategy; the benefits for the firm and the home country are stronger when companies follow a clear outward investment strategy; and there is a positive relationship between international trade and OFDI.

This paper provides novel empirical evidence to better understand an emerging trend in OFDI: in an increasingly integrated world economy, even SMEs from small developing economies are compelled to internationalise their operations in order to compete successfully.