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This chapter examines intra-industry spillover effects from inward foreign direct investment (FDI) in Swiss manufacturing firms. It suggests that (a) the assessment of spillovers calls upon a detailed analysis of these effects according to the mechanisms by which they occur (viz. the increase of competition, demonstration effects, and worker mobility), and (b) spillovers depend on the interaction between their mechanisms and the levels of domestic absorptive capacity. Results are affirmative in that high-technology firms benefit from FDI heightening competition, while mid-technology firms benefit from demonstration effects. And low-technology firms, which are not able to benefit from foreign affiliates via demonstration effects alone, manage to reap the benefit via the recruitment of MNCs labor. In addition, only firms which largely invest in absorbing foreign technology benefit from spillovers.

This chapter examines the role of foreign direct investment (FDI) in promoting industrial development, and asks, if FDI is such an important avenue to promote development, why is there little evidence on concomitant industrial development in most developing countries?

I look at the secondary evidence on FDI and development and explore some of the causes for this ambiguity.

The complexities of global value chains and networks have begun to trivialise the simplistic principle that increased multinational enterprise (MNE) activity automatically implies a proportional increase in spillovers and linkages.

Policies towards MNEs need to be closely linked and integrated with industrial policy. MNE activity needs to be evaluated by considering the kinds of externalities that are generated; whether and how domestic actors can internalise them, and building up absorptive capacities to achieve this.

Among the prominent economic trends in recent decades is the exponential increase in flows of goods and capital driven by technological progress and falling of restrictions. A key driver of this phenomenon has been the cross-border production, foreign investment, and trade both final and intermediate goods by multinational corporations. Research has sought to understand how foreign direct investment (FDI) affects host economies. This paper reviews the main theories and empirical evidence of two streams of literature: the mechanisms by which multinational activity might create positive effects and externalities to countries and the role of complementary local conditions, also known as “absorptive capacities,” that allow a country to reap the benefits of FDI paying particular attention to the role of factor markets, reallocation effects, and the linkages generated between foreign and domestic firms. The survey focuses mainly on work related to developing countries.

This paper seeks to provide an understanding of the relationship between the management control policy of emerging economy (EE) firms and the knowledge transfer with the acquired firm, as well as the mechanism by which specific management control policy facilitates knowledge transfer with the acquired firms.

Employing an organizational learning theory, this paper examines the knowledge transfer from acquired firms to acquiring EE firms through multiple-case study of three EE firms.

Based on organizational learning theory and the results of case studies, this paper finds that the cooperation and willingness of employees in the acquired firm and language barriers are the main factors influencing the relationship between management control policy and the parent company’s knowledge transfer process.

This study sheds light on cross-border knowledge transfer to EE firms from an organizational learning perspective and broadens the understanding of post-acquisition knowledge transfer in an emerging market context.

This study suggests that the low-level management control facilitates knowledge transfer from acquired firms. This is especially true when the parent company from the EE has limited learning experience and faces substantial language barriers between itself and its acquired firm.

This paper extends existing research by exploring how low-level control of acquired firms in developed markets facilitates knowledge transfer of EE firms after cross-border acquisition. Future research can extend this line of research by examining the knowledge transfer mechanism of EE firms through qualitative and quantitative methods.

One of the more important and interesting phenomena in international business in recent times is the upgrading and catchup of firms from emerging economies. How do these firms upgrade and catchup? This paper reviews and synthesizes the literature on upgrading and catchup by emerging economy firms and develops a model and testable propositions to advance research on the topic.

This study examines how foreign R&D investment may explain interfirm variations in productivity performance of home country firms in terms of spillovers. Many have studied spillovers from MNCs to host country’s firms, but there is still scarce evidence on spillovers from outward FDI to the home country. This study analyzes spillovers from foreign R&D investment and hypothesizes that the benefit of outward R&D spillovers occurs only when knowledge accumulated in foreign R&D centers is effectively transferred to MNCs’ parent companies at home. This benefit depends on the mandate of foreign R&D units, their embeddedness in the host economy, and their entry mode. Using detailed firm-level data for Switzerland, our findings seem to support our arguments.

This chapter reviews the role of industrial parks (IP) as drivers of export-led industrialisation in Ethiopia. For several decades, IPs or special economic zones have been promoted as policy instruments to attract investment, create jobs and promote exports of manufactured goods. However, their popularity as policy instruments has been mainly associated with the successful export-led industrialisation of emerging economies in East Asia where IPs have played a critical role not only in attracting investment and promoting export-led growth but also transferring technology, promoting technological learning and industrial development and jump-starting the process of economic diversification and structural transformation. Ethiopia, along with other African countries, is among the latest to introduce IPs as major drivers of economic diversification and export-led industrialisation. As a newcomer, Ethiopia can learn many valuable lessons from more successful cases. This chapter explores some of the lessons that Ethiopia can draw from other countries’ experience as it continues to build additional parks to attract investment and push its industrialisation agenda.

This volume is the outcome of the 33rd European International Business Academy (EIBA) conference held at the Faculty of Political Science of the University of Catania (Italy). This conference brought together more than 300 scholars from around the world to discuss theoretical and empirical issues in international business (IB), as well as their consequences and challenges to IB scholars and policy-makers. Organized around 10 thematic tracks, the conference is the annual forum for discussing major research issues in the IB realm. This volume is a collection of the best papers, which, selected through a blind refereeing process for presentation at the conference, make significant contributions by providing fresh new perspectives on a variety of relevant topics.

Firms have typically tried to profit from their technical innovations by selling them indirectly, embedded in goods and services. Markets for technology, in which innovations are sold or licensed, have been much rarer. Yet, trade in technology has grown systematically over the past 20 years, as reflected in the growth of arrangements such as licensing agreements, R&D joint ventures, and contract R&D. Recent estimates indicate that royalties received by American corporations for industrial processes may amount to about a quarter of total U.S. R&D. A number of supporting institutions that facilitate effective dissemination of information, standardization, and contracting are vital to the rise and functioning of markets for technology. Intellectual property rights, and in particular patents, are one such institution. The main objectives of this survey are to review critically the literature on the relationship between trade in technology and patent protection, and to assess the contribution of stricter and better-defined patent protection to the emergence of technology markets. We start our survey by providing a tentative taxonomy of markets for technology and some recent evidence on their extent and evolution. We then explore several reasons why firms would be willing to act as suppliers in the market for technology. The core of the survey revolves around the idea that patents facilitate the development of markets for technology in several ways: They enhance the ability of the licensor to extract rents from its innovation; they reduce costs in technology trade by forcing an increased codification of knowledge; they reduce information asymmetries, opportunistic behaviors, and transaction costs. However, the literature also points to some potential costs of stronger patents, including litigation costs and the problem of “anti-commons.” Finally, we explore the implications of patents and markets for technology for entry, competition and industry dynamics.

Over the last decade, scholars extensively discuss talent management phenomenon in various country contexts paying much attention to different exogenous and endogenous factors influencing talent management systems and practices and their relationships with other organizational processes. In this chapter we particularly talk about the peculiarities of talent management in Brazil and Russia and explore the potential impact key management practices aimed at attracting, developing and retaining high potentials and high performers have on the development of firms’ absorptive capacity. We argue that for Brazilian and Russian firms “crossverging” context-specific talent management practices play a key role in the acquisition, assimilation, transformation, and exploitation of external and internal valuable knowledge, thus becoming one of the main drivers of organizational performance and competitive advantage.