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This paper is ambitious. Its central purpose is to examine how a number of developed economies, plus the largest developing economy, vary in terms of corporate governance: USA, Japan, Germany, UK, France, Italy, South Korea, Taiwan, Sweden, Switzerland and mainland China. We understand corporate governance in a very broad sense, descriptive not prescriptive: as who controls and influences firms, and how. We are thus dealing very much with varieties of capitalism. In a sense, we shall be seeking to characterise national systems of corporate governance, but we must stress that our concern is always with the situation of the individual firm. We shall find it convenient most of the time to give one label to a country's whole economy, but this will always be an approximation, which conceals variations among that country's firms. At other points, we shall distinguish types of firm and indicate the rough proportions of each type in a particular economy.

This paper proposes to rethink the concepts of relevance and usefulness and their relation to the theory–practice gap in management research.

On the basis of the cognitive-linguistic relevance theory or inferential pragmatics, supplemented by insights from information science, we define relevance as a general conceptual category, while reserving usefulness for the instrumental application in a particular case.

There is no reason to hold onto the difference between theoretical and practical relevance, nor to distinguish between instrumental and conceptual relevance.

This novel approach will help to clarify the confusion in the field and contribute to a better understanding of the added value of management research.

Since at least the 1970s, the American research university system has experienced episodic periods of austerity, frequently accompanied by expressions of concern about the threats that these conditions pose to U.S. scientific and technological leadership. In general, austerity has been tied to fluctuations in Federal Government funding of academic research and macroeconomic fluctuations that have shrunk state government budget revenues. Even amidst these episodes, the system has continued to expand and decentralize. The issue at present is whether this historic resiliency, of being a marvelous invalid, will overcome adverse contemporary trends in Federal and state government funding, as well as political trends that eat away at the societal bonds between universities and their broader publics. The paper juxtaposes examinations of the organizational and political influences that have given rise to the American research university system, trends in research revenues and research costs, and contemporary efforts by universities to balance the two. It singles out the secular decline in state government’s support of public universities as the principal reason why this period of contraction is different from those of the past. Rather though then these trends portending a market shakeout, as some at times have predicted, the projection here is that the academic research system will continue to be characterized by excess capacity and recurrent downward pressures on research costs. Because the adverse impacts are concentrated in the public university sector, they may also spill over into political threats to the current system of awarding academic research grants primarily via competitive, merit review arrangements.

This chapter examines the role of formal and informal institutions in foreign direct investment (FDI) dynamics.

We examine the effects of the quality of legal, political, and economic formal institution as well as the effect of institutional distance (based on new dataset) on bilateral inward FDI stocks in 34 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries for the period 1990–2010 using a gravity specification. Additionally, we also examine FDI for the effects of a specific informal institution – attitude of the public toward economic liberal issues. Reactions of FDI to liberal and nonliberal public opinion (part of informal institutions) are examined with and without controlling for formal institutions.

Findings show that the quality of legal and political institutions are important determinants of FDI, that legal and political institutional distance are both significant obstacles to FDI, and that public opinion also matters. We find that it is important to control for formal institutions when looking at the effect of informal institutions, and that both past liberal and nonliberal public opinion correlate with FDI, but only nonliberal public opinion significantly reduces inward FDI directly.

Results are relevant for enterprises’ investment strategies, marketing strategies influencing public opinion as well as for policy makers, and governmental agencies involved in investment promotion programs.

Exploring the interplay between formal and informal institutions, institutional quality, institutional distance, and their effect on FDI in a bilateral panel.

There is no argument among serious researchers that a mongoloid stock first colonized the New World from Asia. Nor is there controversy about the fact that these continental pioneers used the Bering Land Bridge that then connected the Asian Far East with Alaska.– Gerald F. Shields, et al.American Journal of Genetics (1992)