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In the globalized economy, it is becoming increasingly necessary for firms in emerging economies to adopt advanced knowledge and technology from external sources, both domestic and abroad. This paper aims to identify knowledge flows through domestic and international customer‐supplier relationships that cause gaps in quality assurance, cost reduction, and timely delivery among firms in emerging countries.

The authors constructed an original dataset on production networks within manufacturing firms in Vietnam (including Hanoi and the surrounding region) and estimated statistical models for the relationship between face‐to‐face interactions within a supply chain and QCD (Quality, Cost, Delivery). Findings from in‐depth interviews with Japanese firms in emerging economies complement the quantitative analysis.

The incidence of face‐to‐face interactions between two firms within a production chain via resident engineers significantly explains the variation in performance of total quality management among firms in Vietnam under controlling vertical ownership within a chain. Since the authors could find no significant correlations between transactions of goods along the supply chain and QCD, it is safe to say that transfer of intangible assets among interconnected firms may cause the difference in QCD among firms in Vietnam.

This represents the first systematic quantitative research on the asymmetric gains from face‐to‐face interactions with downstream and upstream firms, and it offers a new development in the study of transfers of intangible assets within a supply chain in Asian emerging economies.

Although the theoretical arguments provide several channels through which innovation affects export, empirical validation of this relationship is scarce. Further, the impact of the diverse channels of domestic and foreign research and development (R&D) on export is assessed in isolation by previous studies. This paper empirically investigates the impact of technological innovation on export capacity and intensity of industrial enterprises in emerging countries by considering three channels of domestic innovation and foreign R&D spillovers, namely internal R&D, embodied knowledge and disembodied knowledge in a unified framework.

Data on China's industrial enterprises in the manufacturing sector are extracted from the China National Bureau of Statistics (NBSC), the Ministry of Science and Technology of China (MST) and the UN Comtrade database for the period from 1998 to 2020. The instrumental variables two-stage least squares (IV-2SLS) and three-stage least squares (IV-3SLS) methods are used to control for the possible endogeneity bias and the problem of cross-equation correlation between residuals.

The results show that internal R&D is a critical factor to enhance the export performance of enterprises in emerging countries, while the effect of embodied spillovers and public–private collaboration on export capacity and intensity of industrial enterprises is substantial. Further, disembodied knowledge that is acquired through licensing of technology from advanced countries does not directly contribute to the export performance of enterprises but requires a threshold level of internal R&D capability. This study’s results also report a greater effect of embodied knowledge spillovers on export capacity and export intensity than internal R&D in emerging countries. The results are consistent to changes in the sample period and the estimation methods. The findings of the paper suggest that developing countries can speed up the process of export upgrading by relying on both domestic and foreign R&D efforts.

The findings would help policymakers to keep in mind the relative importance of internal R&D and embodied and disembodied knowledge spillovers for export performance before formulating a catch-up strategy and the outcome would encourage them to consider prior related knowledge in terms of internal R&D capability while acquiring external technology.

This study fills the gap in the existing literature by providing empirical validation of the innovation–export interplay and simultaneously assessing the effect of three diverse channels of technological innovation on the export performance of industrial enterprises. This paper enunciates important policy lessons for emerging countries' smooth transition to a knowledge-based economy.

Innovation is becoming the key approach for firms to achieve sustainable competitive advantages. The purpose of this paper is to examine whether government public R&D subsidies have a positive impact on firms' private R&D investment (RDI) under globalization; this paper also investigates the impact of international trade on firms' private RDI in China.

The paper empirically tests the government support and international trade on firms' private RDI. An online survey was conducted as well as collaborated with the Department of Science and Technology of Zhejiang Province in 2006. The sample was obtained from more than 1,000 firms in high‐tech industries in Zhejiang province, and covers the year 2003‐2005. Linear regression was used for the firm‐level estimations.

The empirical results indicate that public R&D subsidies and disembodied technology imports positively and significantly impact on firms' private RDI, while non‐high‐tech product exports and embodied technology imports do not have positive effects. Moreover, the results show that high‐tech product exports are positively associated with firms' private RDI but not significantly.

The paper's findings extend the existing understanding of the determinants of firms' RDI in less developed countries, such as China. Moreover, unlike most extant studies, the authors investigate different types of exports and imports and their impacts on firms' RDI, respectively.

This study explores the determinants of growth of credence-based exports of yerba mate from Paraguay, potential for increased export growth, and the fragility of the credence-based export model. Much of the growth in value of yerba mate exports from Paraguay is due to positioning of the good within the universe of products where consumption is driven by perceptions of sustainable production and health benefits to consumers. Credence claims for yerba mate—benefits to indigenous producing communities, environmental sustainability under certain production processes, healthful alternatives to energy drinks—are now widely known, but the growth of this awareness came via a new entrepreneurial strategy of a single firm.

Primary information was collected through interviews of actors in the Paraguayan yerba mate value chain during spring/summer 2020. These included representatives from three exporting companies, processors, public institutions and indigenous producers.

The Paraguayan yerba mate export boom was stimulated through the careful cultivation of an image of healthful consumption and sustainable production processes. The cost of this cultivation was borne mainly by a single firm. Findings suggest that future marketing efforts will need to reinforce credence claims, highlighting the benefits to indigenous producers.

This case study explores the determinants of growth of credence-based exports of yerba mate from Paraguay, potential for increased growth, and the fragility of the credence-based model.

Findings are supported by field interviews with value chain participants and detailed analysis of extant data. The paper is the first to discuss the fragility of relying on credence attributes for long-term demand growth.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a novel conception of embodied entrepreneurial identity. Prior studies conceptualise identity primarily in terms of narrative or discourse. Critiquing the limited focus on linguistic practices, the authors build on the literature by highlighting the role of the non-linguistic. The implications for researching one particular group – entrepreneurs with impairments – are considered.

Entrepreneurial identity is conceptualised as a unique constellation of concerns emergent from the embodied practices of agents committed to new venture creation and management. This new conception draws principally on the embodiment literature, Archer's identity framework and Goffman's ideas on the presentation of self, impression management and stigma.

The entrepreneurial identity literature is underpinned by a number of problematic assumptions that limit understanding of the meaning, formation and influence of identity on action. The body is often an absent presence; it is presupposed, implicit or under-theorised as an influence on identity, producing a disembodied notion of the entrepreneur. Consequently, entrepreneurs are treated as an homogeneous group in terms of the embodied properties and powers, rather than as uniquely embodied individuals. Studies typically assume an able-bodied, as opposed to a differently abled, agent. Entrepreneurs with impairments are largely invisible in the literature as a result.

The approach highlights the role of the body and embodied non-linguistic practices, such as movement, posture, gestures and facial expressions in the formation of identity. Recognising entrepreneurs as differently abled agents, possessing particular embodied properties and powers, is crucial for understanding identity and action.

Critical race theory is a contemporary legal movement composed of progressive scholars, primarily people who identify as people of color, who seek to challenge racism in American society. In their writing, they explore the many ways in which racism infuses American institutions, popular culture, commonsense beliefs, pervades interaction and cuts to the core of the American psyche. One of the central challenges that any person, scholar, activist faces in the U.S. is the peculiar nature of contemporary discourse on race. Often times, much of white America treats racism as if it were a thing of the past, an article of a time when the racial caste system was explicitly upheld and defended, either in the form of slavery, explicitly racist immigration laws (like the Chinese Exclusion Act), the Jim Crow laws, or when Native Americans were massacred by Union soldiers. Contemporary anti-racist work constantly confronts this denial of racism from a large segment of America.² This denial of racism is one in which many people seem to have developed something of a psychic investment. Since the critical race theorists are working in a scholar-activist anti-racist vein, they also have to confront this massive self-delusion or mythic self-understanding.

Based on a sample of foreign‐financed manufacturing firms in southern China, the purpose of this paper is to study the effects of ISO certification on productivity.

The paper employs the stochastic frontier approach to estimate frontier efficiency scores at firm level.

The empirical results suggest that the implementation of ISO was able to improve firms' productivity in the form of a wholly disembodied shift of the production frontier. The results further show that there was a mildly positive embodied shift of the production frontier due to the effects of ISO on the marginal product of labor. However, the embodied effects of ISO on the marginal product of capital were not significant.

The sample size is small and the data were collected from southern China. A generalization of results to other parts of China should be interpreted with caution. Despite the limited degree of generalization, firms with ISO certifications are suggested to be aware of certain flexibility in the implementation of the ISO documented procedures.

The findings of the paper should be of general interest to firms seeking or adopting ISO system or other international standards.

The originality of the paper resides in the fact that the empirical work investigates the embodied effects of ISO certification on the marginal product of labor and capital.

This chapter problematizes the body politics of American liberalism, as viewed through the lens of health policy. The author suggests that American efforts to pursue basic health goals are undercut by the particular way in which American liberals – and their state – conceptualize bodies. To understand the theoretical basis of this body politics, the chapter examines policy preoccupations such as the institution of informed consent, malpractice reform, and efforts to establish a Patients’ Bill of Rights. Finally, considering the ideological contexts that have given rise to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the author gestures toward the establishment of a stronger liberal – and possibly post-liberal – health care system that takes the embodiment of its subjects seriously.

This paper deals with organisational complexity, seen from the perspective of its unfolding from global to local concerns. Historically, this unfolding has produced rigid social systems, where those in power positions have forced unfair constraints over the majorities at the local level, and often excluded them. There is a need to move towards flexible, fair, social systems, inclusive in character. This transformation requires an increasing appreciation of communication problems in society and the embodiment of effective social systems. This transformation is presented as a problem‐solving paradigm which requires social systems with capacity to create and produce their own meanings, with capacity to manage necessary structural couplings among existing social systems, thus making this management a heuristic to produce necessary social differentiation to overcome communication failures among existing self‐producing, operationally closed, social systems. A key construct used in this paper to practically produce this management is the viable system model, developed by Stafford Beer.

The purpose of this article is to develop a critical and extended understanding of practices in organizations from a phenomenological point of view. It explores the relevance of Merleau-Ponty's advanced phenomenology and ontology for understanding the role of the lived body and the embodiment of practices and change in organizational lifeworlds.

Based on the literature review and phenomenology, the role of embodied and relational dimension, the concept of an emergent and responsive “inter-practice” in organizations is developed systematically.

Based on the phenomenological and relational approach, the concept of (inter-)practice allows an extended more integral and processual understanding of the role of bodily and embodied practices in organizational lifeworlds as emerging events. The concept of inter-practice(ing) contributes to conceiving of new ways of approaching how responsive and improvisational practicing, related to change, coevolves within a multidimensional nexus of organizations.

Specific theoretical and methodological implications for exploring and enacting relational practices as well as limitations are offered.

Some specific practical implications are provided that facilitate and enable embodied practices in organizational contexts.

The responsive inter-practice is seen as embedded in sociality and social interactions and links to sociocultural and political as well as ethical dimensions are discussed.

By extending the existing discourse and using an embodied approach, the paper proposes a novel orientation for reinterpreting practice that allows explorations of the emergence and realization of alternative, ingenious and more suitable forms of practicing and change in organizations.