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The purpose of this paper is to raise an empirical question: whether a non‐exclusive licensing for a technological exchange contributes to the firm's performance better than an exclusive licensing (closed) structure.

Data from 343 pharmaceutical firms were used to test effects of these exclusive versus non‐exclusive modes (attention‐structures) on inter‐firm knowledge flow and the firm's performance. Logistic regression was used to analyze the evidence.

The results revealed that the firm that used non‐exclusive licensing more than exclusive modes performs better. The performance was measured in two ways: efficiencies and returns, both on assets and on investment. It appears that non‐exclusive licensing is contributing more to the firm's overall performance than an exclusive licensing. This paper makes an argument in favour of an open attention‐structure.

The study is limited to one sector; it can be extended to other industrial sectors. Modes of governance can be extended to internalization or equity investment. The study is also limited to cross‐section analysis. Temporal factors can provide better insights. Knowledge type and its scope are also likely to influence the outcome. These areas provide opportunities for future research.

The study emphasises that structures may precede technologies. Therefore, relevant institutions need to be considered in favour of a non‐exclusive attention‐structure. These findings may be relevant for future research and practice or policy making.

This paper extends the literature by supporting the argument that the usage of knowledge can increase its value to all relevant stakeholders. It provides empirical evidence to indicate that relatively open systems are better for high technology sectors. The study is likely to provide a solution, as well as trigger contentions, in the future.

This chapter provides an overview of the five main modes of intellectual property (IP) protection – patents, copyrights, trademarks, trade secrets, and designs – available in the United States, the European Union, and Japan. After describing the purposes of and principal differences among the five types of IP protection and outlining the advantages of each form, the chapter provides country- and region-specific information. The authors highlight the aspects of IP law in which international harmonization has, or has not yet, occurred, and offer insights into the relative advantages of various national and regional IP protection systems.

This paper examines the effects of resource dependency and contract exclusivity on the attitudes and intentions of consumers in brand alliances. Findings indicate that attitudes of the brands before the alliance (pre‐attitudes) have a positive effect on the attitude toward the alliance, which has a positive effect on perceived quality of the alliance, willingness to pay a premium price and purchase intention. Further, attitudes toward the brands after the alliance (post‐attitudes) reveal a positive spillover effect for both the host and ally brands. Interestingly, the moderating effects of dependency and exclusivity differ based on whether the brand serves as the host or the ally brand in the alliance. Analyses conducted after controlling for the effects of familiarity of the ally brands revealed consistent results.

This chapter provides an overview of five modes of intellectual property (IP) protection – patents, designs, copyrights, trademarks, and trade secrets – available in the United States, the European Union, and Japan. After describing the purposes of and principal differences among the five types of IP protection and outlining the advantages of each form, the chapter provides country- and region-specific information. The authors highlight the aspects of IP law in which international harmonization has, or has not yet, occurred, and offer insights into the relative advantages of various national and regional IP protection systems.

Recently, the public and academic discussion on elite education and the selection of top performers in Germany has led to a renewed controversy about social exclusion and inequality. Consequently, the use of terms such as ‘elite’, ‘excellence’ and ‘intellectual giftedness’ have provoked a debate about the necessity, opportunities, and rejection of educational distinctions. This chapter takes a comparative perspective to examine a private boarding school with a rich tradition, and a relatively new state-run public boarding school, examining their status as exclusive educational institutions, including their selection processes, elite aspirations and educational philosophies. The analysis focusses on how the schools construe themselves as elite and how exclusive membership is created and negotiated within the boarding school context. Using a multilevel qualitative approach and empirical data, this chapter offers findings on mechanisms of elite formation in boarding schools between two poles: the reproduction of an existing elite status and the production of elites from scratch. The analyses show the establishment of a distinct composition of students – either selected by milieu affiliation or by cognitive abilities – resulting in specific processes of coherence and distinction within the school communities. Thus, this chapter makes a contribution to a differentiated observation of new educational hierarchies in Germany.

In a dynamic environment where underlying competition is “for the market,” this chapter examines what happens when entrants and incumbents can instead negotiate for the market. For instance, this might arise when an entrant innovator can choose to license to or be acquired by an incumbent firm (i.e., engage in cooperative commercialization). It is demonstrated that, depending upon the level of firms’ potential dynamic capabilities, there may or may not be gains to trade between incumbents and entrants in a cumulative innovation environment; that is, entrants may not be adequately compensated for losses in future innovative potential. This stands in contrast to static analyses that overwhelmingly identify positive gains to trade from such cooperation.

This chapter reconsiders commonly held views on the ownership and management of private property, contrasting capitalist and simple property, particularly in relation to how a firm shareholder governance model has shaped society. This consideration is motivated by the scale and scope of the modern global crisis, which has combined financial, economic, social and cultural dimensions to produce world disenchantment.

By contrasting an exchange value standpoint with a use value perspective, this chapter explicates current conditions in which neither the state nor the market prevail in organising economic activity (i.e. cooperative forms of governance and community-created brand value).

This chapter offers recommendations related to formalised conditions for collective action and definitions of common guiding principles that can facilitate new expressions of the principles of coordination. Such behaviours can support the development of common resources, which then should lead to a re-appropriation of the world.

It is necessary to think of enterprises outside a company or firm context when reflecting on the end purpose and means of collective, citizen action. From a methodological standpoint, current approaches or studies that view an enterprise as an organisation, without differentiating it from a company, create a deadlock in relation to entrepreneurial collective action. The absence of a legal definition of enterprise reduces understanding and evaluations of its performance to simply the performance by a company. The implicit shift thus facilitates the assimilation of one with the other, in a funnel effect that reduces collective projects to the sole projects of capital providers.

Because forsaking society as it stands is a radical response, this historical moment makes it necessary to revisit the ideals on which modern societies build, including the philosophy of freedom for all. This utopian concept has produced an ideology that is limited by capitalist notions of private property.

The primary purpose of this paper is to investigate how opportunity for control and firm capability interact to moderate the amount of risk that managers associate with various international entry‐mode strategies. A secondary goal is to investigate how managers perceive the need to retain control over three core functional areas (marketing, production, and R&D) when making entry‐mode decisions.

A field experiment design was implemented in a sample of US business owner/executives. Using an online data collection method, the study asked a sample of small‐business owners and managers to assess the amount of risk they associated with three modes of entering the Japanese market: non‐ownership (export), equal partnership (50/50 joint‐venture), and sole‐ownership. They were also asked how much control they needed to retain over R&D, production, and marketing for the venture to be successful.

Ownership‐provided control interacts with capability to influence managerial risk perceptions. Managers in lower‐capability firms see the least risk in the non‐ownership entry mode while those in higher‐capability firms see the least risk in the equal‐partnership entry mode. Managers believe that for a new venture in a foreign market to be successful, control should be retained over the R&D function, regardless of entry mode.

The findings appear to reconcile some of the conflicting predictions of the transaction cost and resource‐based theoretical perspectives, because it appears that international managers consider both control (internationalization theory) and capability (resource‐based theory) when judging the perceived risk of an entry strategy.

For firms that are incapable of managing in an international context, a low‐control no‐ownership entry mode is perceived as the least risky approach; for firms that have some capability for international management, then a partial‐ownership mode such as a 50/50 joint‐venture is perceived as having lower risk than no‐ownership. In non‐ownership and joint‐venture type entry modes, managers are more apt to outsource the marketing function to an agent/partner, but not R&D. In contrast, managers believe that marketing needs to be maintained in‐house when utilizing a sole‐ownership entry mode.

By illustrating the role of perceived risk in foreign‐market entry‐mode decisions and demonstrating how capabilities interact with ownership‐provided control to moderate these perceptions, the paper's findings suggest that managers' risk perceptions may mediate the effects of firm‐specific factors, and thus contributes significantly to both theory and practice.

The purpose of this paper is to reconsider commonly held views on the ownership and management of private property, contrasting capitalist and simple property, particularly as it relates to the impact of the firm shareholder governance model on the shape of society.

The author contrasts an exchange value standpoint with a use value perspective to explicate current conditions under which neither the state nor the market prevail in organizing economic activity (i.e. the co-operative form of governance and community-created brand value).

This paper offers mechanisms and recommendations regarding the formalized conditions for collective action and definitions of common guiding principles to facilitate new expressions of the principles of co-ordination. Such behaviour will allow for the development of common resources the purpose being a re-appropriation of the world.

This consideration is motivated by the scale and scope of the modern global crisis which combines financial, economic, social and cultural dimensions to produce world disenchantment. Dismissing the alternative of individuals simply forsaking engagement with society as it stands, it becomes necessary to revisit at this historical moment, the ideals on which modern societies are built, including the philosophy of freedom for all. This utopian concept has produced an ideology limited by capitalist notions of private property, motivating this inquiry.