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This paper explores how key insights from highly cited and well-used frameworks that describe the strategies and structures of MNCs are reflected in the international configurations of US MNCs. After reviewing existing frameworks that highlight different MNC choices regarding the integration, responsiveness, and dispersion of firm value chain activities, I perform a cluster analysis on a comprehensive and confidential database of US MNCs. The results reveal five configurations which both support the importance of key insights from existing frameworks while at the same time highlighting underexplored configuration characteristics, like the low levels of integration in US MNCs, the global sourcing arrangements for accessing foreign inputs and distribution, different approaches to regional expansion, and the limited geographic expansion of US MNCs pursuing product diversification. I argue that these underexplored characteristics suggest directions for future research to better reflect the international configuration choices of MNCs.

In the last decade, the speed and intensity with which regional level connections are expanding in all areas of the world has been remarkable. Higher education in Africa is no exception. This chapter focuses on African policies and programme initiatives to further higher education regionalization. Regionalization is defined as the process of ‘building closer collaboration and alignment among higher education actors and systems in a designated area or framework, commonly called a region’. An analytical framework, consisting of functional, organizational and political approaches, is applied to the evolution of higher education regionalization at the continental level in Africa through a close examination of the progress related to the implementation of the “African Union Strategy for the Harmonization of Higher Education Programmes.” Special emphasis is given to the harmonization of degree structures and the recognition of qualifications through sub-regional qualification frameworks. Key issues and challenges such as rationales, governance, benefits and risks, unintended consequences, language, engagement for all and innovation are raised at the end of the chapter to stimulate further reflection and exploration of the complex process of higher education regionalization.

A number of multidimensional poverty measures that respect the ordinal nature of dimensions have recently been proposed within the counting approach framework. Besides ensuring a reduction in poverty, however, it is important to monitor distributional changes to ensure that poverty reduction has been inclusive in reaching the poorest. Distributional issues are typically captured by adjusting a poverty measure to be sensitive to inequality among the poor. This approach, however, has certain practical and conceptual limitations. It conflicts, for example, with some policy-relevant measurement features, such as the ability to decompose a measure into dimensions post-identification and does not create an appropriate framework for assessing disparity in poverty across population subgroups. In this chapter, we propose and justify the use of a separate decomposable inequality measure – a positive multiple of “variance” – to capture the distribution of deprivations among the poor and to assess disparity in poverty across population subgroups. We demonstrate the applicability of our approach through two contrasting inter-temporal illustrations using Demographic Health Survey data sets for Haiti and India.

The aim of this chapter is to stimulate debate and critical thinking about the relevance and effectiveness – especially for ‘non-core’ areas – of prevailing methodological approaches to entrepreneurial ecosystems (EE) research and policy development and to argue for the exploration of critical realism (CR) as a potential framework for researchers, practitioners and policymakers. I argue that prevailing theoretical and methodological frameworks are insufficient to enable researchers to adequately understand the dynamics of diverse EE or for policymakers to act appropriately on research findings. I posit CR as an alternative framework, providing a ‘lens’ through which researchers, policymakers and other ecosystem stakeholders can collaboratively explore the role of context and its interplay with agency. CR addresses the disadvantages associated with deterministic models of entrepreneurship and ‘Valley envy’ policy prescriptions, thus generating more meaningful insights for policy and practice, especially in relation to ‘non-core’ areas.

Empirical findings from the past 15 years suggest that the influence of culture on the integration process is critical. However, the interrelationships between corporate and national cultures and their influence on merger success are not clear, and the results of empirical studies are contradictory. The major objective of this chapter is to provide a framework that addresses the effects of cultural distance on various integration approaches, and thereby explain international merger and acquisition performance. The framework can assist managers of international mergers in analyzing, evaluating, and planning before the merger and in implementing the chosen integration approach after the merger.

Purpose – The paper develops a conceptual framework for assessing value-creating service ecosystems that contains four core dimensions: medium, meaning, usage, and network. Its purpose is to identify and discuss the implications of the changes that occur in these dimensions when exchanges within the ecosystem that have long been mediated by physical products become direct instead.

Methodology/approach – The analysis employs the historical method and is based on a systematic investigation of the evolution of the recorded-music market during the past 150 years.

Findings – The analysis shows that the key dimensions of the recorded-music-service ecosystem evolved only gradually and incrementally during the era of physical formats that were dominant until the mid-1990s. With the advent of “liquid” music, the elements of the service ecosystem changed dramatically, leading to instability and redefining roles and exchange mechanisms in the ecosystem.

Research limitations/implications – The investigation focuses on a single ecosystem (music), and conclusions stemming from it are subject to the assumptions inherent in the historical method. Nevertheless, the paper contributes to knowledge in the Service-Dominant Logic (S-D logic) domain by offering a robust framework and a set of core dimensions that are useful for systematically analyzing the nature and consequences of changes that occur in rapidly evolving service ecosystems.

Practical implications – Apart from direct implications for the music market, the proposed framework can help managers working in other ecosystems to adopt a macro perspective in addressing value-creation issues and to pay particular attention to the underlying dynamics that influence value creation in those ecosystems.

Originality/value of paper – The development of a conceptual framework that adopts a macro-level, market-wide perspective for understanding value creation in service ecosystems is a distinct contribution of the paper, as is the application of the historical method in analyzing such an ecosystem.

A broad agreement exists that tourism is an effective instrument for social and economic development. However, there is no specific theoretical or practical framework of tourism for development to be found. Even the key issues have remained unformulated: concept of development, tourism's contributions to development, and tourism policy and governance for development. This chapter first summarizes the development paradigms held in the last decades (modernization, neoliberalism, dependency, and sustainability) vis-à-vis tourism, and then goes on to consider proposals emanating from New Institutional Economics and the Theory of Social Capital. It concludes with the results of a 2011 enquiry, involving some 60 international experts.

This chapter attempts to untangle the complex arena of private sector engagement in education by discussing the definitional challenges associated with understanding the non-state sector and by introducing some conceptual frameworks employed in research on private education. A thematic review of research from the field of Comparative International Education is provided to give the reader an understanding of the diversity that characterizes private involvement as well as the interconnectedness of private actors, specifically drawing attention to findings that grapple with equity implications. The chapter concludes with some suggestions for developing a framework for research via posing questions that ought to be asked when designing, conducting and analyzing findings from studies into private sector engagement in education.

Due diligence refers to a comprehensive process of investigating and evaluating business opportunities in mergers and acquisitions. While early-stage due diligence usually encompasses financial and strategic assessment, one of the most important things in due diligence is looking at organizational culture at an early stage. This chapter takes stock of the existing research and practice in the area of cultural due diligence and evaluates the strengths and limitations. Based on the review of literature, we developed a framework for cultural due diligence to address the limitations of existing approaches. The framework illustrates a process to screen the M&A targets, gain insight into the target firm’s culture, and identify integration challenges. The process starts with more unobtrusive, indirect, and informal assessments of the target firm’s culture and moves onto more obtrusive, direct, and formal assessments.