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The purpose of this paper is to explore how internationalization has impacted the composition and performance of global companies. Trends among continents, countries and across industries are shown in order to further understand the effects of internationalization on these prominent organizations in our world economy.

This is a descriptive study using a cross‐sectional design. The unit of analysis consists of the companies comprising the world's largest 500 companies as reported by Fortune Magazine in 2009. Secondary data covering more than 30 variables and 500 cases were collected pertaining to these large organizations. The “world's largest 500 companies” is further divided by continents and countries in order to provide detailed cross tab analysis.

Utilizing the Global Industry Standard Classification (GICS), the authors categorized the diversity of firms based upon the type of products or services rendered by the world's largest 500 companies. It was found that these influential global organizations fall under ten broad classifications for industry sectors, with the financial sector being the dominant classification among 101 multinational firms. The results indicated that the USA dominated in all GICS sectors, except for energy. Europe is producing the largest amount of total global revenue at $10 trillion and employs the greatest number of workers, employing some 18,907,256 global employees.

The analysis was not designed to make a generalization for the population of all global organizations.

The authors' research not only identifies and describes these characteristics, but is intended to increase awareness of how internationalization has changed the composition and performance of the world's largest 500 companies over the five‐year period spanning 2005 through 2009.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of relationships and networking in the international flow of seafood products through export processes and practices using empirical case examples.

This paper provides an insight into seafood export through ten case studies of seafood exporters from Norway and a freight forwarder working with most of these companies.

The international seafood business is characterised by coordination, interactions, and exchange such that economic and social interactions among network members transcend national boundaries into international/global markets. The findings reveal how studied seafood exports are in line with the learning-based Uppsala internationalisation model, embedded in international buyer-seller relationship structures and networks, which is also a particularity of this food-producing industry. To secure long-term business in distant markets, small- and medium-sized (SME) seafood exporters have shifted the focus from transactional approaches to relationships and networking as a means of improving export performance. This paper suggests how logistics and marketing have become closely and strategically interconnected, and so marketing strategies depend on logistics strategies and the two cannot be separated in a typical global seafood supply network.

Purposeful collaborative interaction between exporter and importer helps in risk mitigation. Increased interactions in distant markets by SMEs can also be achieved using social media networking.

This paper offers an insight into the global seafood supply network using empirical case examples from Norway, an important seafood producing country.

The purpose of this paper is to show how yield management and dynamic pricing, which originated in the airline industry, are now diffusing in other service industries. The aim is to demonstrate that these techniques can be profitably applied to telecommunications and similar sectors and to examine the particular conditions of their implementation, development and efficiency.

The main concepts of yield management, dynamic pricing and CRM are carefully scrutinized. Also discussed is the concept of natural demand curve that aims at reaching a better compromise between the capacity of a company and the demand in an environment where services cannot be sold in advance. In order to sustain the analysis and demonstrate its managerial implications, five case studies are presented that exemplify some aspects of yield management techniques in the telecommunication sector.

Since the telecommunications are undergoing a process of increased competition and dynamic convergence, yield management techniques can help telecom operators to optimize the benefits they can derive from a subtle management of information networks and partnerships. However, such an approach is more difficult to implement in the telecommunication industry than in the airlines sector because of the difficulty to control (and sometimes refuse) network access to customers.

Capacity and revenue management become critical differentiation factors in improving service quality, loyalty and profitability. Given the increase in competitive pressure, the main objective of operators to sell customer access database to potential partners represents a radical change in the nature of financial and information flows and leads to a “customized management of services supply”.

Sharing economy-based service platforms are a relatively new way of delivering services that have received increasing attention from both practitioners and researchers. However, current research in the area is still developing in terms of offering practical insight in conjunction with a decision model that may help to determine optimal strategies for efficient service design in the sharing economy from a service triad perspective. Exploring this gap in the literature, this paper aims to develop and apply a decision model that enables managers to identify and prioritise the efficiency attributes of sharing economy-based services. It also aids in designing optimal strategies to enhance efficiency over time based on the insights obtained from users (buyers and sellers) and platform providers.

This study adopts a mixed-methods approach. The qualitative approach comprised an extensive literature review followed by in-depth interviews, and the quantitative approach adopted the quality function deployment (QFD) integrated optimisation technique to design and prioritise the most optimal strategy emanating from the application of a decision model.

The findings revealed that establishing global distribution, continued technological research and development (R&D) and enhancing the transactional platform are the most important strategies in the context of sharing economy platform providers (e.g. accommodation-based-platform service providers). This study also revealed that as the importance weights of the efficiency attributes changed over time, so too did the portfolio of strategies used to attain an optimal efficiency level.

The decision model brings a richer conceptual understanding of the dynamic changes over time that occur in the business ecosystem. It also allows managers of sharing economy-based platforms to select optimal strategies and make astute decisions towards achieving efficient service design.

Due to the increased growth of Internet users, the examination of compelling online shopping behavior has emerged as a vital topic in developing positive consumer behaviors. However, there is a dearth of studies into how consumers of sport merchandise in the online setting spend their time and what types of factors contribute toward their positive shopping experience. To fill this gap, the purpose of this current study is to investigate the impact and complexity of sport commerce websites by providing the precondition of flow (e.g. convenience, content, aesthetics, interactivity and customization), as well as the consequences of flow (e.g. website satisfaction and shopping well-being).

This study examines relationships among perceived website quality, flow, web satisfaction, and shopping well-being by using structural equation modeling. This current study is based on online sport fans who have recent online shopping experiences of licensed sport products (n = 331).

Results of this present study show that flow plays a mediating role between perceived website quality and web satisfaction, which in turn is positively associated with consumers' shopping well-being.

This current study supports a mediating role of flow state in sport consumer perceptions of website quality and satisfaction; it expands existing knowledge through determining the factors that facilitate flow state and website satisfaction in online shopping. This empirical finding offers important implications regarding the function of flow as an essential factor via the optimization of website services and sport consumers' attitudes.

The purpose of this paper is to examine associations between observable characteristics of Chief Financial Officer (CFO) and accounting choices.

The dependent variable is an index that measures a manager's propensity to choose accounting policies that increase earnings and/or operating cash flow (OCF). The index consists of ten accounting policies collected from the financial statements of 175 entities located in Germany, Brazil and the UK (2010-2016).

The results demonstrate that the observable characteristics of CFOs partially explain their accounting choices. Specifically, entities that tend to adopt accounting policies that increase earnings and/or OCF have CFOs that lack graduate education or greater internationalization.

CFOs can use the flexibility inherent in accounting choices to adopt accounting policies that increase earnings and/or OCF in ways that fit their personal characteristics. Therefore, it may be beneficial to reflect on the potential benefits of reducing the use of certain accounting policies that affect financial statements.

This paper contributes to the literature by identifying which CFOs characteristics determine the choices of a set of accounting policies that affect companies’ earnings and/or OCF in countries with different economic, social and cultural realities.

Aim of the present monograph is the economic analysis of the role of MNEs regarding globalisation and digital economy and in parallel there is a reference and examination of some legal aspects concerning MNEs, cyberspace and e‐commerce as the means of expression of the digital economy. The whole effort of the author is focused on the examination of various aspects of MNEs and their impact upon globalisation and vice versa and how and if we are moving towards a global digital economy.

The objective of this study is to investigate how country risk, different political actions from the government and bureaucratic behavior influence the activities in industry supply chains (SCs) in emerging markets. The main objective of this study is to investigate the influence of these external stakeholders’ elements to the demand-side and supply-side drivers and barriers for improving competitiveness of Ready-Made Garment (RMG) industry in the way of analyzing supply chain. Considering the phenomenon of recent change in the RMG business environment and the competitiveness issues this study uses the principles of stakeholder and resource dependence theory and aims to find out some factors which influence to make an efficient supply chain for improving competitiveness. The RMG industry of Bangladesh is the case application of this study. Following a positivist paradigm, this study adopts a two phase sequential mixed-method research design consisting of qualitative and quantitative approaches. A tentative research model is developed first based on extensive literature review. Qualitative field study is then carried out to fine tune the initial research model. Findings from the qualitative method are also used to develop measures and instruments for the next phase of quantitative method. A survey is carried out with sample of top and middle level executives of different garment companies of Dhaka city in Bangladesh and the collected quantitative data are analyzed by partial least square-based structural equation modeling. The findings support eight hypotheses. From the analysis the external stakeholders’ elements like bureaucratic behavior and country risk have significant influence to the barriers. From the internal stakeholders’ point of view the manufacturers’ and buyers’ drivers have significant influence on the competitiveness. Therefore, stakeholders need to take proper action to reduce the barriers and increase the drivers, as the drivers have positive influence to improve competitiveness.

This study has both theoretical and practical contributions. This study represents an important contribution to the theory by integrating two theoretical perceptions to identify factors of the RMG industry’s SC that affect the competitiveness of the RMG industry. This research study contributes to the understanding of both external and internal stakeholders of national and international perspectives in the RMG (textile and clothing) business. It combines the insights of stakeholder and resource dependence theories along with the concept of the SC in improving effectiveness. In a practical sense, this study certainly contributes to the Bangladeshi RMG industry. In accordance with the desire of the RMG manufacturers, the research has shown that some influential constructs of the RMG industry’s SC affect the competitiveness of the RMG industry. The outcome of the study is useful for various stakeholders of the Bangladeshi RMG industry sector ranging from the government to various private organizations. The applications of this study are extendable through further adaptation in other industries and various geographic contexts.