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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.

Enterprise education has been regularly cited as a tool which can be utilised to not only increase the level of entrepreneurship within an economy, but also the success of those enterprises created. This chapter explores the extent to which participation in enterprise education is associated with the adoption of new technology within new businesses since this is one way that businesses can remain competitive, not only within their own countries, but when competing internationally. Using data from the UK Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) survey, the study finds evidence that those firms undertaking enterprise education in the form of university-based schemes or government sponsored training programmes are more likely to be using newer technology. However, this relationship is relatively weak, and brings into question whether many enterprise courses offer effective value for money.

The purpose of this paper is to assess whether environmental management systems (EMS) according to ISO 14001 requirements have contributed to the implementation and adoption of new technologies and to the issues related to technology performance in industrial enterprises.

The research is based on the questionnaire survey conducted on a sample of ISO 14001 certified Slovene manufacturing companies.

The results revealed that ISO 14001 certified manufacturing companies still mostly used the combination of partly adopted and partly modified technologies in order to reduce environmental impacts. ISO 14001 was considered as a very useful tool for the promotion of technological modernisation. It was shown also that ISO 14001 standard can play a significant role as a support tool for the acceleration of technological innovation activities regardless of the origin of the technology.

The research surveyed only industrial ISO 14001 certified enterprises in the Republic of Slovenia. Differences among industrial branches exist as well as among small, medium and large enterprises. These facts must be further studied.

ISO 14001 certification proved to be an important driver for technological modernisation in industrial practice. Some environmental indicators are still underestimated or nonsufficiently included into firms' environmental policies and must be certainly improved. Since adoption of new technologies and EMS were rarely covered together the findings are interesting for wider community.

The paper covers a subject on how adoption of ISO 14001 influences technological changes and related activities. Not many information and in‐depth case studies have been available until now.

The technological revolution is creating new goods and services and altering how and where they are produced. One of the principal issues for all countries is how these new technologies will affect employment and the composition of skills demand. Surveys the literature to attempt to answer three main questions: to what degree are the new technologies becoming diffused around the world? How much do they reduce, or increase employment? And do they reduce, or increase, the skills required in the labour force? Touches briefly on implications for educational policy. The survey suggests that because of new technologies, new organizations of production, changing employment conditions and the development of new sectors of production, the complementarity of general, formal schooling, in‐plant training and learning‐by‐doing to capital investment are increasing over time and that general schooling plus on‐the‐job training is more complementary to new technologies than is vocational schooling. The former combination is more likely to give workers the flexibility they need in such changing conditions.

The monograph analyses (a) the potential impact of information technology (IT) on organisational issues that directly concern the personnel function; (b) the nature of personnel’s involvement in the decision making and activities surrounding the choice and implementation of advanced technologies, and (c) their own use of IT in developing and carrying out their own range of specialist activities. The monograph attempts to explain why personnel’s involvement is often late, peripheral and reactive. Finally, an analysis is made of whether personnel specialists – or the Human Resource Management function more generally – will play a more proactive role in relation to such technologies in the future.

Post‐industrial predictions of a rapid growth in new technology homeworking have gained widespread currency to become part of the conventional wisdom. However the evidence, including primary research material, suggests that the claims for new technology homeworking, both regarding its extent and its alleged benefits, have been considerably overestimated. In particular, new technology homeworking by itself does not appear to open up opportunities for women to improve their position in the labour market; the demographic changes predicted for the 1990s may provide a better bet. Nevertheless, there is a danger in assuming that all firms apply the same strategy when employing homeworkers; at least three different variations can be identified and this has important implications for personnel managers. The overestimation of new technology homeworking stands in stark contrast to traditional homeworking where the extent has been considerably underestimated. This marginalisation of traditional homeworking stems in large part from the distortion caused by the conceptual split between private and public realms. The failure to find evidence to support the growth of new technology homeworking leads to a consideration of how the arguments may better be considered as rhetoric designed to advance a certain set of ideas – in particular that set associated with “privatisation” as a political ideology.

The purpose of this study is to find the relationships among the high- and new-technology enterprise (HNTE) identification policy, firm’s total factor productivity (TFP) and the marketization process by using data obtained from China manufacturing firms.

Propensity matching score – difference-in-difference modeling are used to investigate the relationships among the HNTE identification policy, firm’s TFP and the marketization process. In addition, the complex relations between policy and firm’s TFP, including in the proposed model, are assessed in detail through the mediation analysis.

The results show that the HNTE identification policy can promote firm’s TFP, but its effect depends on the marketization process. The transmission path of HNTE identification policy to promote enterprise productivity lies in the optimization of incentive mechanism, including the improvement of enterprise labor productivity, the reduction of income tax burden and cost and the reduction of financing constraints. In industries and regions with more effective market mechanism, as well as industries with more intense market competition, the productivity promotion effect of the HNTE identification policy is stronger. In industries and regions with low degree of marketization, as well as industries with low degree of market competition, the productivity promotion effect brought by the improvement of incentive mechanism is distorted, which actually inhibit the promotion of enterprises’ TFP.

The study confirms that the HNTE identification policy plays an important role in enhancing the TFP of China’s manufacturing firm. Policy makers can adopt industrial policy in the key industries and technology areas that are meaningful but market failure. Furthermore, it demonstrates that the effect of the HNTE identification policy largely depends on the marketization process. These finding imply that when formulating an industrial policy, the marketization process of the industry and region should be taken into account.

The paper analyzes the relationship among the HNTE identification policy, firm’s TFP and the marketization process. Panel data are used to discuss the mechanism of HNTE identification policy affecting firm’s TFP. The paper also reveals the effect of the marketization process on the effectiveness of the HNTE identification policy.

This study explores the influence of Taiwan’s high‐tech manufacturers’ innovative strategy and innovation motivation concerning the implementation of innovative activities, as well as the influence of innovative activities implementation on business performance. The two intermediate variables, industry group and enterprise scale are also considered. Through a review of the relevant literature, a theoretical model of the influence relationship is developed, while an empirical analysis is simultaneously conducted on Taiwan’s high‐tech manufacturers. The research result shows that the internal driving force of innovative activities has a significant impact on the level of implementing technological innovative activities and cultural innovative activities. The external driving force of innovative activities has a significant impact on the level of implementing market innovative activities and management innovative activities. Companies adopting self‐developed technology and purchased as well as self‐developed technology strategies, perform better than those adopting purchased new technology or those with neither purchased nor self‐developed technology strategies, at implementing technological innovative activities and cultural innovative activities. The level of implementing innovative activities has a significant influence on business performance (cost reduction and product/service differentiation). For the intermediate variables of “industry group” and “enterprise scale”, it is proven in this study that they have no significant influence on the level of innovative activity implementation or business performance.

By now there should be little ignorance about the advent of the new micro‐electronics technology, large scale integrated circuits made up from little pieces of metal oxited silicon wafers — the so‐called silicon chips. These tiny chips, less than five mm square, can contain microprocessors capable of performing the tricks that room‐sized computers found difficult ten years ago. At the moment their commonest usage is in calculators, electronic games and the remote control for the latest teletext domestic televisions but this may well be the consumer tip of a huge industrial iceberg, upon which this country might just founder. To combat this possibility both the last Labour Government and the present administration are spending large sums of money both in publicising the potential of the new technology to key decision‐makers in industry, through the Microprocessor Applications Programme (MAP), and also by direct investment through the National Enterprise Board in the setting up of companies both to manufacture the chips themselves and to build equip‐ment incorporating these devices.

Owing to shorter innovation cycles, increasing competitive pressure and the need for more flexibility in an uncertain business environment, we need more efficiency and effectiveness in education and training. Computers provide an added degree of freedom that can be used both within and external to traditional classroom environments and can be coupled with new as well as “tried and true” structures and techniques. This paper presents results of a survey of Austrian and German enterprises and universities as part of an extended research program.