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The identification of country-specific advantages for business activities is one of the most crucial issues of strategic management and international business literatures. We address this issue by examining location-specific conditions for a successful generic medicines industry within 24 European countries. The findings of our fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis show that there are no necessary conditions for the high performance or absence of the high-performance industry. By revealing the causal complexity related to the issue, however, we show that the high performance or lack of it results from a configuration of conditions. Specifically, we identify two sufficient causal configurations to both outcomes. These findings provide clear implications for generic medicines industry firms who are planning location choices of their operations. In addition, this study provides a methodological advancement to explain and understand which country elements matter more, for what outcomes, and under what conditions.

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.

Allyn Young′s lectures, as recorded by the young Nicholas Kaldor, survey the historical roots of the subject from Aristotle through to the modern neo‐classical writers. The focus throughout is on the conditions making for economic progress, with stress on the institutional developments that extend and are extended by the size of the market. Organisational changes that promote the division of labour and specialisation within and between firms and industries, and which promote competition and mobility, are seen as the vital factors in growth. In the absence of new markets, inventions as such play only a minor role. The economic system is an inter‐related whole, or a living “organon”. It is from this perspective that micro‐economic relations are analysed, and this helps expose certain fallacies of composition associated with the marginal productivity theory of production and distribution. Factors are paid not because they are productive but because they are scarce. Likewise he shows why Marshallian supply and demand schedules, based on the “one thing at a time” approach, cannot adequately describe the dynamic growth properties of the system. Supply and demand cannot be simply integrated to arrive at a picture of the whole economy. These notes are complemented by eleven articles in the Encyclopaedia Britannica which were published shortly after Young′s sudden death in 1929.

This conceptual paper aims to explore under what conditions multinational companies (MNCs) are more likely to internationalize through externalization modes.

This paper complements previous studies by proposing three industry-specific factors that affect MNCs’ decision for externalization. It then applies this framework to the case of Korean MNCs’ strategic choice when entering the Chinese film market which is highly regulated by the government, to illustrate how such a framework works in practice.

This paper suggests that MNCs are more likely to choose externalization entry modes under the three industry conditions: when the business grows fast, when there are best practices of industry standard and when the business requires multi-competence. It also shows that the three conditions explain well the growing Korea–China co-productions in the Chinese film market.

This paper provides useful implications for the government’s regulatory effectiveness. The protectionist policies of the host government are valid only in an industry where the three conditions are met, as they increase the possibility of domestic firms’ participation by encouraging foreign MNCs to shift their entry mode from sole venture toward alliances with domestic firms.

This paper enriches the entry-mode research by indicating that MNCs’ externalization decisions need to consider these industry-specific factors. In addition, it also contributes to the understanding on why some countries maintain their high attractiveness for foreign MNCs, whereas other countries do not, given the similar level of restrictive government regulations.

Industry appropriability – the degree to which firms in an industry can appropriate benefits from their innovations – is a crucial dimension of industry environment. Small and medium manufacturing enterprises (manufacturing SMEs), because of their limited resource base, tend to be especially sensitive to the appropriability conditions in their industry. The purpose of this paper is to understand the influence of industry appropriability on firm outcomes (innovativeness and performance), and posits technology orientation as a dynamic capability that helps firms overcome appropriability barriers in their industry.

Data were collected from 162 manufacturing SMEs in India. Multiple linear regression analysis was used to test the proposed hypotheses.

This study reveals that the perceived level of appropriability of manufacturing SMEs impacts their innovativeness. Further, findings also support technology orientation as a crucial firm-specific characteristic which enables firms to overcome unfavorable appropriability conditions. Technology orientation plays a significant role in mitigating the negative impact of lower appropriability conditions. Even when the patent regime is unfavorable, technology-oriented firms are able to innovate and perform better.

The findings suggest technology orientation as a strategic mechanism for manufacturing SMEs to respond to conditions of unfavorable appropriability regime.

This study elaborates the benefits of integrating industry-level and firm-level characteristics. Specifically, an attempt was made to extend the existing research on industry appropriability by bringing in the contingent effect of technology orientation. The context of manufacturing SMEs yielded several interesting insights.

The purpose of this research is to better understand how industry conditions affect corporate social performance (CSP). To accomplish this objective, the authors develop and test a theoretical argument that task environment managerial discretion plays an important role in determining a firm’s level of CSP.

In this research, the authors utilize a longitudinal data set of archival data nested across year, firm and industry. They then test their research model using multilevel techniques, which account for the nested nature of their research design.

Firms exhibit higher levels of CSP when their industry’s environment is high in dynamism and product differentiation. Conversely, firms exhibit lower levels of CSP when capital intensity is high. Finally, the authors find that firms exhibit higher levels of both positive and negative CSP as industry munificence increases.

A number of researchers have called for investigation into the antecedents of CSP. This research provides an important next step in understanding the factors that influence firm CSP. Specifically, this research illustrates how the task environment affects stakeholder management by influencing the degree to which firms engage in CSP.

Managers should be mindful of the task environment’s conditions for managerial discretion and how these conditions affect stakeholder support for CSP. Moreover, managers should understand how industry conditions affect the firm’s ability to achieve competitive advantage through the use of CSP strategies.

While there has been much research aimed at understanding the potential CSP-firm performance link, there has been relatively little attention paid to understanding what influences firm CSP in the first place. This research suggests that industry-level characteristics of managerial discretion strongly influence firm strategic actions toward social performance.

This paper seeks to reconcile two very different views existing in the literature concerning how exchange and demand affect the magnitude of commodity values. Traditionally, value is considered to be created in production and subsequently realized in exchange. An alternative monetary approach posits that exchange itself contributes to the determination of commodity values. Proponents of each view claim that significant parts of Marx’s theory of value are compromised if their interpretation of the role of exchange is not adopted. Drawing on the work of Rosdolsky and Roberts, I argue that it is necessary to distinguish between the effects of exchange and demand. Exchange acts to reduce concrete, private labor to abstract social labor, while demand affects the magnitude of labor considered “socially necessary” in the sense of being expended in accordance with existing social need. I identify a new category of exchange value – the market-price of production – and use it to explain how changes in demand act to redistribute value across industries by affecting the magnitude of abstract labor considered to be socially necessary. In this way the major claim of the two approaches to exchange are reconciled. The magnitude of value is fully determined in production. At the same time monetary exchange effects, or brings about, a social division of labor by reducing concrete, private labor to abstract social labor and by distributing value according to social need as expressed by effective demand.

This paper aims to integrate insights from the behavioral theory of the firm and the dynamic capabilities perspective to explain how the historical and social attainment discrepancies motivate firms to change. Specifically, this paper proposes that a negative historical attainment discrepancy encourages the firm to engage in strategic change to solve its performance problems. In contrast, this paper advanced that a positive social attainment discrepancy motivates strategic change as a mechanism to bolster the firm’s position within the industry. Further, this paper integrated the moderating effects of industry dynamism and industry munificence.

This paper tests hypotheses using panel data on 2,435 US public firms over the years from 1996 to 2018. This paper uses a fixed-effects regression model to empirically test these hypotheses.

This paper finds empirical support for the effects of both the negative historical attainment discrepancy and the positive social attainment discrepancy on the firm’s tendency to engage in strategic change. As for the hypothesized moderating effects, this paper finds that industry munificence accentuated the effects of both attainment discrepancies on the firm’s tendency to engage in strategic change. However, the results do not support the hypothesized moderating effect of industry dynamism on either of these attainment discrepancies.

This paper contributes to the research on the separate effects of historical and social comparisons within the context of strategic change. Further, the paper bolsters our understanding of how performance feedback increases the firm’s tendency to change. Finally, the paper integrates theoretical views from the behavioral theory of the firm and the dynamic capabilities perspective on how socially high-performing firms may build and sustain their competitive advantage through organizational change.

In this paper, we analyze the influence of the environmental conditions and firm capabilities on the time of entry. We find significant direct and interaction effects. Furthermore, we show that firms develop a pioneer behavior not only when they have the suitable capabilities to take advantage of the perceived opportunities in the industry but also when these firms have key capabilities to maintain their first‐mover advantages, given the perception of unfavorable conditions in the industry.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the financial factors across multiple levels of analysis that influence the performance effects of the unrelated diversification strategy, including institutional-, industry- and firm-levels.

Using a unique panel dataset of Italian firms from 1980 to 2010, the paper tests hypotheses on how industry external financial dependence and the firm's financial constraints both separately and jointly alter the performance benefits of unrelated diversification in contexts with financial market inefficiencies.

Unrelated diversification increases performance in weak financial contexts and such positive effect is enhanced by greater industry external financial dependence and greater firm financial constraints. However, as financial markets develop, the moderating effects of firm financial constraints shrink.

The study highlights the importance of recognizing the multiple financial contingencies that may alter the benefits of the unrelated diversification strategy, suggesting caution in its pursuit to boost firm performance.

The authors develop a theoretical framework that explains the performance outcomes of unrelated diversification, linking the benefits of an internal capital market (ICM) with the financial context of the firm and offering a fine-grained analysis that moves beyond the advanced/emerging economy dichotomy. Furthermore, leveraging on the unprecedented time frame of the empirical analysis, the paper highlights the crucial role of industry- and firm-level financial contingencies and demonstrates that their effects change at varying levels of development of the financial context.