Search results

Examines consumer preferences for forthcoming technological innovations. Studies consumer response to different levels of technology over time. Looks at preferences for existing and intermediate technologies when future ones are expected. Focuses on technological consumer durables that are expected to evolve over time. The primary contributions of this research are: an understanding of how consumer preferences for a technology are affected by the time of adoption; an understanding of the value to consumers of obtaining different levels of a technology, at different points in time; and the utilization of parsimonious indices to assess consumer response to different levels of technology over time. An empirical examination is conducted for high definition television (HDTV). Using survey data, the study explores consumer preferences for HDTV, and for interim television technologies. Managerial implications to aid product design, and the timing of introduction of evolving technological innovations, are also discussed.

This paper aims to exploit a new trade database to explore the extent to which trade, and the industrial division of labor which it represents, is regional in nature.

The analysis focuses especially on intermediates trade, in three key regions – the EU, NAFTA and ASEAN+3 – which together represent 78 percent of global trade.

The results indicate that levels of regional integration in trade and changes in that integration vary by region and by direction of flow. Notably, the EU has higher levels of intra‐regional trade than the other two. These results vary by technology, with high‐tech trade less regionally biased than others.

Trade data has been little used in the debate on the regionalization of business activity. In addition, the paper highlights trends, not just in total trade, but within intermediate products and by technology.

The purpose of this paper is to theoretically examine the effects of outward FDI on domestic aggregate productivity and welfare.

This paper develops a North-South general equilibrium model in which firms' technology adoption and workers’ skill-technology matching are endogenous. Technologically heterogeneous firms in the North make explicit delocalization decisions to the South through FDI and heterogeneous workers endogenously sort into different technologies according to their respective comparative advantages.

This paper highlights how globalization-induced technology-upgrading mechanisms of firms and workers increase aggregate productivity and welfare, though at the cost of increased income inequalities. The model shows also that the same technological shock (favoring high-tech firms) leads to different results in closed and open economy: both technology up- and downgrading occur in closed economy, while technology upgrading prevails in open economy.

By modeling and exploring the technology-skill links in a North-South setting, this paper provides richer predictions on the implications of outward FDI. In particular, the model highlights that the initial openness degree of the economy matters: the more open the country initially, the more technology upgrading as globalization proceeds, leading to higher aggregate productivity and welfare gains.

The fact that many international companies remain strongly orientated towards their home region has been highlighted in the work of several international business scholars. This work has given rise to the concept of “the liability of inter‐regional foreignness”. This paper aims to argue that the data that have so far been exploited in this debate are too aggregated and that more attention needs to be paid to differences between different types of companies if we are to better understand the reasons for this liability of inter‐regional foreignness and how companies can overcome it.

This paper uses trade data to explore levels of global and regional orientation in international exchanges of goods. It disaggregates the trade data by type of product (final goods or inputs to production), level of technology (high, medium and low tech) and direction of flow (imports and exports).

The paper finds striking differences between regions, types of products and trade direction. The trade data do not show an overwhelming home region bias in exchanges, but neither are these exchanges overwhelmingly global. Companies in different regions and different sectors seem to experience the liability of inter‐regional foreignness differently. In particular there is some evidence that high‐tech companies may be less subject to such difficulties. These findings imply that more attention needs to be paid to sectoral differences when analysing international business.

The trade data also suffer from some aggregation bias, as highlighted in the paper. In addition the inability to differentiate between inter‐ and intra‐firm trade limits the usefulness for theory building. However the results do provide some pointers for further research and imply that greater attention should be paid to the type of company and its position in the supply chain when considering the impact of the liability of inter‐regional foreignness.

The debate so far has been based on either Fortune 500 data or foreign direct investment data. Both of these datasets mix companies with very different market structures and operating practices. The originality of this work is to explore macro data extensively and look at exchanges differentiating by type of good. The results have implications for work on aggregated datasets. Simply differentiating by technology alone may lead to interesting variations in findings from firm‐level studies.

The purpose of this paper is to measure the relationships between advanced manufacturing technologies (AMTs) categories (stand-alone, intermediated and integrated systems) implementation and design, process and commercial benefits obtained.

A survey is designed with benefits gained from AMT implementation as well as its categories, which is applied to the maquiladora industry. A structural equation model with data from 383 responses is used to measure the relationship between AMT categories and benefits gained using nine hypotheses that are tested statistically significant using partial least squares. Also, using conditional probabilities, a sensitivity analysis reports how low and high levels from AMT implementation influence on the obtained benefits.

Integrated systems are the most important AMT for maquiladoras and have the strongest impact on design, processes and commercial benefits.

Data obtained support the model, but results may be different in another industrial sector and countries with different labor culture and technological level.

Managers in maquiladora industry must focus their attention on integrated manufacturing systems, because high implementation levels guarantee the biggest probability to gain benefits in design, production process and commercial.

The relationship between AMT and their benefits has not been measured in depth, and this paper contributes to understand that problem. In addition, this paper is the first to report a sensitivity analysis that enables managers to acknowledge the probability of obtaining certain benefits.

The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the development of a biodiversity reporting and evaluation framework. The application of the framework to an exemplar organisation identifies biodiversity-related annual report disclosures and analyses changes in the nature and levels of these over time. Finally, the paper aims to establish whether the disclosures made by the exemplar are consistent with a deep ecological perspective, as exemplified by New Zealand conservation legislation.

Viewing the framework developed by the paper through a deep ecological lens, the study involves a detailed content analysis of the biodiversity disclosures contained within the annual reports of a conservation organisation over a 23-year period. Using the framework developed in this paper, the biodiversity-related text units were identified and allocated to one of three major categories, 13 subcategories, and then into deep, intermediate and shallow ecology.

Biodiversity disclosures enable stakeholders to determine the goals, assess their implementation, and evaluate the performance of an organisation. Applying the framework to the exemplar revealed the majority of annual report disclosures focused on presenting performance/implementation information. The study also found that the majority of disclosures reflect a deep ecological approach. A deep/shallow ecological tension was apparent in a number of disclosures, especially those relating to the exploitation of the conservation estate.

This paper is the first to develop a framework that can be used as both a biodiversity reporting assessment tool and a reporting guide. The framework will be particularly useful for those studying reporting by conservation departments and stakeholders of organisations whose operations impact biodiversity.

There can be few greater challenges facing mankind than the elimination of poverty and hunger. Engineers and others will play a key role in meeting that challenge

If Schumacher's notions of intermediate technology and intermediate size were to underpin the task of visioning a future for our natural resources, it is rather likely that the processes and outcomes to apply would be rather different from those that have driven recent global visioning processes. By way of example, the recent efforts of the World Water Council to engineer a single global vision for the world's water resources provide a setting through which we can consider the relative possibilities for the kind of community-engaged, learning-based visioning process that Schumacher would likely advocate and the ‘old school’ hierarchically and expert-driven alternative that was undertaken by the World Water Council. Visioning is an instrument of community building, so the perspective and tools we use to develop visions are of critical importance to the character and resilience of those communities.