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The authors propose a strategic-balance approach to local content laws in which less developed economies in sub-Sahara Africa can develop investment incentive policies for attracting multinationals and direct foreign investment but, at the same time, have a structured and operational framework for the enforcement of local content laws. The purpose of the paper is to identify the elements involved in the equation: the incentives, the potential spillovers and the criteria for evaluation.

The approach involves a review of the literature and the operational details and limitations of local content laws in sub-Sahara Africa.

The paper develops a conceptual model for a holistic understanding and management of this dilemma by policymakers and development practitioners to maximize the benefits of natural resources to less developed countries in sub-Sahara Africa towards the fight against poverty and underdevelopment.

This paper provides the opportunity to influence policy direction in relation to the adoption of investment incentive policies and programs and the enforcement of local content policy guidelines and regulations in sub-Sahara Africa.

Multinational companies (MNCs) operating in less developed and emerging economies in sub-Sahara Africa should consider how their economic and corporate social responsibility activities can help develop the capabilities of the local workforce through training and development activities; develop domestic firms’ capabilities via enterprise development programs; and develop local firm’s absorptive capacities through knowledge transfers and innovation systems to support development activities.

Policymakers in less developed and emerging economies in sub-Sahara Africa need to strike a balance in adopting investment incentives policies towards attracting foreign investments and the enforcement of local content regulations to make sure they derive the maximum benefits from their strategic resources. It is important for policymakers to understand that the mere attraction of MNCs into an economy does not explicitly guarantee domestic job creation; rather, it depends on how MNCs respond to local content policy regulations through their business strategies. Linking investment incentives with local content policy regulations at a critical point could potentially support and strengthen industrial development in sub-Sahara Africa.

This paper is among the first to examine the challenges of both attracting foreign direct investment and enforcing local content laws and regulations in sub-Sahara Africa. This paper contributes to the understanding of this dilemma and how less developed economies can manage such a crucial and important issue using our proposed strategic-balance approach. The contribution of local content laws and the design and adoption of investment incentives policies and programs to attract foreign investment to promoting sustainable domestic growth and development must depend on the balance between the enforcement of local content policy guidelines and the provision of such investment incentive packages to attracting foreign investment.

The study examines the instigating factors behind the development of the local content (LC) policy in Ghana and it further investigates the accountability mechanisms that drive the LC policy implementation to promote sustainable development.

The study reports on a series of interviews with key actors using Institutional Theory and the application of Bovens’ (2010) Global Accountability Framework as a lens for discussion and interpretation of results.

The results reveal that two forces instigated LC policy enactment. One is external funding pressure from the Norwegian government and the World Bank. The other is the government’s engagement of Civil Society Organisations and other internal stakeholders to justify its activities and missions to signal adherence to impartiality, neutrality, and, to a lesser extent, solidarity. The analysis also reveals tensions in how accountability legitimacy relates to implementation of the LC policy. The study further discovers that while participation, transparency, monitoring, and evaluation are frequently invoked as de jure institutional legitimacy in oil and gas contracts, actual practices follow normative (de facto) institutionalism rather than what the LC policy law provides.

The interview had a relatively small number of participants, which can be argued to affect the study’s validity. Nevertheless, given the data saturation effect and the breadth of the data obtained from the respondents, this study represents a significant advancement in LC policy enactment knowledge, implementation mechanisms and enforcement in an emerging O&G industry.

The findings of this study suggest that future policy development in emerging economies should involve detailed consultations to increase decision-maker knowledge, process transparency and expectations. This will improve implementation and reduce stakeholder tension, conflict and mistrust.

The findings of this study build on earlier investigations into legitimacy, accountability and impression management in and outside the O&G sector. Also, the findings reveal the legitimising tactics used by O&G actors to promote local content sustainable development targets.

The paper aims to identify and analyze the actors and their interrelationships in realizing local content objectives in African oil- and gas-producing nations.

The paper includes content analysis of relevant research papers and reports within the oil and gas industry, local content and industrial networks published between 2000 and 2014.

The study developed a framework that integrates the literature on local content with the industrial network theory. The framework classifies the various critical actors for achieving local content, proposing that achieving local content requires the development of business network links and a resource alignment among local companies and institutions and foreign companies and institutions, in addition to multinational oil companies.

The framework of this study contributes to an emerging theory on local content by integrating the industrial network theory, which provides specific frameworks for analyzing embedded business environments, along with the previous economic and legal-based studies of local content achievement.

The way the relevant actors organize their resources and business networks provides potential for local content in an emerging oil and gas industry in Africa.

The paper is one of the few to integrate studies of local content with the industrial network theory. The literature review provides a summary window of the research on the subject over a 14-year period.

Energy policy and sector developments in Greece in the last decades reveal the government and investors' intentions to exploit the energy resources and production potential of the country. Developments regard renewable and hydrocarbon energy sources. Agreements with international companies come with economic terms attached and the prospect of related sectors' development, employment generation, research and innovation. Developments, particularly those related to hydrocarbons exploration, take place in times of climate change mitigation and adaptation and actions to ensure environmentally, socially, and economically sustainable development in line with the goals set out in the United Nations Agenda for 2030 and the European Green Deal. Given these challenges, the design and implementation of timely policies that can promote local supply capacity appear to be of primary importance. This chapter discusses the challenges and opportunities of designing and implementing local content policies with the intention to derive useful policy considerations. The discussion draws from the latest developments with hydrocarbons exploration and production activities in Greece and from the recent relevant to local content literature. The analysis concludes that in the face of climate action, rapid technological innovation, and the high capital intensity that characterize the sector, knowledge transfer, and education upgrade emerge as important factors of achieving sustainable growth through local content policies.

The purposes of this study are: to investigate how the dimensions of resource competitive strategies impact on small and medium enterprises’ (SMEs) intention to invest in Ghana’s downstream petroleum sector and to develop a model to explain the moderating role of local content policy on the relationship between competitive strategies and investment intention of SMEs. Focusing on the Ghanaian SMEs, quantitative research approach and survey questionnaire have been used. The research hypotheses have been tested using variance-based structural equation modeling technique.

Since the Ghanaian Parliament passed the Local Content and Local Participation Policy (LI.2204) into law in 2013, successive governments have strived to optimize oil and gas benefits and encouraged local participation, yet the actual impacts are mixed, ambiguous and inconsequential. This paper further argues that the extent to which the local content policy role moderates the relationship between firms’ internal resources (proxied as competitive strategies) and investment intention in the energy sector remains largely unexplored.

The results have shown that competitive strategies such as entrepreneurial competency, finance resources and technological usage have positive and significant effects on SME's investment intention. Again, local content policies exert significant moderating effect on SMEs’ investment intention.

The policy implication of these results includes the need to strengthen regulatory capacity of the Petroleum Commission to enforce local content implementation in Ghana to enhance indigenous participation in the sector.

Theoretically, using the resource-based view theory, this study has offered a robust predictability of SMEs investment’s determinants in an emerging economy.

This paper aims to examine the effects of extractive activities on the well-being of local communities and assesses stakeholder expectations of resource benefits and the corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices of oil companies in Ghana.

The paper uses a qualitative approach based on an exploratory research design to investigate the opinions and experiences of stakeholders in the growing oil and gas industry in Ghana.

The empirical findings demonstrate that entry negotiated agreements and local content requirements in the offshore oil industry have minimal benefits because of the lack of linkages with the economies of local communities. Additionally, the nature of CSR practices within the extractive industry is directly traceable to the resource governance arrangements and plural logics in Ghana’s institutional context.

This study only provides insights into natural resource governance and CSR issues in offshore oil and gas projects. Thus, the findings are not generalisable to the entire industry, including onshore drilling, which have other sustainability issues.

This research highlights the gap in natural resource management in Ghana and the effects of community expectations on CSR practices in the oil and gas industry. Therefore, this study posits the significance for including compliance requirements for improving the well-being of host communities in entry negotiated agreements and local contents.

By highlighting the nuanced issues in natural resource management within the oil and gas industry in Ghana, this paper makes significant contributions to the CSR and sustainability literature.

This paper explores how platforms reconfigure versatile digital resources to achieve marketing agility in international markets.

We draw on a case study of a Chinese digital platform to explore the processes and mechanisms of reconfiguring during marketing agility development. Data from different sources are collected, including interviews, informal dialogue and archival data.

Versatile digital resources create productive applications for previously less amendable marketing and nonmarketing resources to be malleable, editable and reconfigurable in marketing agility development. This study identifies and clarifies three versatile digital resource-enabled reconfiguration activities in marketing agility building: recombining digital artifacts, repurposing human capital and cross-pollinating markets.

Since our study adopts a case study method, future research can extend our insights by using quantitative methods to test and verify our theoretical framework.

First, we provide insights into how organizations can reconfigure versatile digital resources to achieve the benefits of marketing agility in international markets. Second, while recruiting new employees during internationalization is vital, we suggest that assisted by digital artifacts, firms can repurpose the existing workforce, such as via multitasking, swift task-switching and flexible job redirecting to satisfy dynamic international business requirements with lower adjustment costs. Third, we offer two localization approaches in which firms can use digital artifacts as the enabler to remix sociocultural elements with local adaptations to develop glocal content and decentralize content production to generate inclusive local content.

We provide a process model that specifies how platforms reconfigure versatile digital resources to achieve marketing agility in international markets. Furthermore, we provide novel insights into the literature on marketing agility in international markets and localization.

It is of concern that several attempts at making Nigeria an automobile producing country have not yielded much success. This paper aims to re-examine the history of automobile manufacturing and the consequences of auto policies of successive governments towards having a viable automotive industry in Nigeria and the lessons therefrom.

Dispersed data were assembled from both primary and secondary sources on the automobile industry activities in Nigeria. The historic data cover Nigeria’s vehicles need, production levels, importations and local content developments. Time series data on Nigeria’s crude oil prices and the devaluation of the local currency were obtained and analyzed to elucidate effects and provide the trajectory. A comparative analysis of the policies of successful countries with initial status with Nigeria was carried out to elucidate the policy pitfalls in Nigeria’s industrial policies.

The automotive policies in Nigeria are not self-sustaining. It has been curiously observed that the automotive policy on import substitution and local content development approach did not include the key components in automobile manufacturing, making it a footloose industry. Nigeria’s crude petroleum mono-economy affects the manufacturing sector negatively. A fall in international crude oil price causes free fall of the country’s currency in the international market, the cost of imported new vehicles and parts become prohibitively high, consequently, individuals, as well as corporate organizations, resorted to imported fairly used vehicles and parts for their transportation needs. Capacity utilization dropped abysmally.

Nigeria’s experience has demonstrated the critical role the government can play in safeguarding the automobile industry in the developing economies. Apart from diversification of the economy, there is a need, therefore, for a more refined and pragmatic approach in the formulation of policies to enable only genuine investors to operate in the automobile industry which hitherto has been an all-comers affair with many taking advantage of unguarded and unguided government incentives.