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To investigate in an empirical situation the resources that drive organizational performance, considering as resources HR practices, human competencies and other tangible resources and evaluating performance according to the balanced scorecard (BSC) model.

After literature review, a case study in a Brazilian water company was chosen. Methodology consisted of in‐depth interviews with managers; collection of information from company's database and questionnaires; factor analysis to identify underlying factors that explain the majority of variance for each BSC perspective; regression analysis to find association between factors and resources.

In general, resources seemed to be correlated to performance, but further details appeared: employee competency presented no correlation with performance; environmental factors related to demand seemed to be the strongest performance determinant; employee satisfaction showed association with all BSC perspective.

The research circumstances are quite particular and should not be generalized to other organizations. Future research should focus on more knowledge intensive firms and use a longitudinal research design.

The results for practitioners, especially those in the investigated company, included the need to review part of their indicators, choosing formulae that are better connected to business results.

This paper helps to understand how resources and competencies convert into performance and proposes a methodology to be used under particular conditions of organizations with multiple and comparable business units.

This paper aims to analyze how emerging market firms upgrade their capabilities by focusing on “uncommoditizing strategies” that enable them to achieve levels of international competitiveness beyond the comparative advantages of their home countries and serve markets with premium pricing, quality and reputation of products.

In this paper, the authors studied 18 Latin American companies across six countries. Latin America represents an ideal setting because many of these countries have traditionally developed using natural resource endowments, and their firms have tended to rely on these in their internationalization. To facilitate the analysis of each case and the comparisons across cases, the authors used the same analytical framework for the companies, identifying the sources of differentiation and cost efficiency strategies that enabled these firms to upgrade their capabilities and compete on the basis of premium pricing, quality and reputation.

The analysis identified a general framework that represents an abstraction of the actions taken by these companies over time. The proposed model consists of three main elements used to pursue uncommoditizing strategies: tropicalized innovation, global efficiency and coordinated control.

Recent research on emerging market firms has shown interest in how these firms upgrade their capabilities. This paper contributes to this stream of research by providing an overarching framework that not only bridged previous narrower studies but also explained how firms can develop uncommoditizing strategies to upgrade their capabilities. Further, this paper helps managers by providing a comprehensive yet succinct overview of the main strategies that they can use to help their firms to achieve international competitiveness.

The development of a conceptual framework for the study of production systems in general derived from the analysis of the telecommunications industry; since this industry is considered as one of the pillars of the coming information society and knowledge economy, the application of that framework to other industries and production systems brings insights as to their recent changes and future trends. This paper looks at the stream of frameworks proposed for production and operations management, with the intent of contributing to the debate by addressing the following question: would an analytical framework derived from the telecommunications industry have distinct features relative to the analytic frameworks currently in use?

Following a literature review of the evolution of the telecommunications industry, the framework (TbF for telecommunications‐based framework) was built from scratch, using grounded theory, case studies and Delphi methods. The field for research was the Brazilian Telecommunications industry, considered as a microcosm of the whole industry. The TbF was then applied to the automobile and textile/apparel industries for illustration purposes.

The TbF is composed by six types of companies, characterised by distinct profiles of organisational competences, interacting according to some specific patterns of relationships. Compared to the most commonly used conceptual frameworks, the TbF allows for critical assessments in regards to their basic assumptions and reveals ways to evolve in direction of more dynamic approaches to the study of production systems.

As all other conceptual frameworks, the TbF is a simplification of reality and so its use requires a clear view of its assumptions. In regards to generalisation, the main assumption of the TbF is that other industries and production systems are accelerating their “clockspeeds” over time. As to the TbF's limitations, the main drawback relates to its development being derived from the most “traditional” segment of the telecommunications industry. This led to the exclusion of the internet‐enabled industries which promise a great impact in the near future.

The main contribution is for practical work in the academic and consultancy spheres, because what is under investigation is the way in which knowledge about production systems is being produced. The use of the TbF might disclose the limitations of the most commonly used conceptual frameworks and reveal ways to produce knowledge which is more aligned to the dynamism and complexity of production systems now and in the future.

The TbF is original in its structure. Its value in the creation of knowledge which is relevant and applicable still depends on further development.

The purpose of this paper is to discover whether factors responsible for the existence of non‐local competences in emerging multinationals are different from those of traditional multinationals.

Survey of 66 subsidiaries of Brazilian multinationals (BrMNes). This represents 70 percent of the 93 subsidiaries originally sampled.

The factors responsible for the development of non‐local competences in BrMNes are: the relationship between subsidiaries and business networks, the initiatives of subsidiaries and the support of the entrepreneurial orientation of subsidiaries by the headquarters.

Even though emerging multinationals require more resources developed abroad and although some studies revealed that different management models had been adopted during the internationalization process, the factors required to develop non‐local competences in BrMNes are very similar to those required by traditional multinationals.

Subsidiary innovation in partnership with the business network in the foreign country is essential to develop non‐local competences.

The paper supports the results of studies of traditional multinationals and demonstrates that despite the differences of Brazilian multinationals the factors required to develop non‐local competences are very similar. This is an interesting result to consolidate knowledge about global competitive advantages in multinationals: the management model to develop non‐local competences seems to be the same, in order of importance, regardless of multinational origin.

One of the key features of the new economy seems to be the change from individual to collective efficiency: the joint performance of systems of networked enterprises. That movement has an international dimension mainly related to the new strategies of transnational corporations. from the perspective of developing countries important changes might be taking place, as a consequence of the positioning of their firms in that new interorganisational networking. This is the focus of this study. An analytical model was developed for the assessment of which industrial segment shows the potential to be an international player for having the required organisational competencies. The conceptual framework was built around the idea that participation in an interorganisational network depends on the competencies built by each firm and influences the conditions for strategy formulation. A survey about the recent evolution of industry in Brazil was prepared. The outcomes reveal the relative position of the Brazilian firms in international networks, what leads to an overall picture of the competitiveness of local industry.

The purpose of this paper is to re-assess both the nature and sources of the competitive advantages which multinationals expanding from home bases in emerging economies (EMNEs) may enjoy in the global market.

The paper analyses the results of 12 concurrent studies undertaken by a group of experts who were asked to examine how strategies for innovation, international value chain configuration and foreign mergers and acquisitions contributed to the competitive advantages of multinationals emerging from Brazil, Russia, India and China (the BRICs), respectively.

EMNEs do have competitive advantages that can underpin their expansion abroad, but these are mainly “non-traditional” advantages that have been built by finding innovative ways to leverage advantages of their home countries. EMNE’s internationalisation is as much about accessing new resources and knowledge to enable them to extend their competitive advantage, as it is a route to exploiting existing advantages over a larger set of markets. As a result, the global value chain structure of EMNEs tends to be fundamentally different from that chosen by incumbent multinationals.

The study is limited to EMNEs from the BRIC countries, but implications for EMNEs emerging from other countries are discussed.

We bring to bear extensive data and a systematic approach to understanding the new breed of multinationals emerging from the BRIC countries; their sources of competitive advantage; and how they are using innovation, foreign investment and overseas acquisitions to transform global competition.