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Against the backcloth of a growing geopolitical and economic importance of emerging economies, this paper seeks to ask whether emerging economy firms are willing to match their increased economic weight with greater social responsibility. Given a relative scarcity of research into CSR in Russia, particular attention is to be given to firms from that country.

The research question is examined through an analysis of differences between firms from industrialized nations, transition economies, and newly industrialized countries in terms of the breadth and depth of their sustainability reporting. This three‐way comparison analyses corporate sustainability reporting according to the GRI G3 framework developed by the Global Reporting Initiative.

The firms in the sample display clear evidence of a divide between industrialized and emerging economies, with Russia occupying a middle position. Contrary to expectations, however, emerging economy firms outperform those from industrialized nations in their coverage of GRI indicators.

These findings leave open two possible conclusions: either emerging economy MNEs have leaped to the front in terms of addressing sustainability or they have been able to use GRI reporting as window‐dressing to hide a dirtier reality. From a different angle, the strong evidence of a North‐South divide in the sample also lends support to the national business systems approach to CSR.

The paper adds to a small but growing body of cross‐national studies into CSR that go beyond OECD member countries. In particular, it constitutes one of the first studies not only to tease out CSR priorities of large Russian firms but also to elucidate differences in terms of CSR priorities between newly industrialized countries and transition economies.

Interviews in South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, and India indicate net present value (NPV) is not widely employed in making capital investment decisions in these newly industrialized and developing countries. It is not from lack of knowledge about net present value: rather, it is due to (1) widespread violation of the assumptions underlying NPV, (2) the high risk/high return nature of the capital investments, and (3) the decision‐making process employed in making capital investment decisions. These same three conditions exist for many capital investment decisions made by firms in developed countries. Only by abandoning the static NPV approach, building in real options, and understanding and building in the decision‐making process will further advances be made in capital budgeting decision‐making. One of the key paradigms in finance is net present value (NPV). In order to maximize value, managers should accept all positive NPV investment projects, and reject all negative NPV projects. The issue becomes more complex when uncertainty is introduced, or, as in recent years, when real options to defer, abandon, expand, etc. are incorporated into the decision‐making process [e.g., Dixit and Pindyck (1994) and Trigeorgis (1995 and 1996)]. However, with these exceptions, the state of the art in capital investment decision‐making revolves around the simple statement—take all positive NPV projects. In practice, evidence from surveys and discussions with corporate executives indicates the message taught for the last 30 years in business schools has been heard and, to a large extent, acted upon by larger U.S., Canadian, and British‐based firms. While larger firms in North America, and to a lesser extent Western Europe, generally employ the static, or traditional, NPV framework for making, or assisting in making, capital investment decisions, less is known about the decision‐making process employed by firms in other parts of the world. The question addressed in this study is: “Do firms in other parts of the world, especially in newly industrialized or developing countries in the Asia Pacific region, employ NPV for making capital investment decisions?” The purposes of this study are threefold: (1) to report the results of a series of open‐ended interviews conducted in South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, and India about the capital investment decision‐making process employed; (2) to understand why NPV is not widely employed in making capital investment decisions in these newly industrialized and developing countries; and, most important, (3) to indicate that NPV and the capital budgeting decision‐making process need rethinking and refocusing to make them more effective—in all countries, whether developed, newly industrialized, or developing. The paper proceeds in the following manner. Section I provides an introduction to the study. In Section II the results of the interviews are presented. In Section III patterns that emerged during the interview process are presented, along with a number of specific examples of the types of capital investment decisions being considered. In Section IV the assumptions underlying NPV are examined, and then risk/return and the decision‐making process are considered. Section V contains the discussion and conclusions.

Conspicuous consumption and sustainable consumption are commonly understood as being in contradiction with each other. Yet, scholars have recently become increasingly interested in examining positive relationships between these forms of consumption. The purpose of this paper is to conceptualize the synergies and contradictions between sustainable and luxury consumption and proposing whether and how conspicuous motives can foster a shift towards sustainable consumption in newly industrialized countries in general and Egypt in particular.

This paper is a conceptual note, intended as a starting point and acting as an eye-opener regarding the values inherent in both conspicuous and sustainable consumption and the potential influence that conspicuous motivations could have on the latter.

The paper discusses the possibilities for and limitations of conspicuous motives to foster sustainable consumption in newly industrialized countries in the Middle East. The adoption of westernized lifestyles, spreading in Middle Eastern countries, can represent a venue for motivating sustainable consumption behaviours as a means of status distinction. On the other hand, the trickle-down effect and the preconditions of visibility and exclusiveness pose risks on promoting sustainable consumption by addressing conspicuous motives.

The paper suggests that the synergistic interplay between conspicuous and sustainable consumption, as well as barriers and motivations underpinning both constructs, needs to be empirically researched, while factoring in the cultural specifics of the countries under study, as cultural nuances can influence the dynamics of interaction between conspicuous and sustainable behaviours.

Given the salience of the relationship between luxury and sustainable consumption and the focus of most studies on early-industrialized countries, insights regarding the possible influences of conspicuous motives on sustainable consumption in newly industrialized countries are warranted. With the scarcity of research examining the ambiguous relationship between conspicuous and sustainable consumption in newly industrialized countries, this paper contributes by providing insights about the conditions that can help conspicuous motives promote sustainable consumption in newly industrialized countries.

The purpose of this paper is to present a comparative study on the impact of manufacturing strategies and resources on innovation performance in two newly industrialised countries in the South East Asian region, Thailand and Vietnam.

A quantitative approach was employed. The survey data was drawn from 95 Thai and 44 Vietnamese middle or senior managers in manufacturing firms.

Three major findings were noted in this study. First, there were no significant differences between Thai and Vietnamese manufacturing firms with respect to manufacturing strategies, resources, and innovation performance. Second, differentiation strategy is shown to be the strongest predictors for both product and process innovation across both countries. Technology management, however, only shows a significant effect on both product and process innovation among Thai firms. The other three manufacturing strategies (leadership, people management, and R&D) did not show a significant relationship with any of product or process innovations. Finally, the results of the moderating regression analysis, using country as a dummy variable, confirm that the effect of technology on product innovation is significantly stronger among Thai firms than Vietnamese firms.

Small sample sizes of both countries are the major limitation of the study. Future studies can advance this research by incorporating a larger sample size as well as focusing on more innovative industries, such as electronics, automotive and food industries.

The results provide insights on the status of several key managerial practices among manufacturing firms in Thailand and Vietnam. The study highlights the lack of R&D intensity in manufacturing firms as well as its non‐significant impact on innovation performance.

This is the first empirical study to compare two newly industrialised countries in the South East Asian region in regards to manufacturing/operational practices, innovation performances, and differentiation strategy.

The aim of this paper is to investigate bank choice/selection criteria in a range of cultural and country economic scenarios. More specifically, the purpose of this study is to understand international consumers' selection criteria of banks using the USA, Taiwan, and Ghana as illustrations.

Following a literature review, the paper adopts the classical multi‐step scale development process which demanded that thorough attention be paid to every step of the process. The study employed exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses to assess the reliability of the results.

The study reveals three key dimensions/factors/strategies that are consistent across all three economies. The paper concludes that open and liberalized business climate appear to explain consumers' decisions.

This research is based on the college student cohort and thus the results do not represent the public. This poses generalizability questions without further replications and validations. This study did not examine whether there were consumers' switching behaviors involving banks.

Insights derived from this study will provide bank managers and advertising executives with the building blocks for understanding consumers' choice criteria of banks in industrialized, newly industrialized and liberalized developing economies.

A comprehensive validated scale measuring international consumers' selection of banks is proposed. In view of the scarce stream of empirical studies dealing with consumers' selection of banks in liberalized developing nations, this research comes at an opportune time, as several governments in these economies are encouraging bank savings, channeling college students' loans through bank accounts and proactively attracting global banks to establish branches in their countries. This study complements the extant literature dealing with consumers' selection of banks. Finally, a cross‐national and cross‐cultural dataset of consumers' choice criteria of banks have been put forward that would enhance further appreciation of the subject of banks selection in varying economies.

This article presents the results of a survey of 209 Mainland Chinese male consumers carried out in the late 1990s. In this study, consumer judgements of products made in both highly and newly industrialised countries were obtained in a multi‐attribute and multi‐dimensional context. As expected, the results showed that Chinese consumers' perceptions of country of design and country of assembly were much more positive for products made in highly industrialised countries than for those made in newly industrialised countries. However, some exceptions to this are addressed. A multi‐attribute analysis with country‐of‐origin variables indicates that the perception of a T‐shirt quality was strongly related to price and product satisfaction assurance, whereas the perception of a T‐shirt purchase value was mainly linked to satisfaction assurance. It is therefore concluded that Chinese consumers, having recently emerged from a totalitarian state‐controlled market condition, are in the process of forming enduring attitudes towards products made in foreign countries. This provides excellent opportunities for countries/brands that wish to build an image of fashion leadership in the Chinese market to gain a first‐mover advantage.

The purpose of this paper is to replicate the taxonomic study of Miller and Roth and to validate its applicability in a small newly industrialised country.

An empirical survey of manufacturing companies in Ireland was conducted using a research instrument that replicated the questions asked in the original 1994 study. Data was collected using mail questionnaires posted to 874 manufacturers. A total of 199 respondents were used for this study. The study tested two central hypotheses using advanced statistical data analysis techniques, such as canonical discriminant analysis.

The results of the research identified three clustered strategic groups (Best Value, Budget and Multi Focus) which were different from those of Miller and Roth: caretakers, marketeers and innovators. The study supported the dynamic nature of manufacturing strategy, and shows how new manufacturing strategies evolve over time and differ between regions.

Further research should replicate this study in other small newly industrialised countries. Given the recently changed nature of the economy within Ireland, a longitudinal study would provide useful insights into the dynamics of manufacturing capabilities.

The study provides important insights into manufacturing strategy within a small newly industrialised country. The results suggest that manufacturing strategies appear to change depending on the country of plant location. The manufacturing strategies may be attributed to the unique business environment, challenges and constraints of the country.

There is a scarcity of taxonomy studies in general, and there is a dearth of such studies in small newly industrialised countries such as Ireland. Through identifying a new taxonomy the study contributes to the existing literature on manufacturing strategy, and challenges the global applicability of taxonomies developed in the USA.

This article presents the results of a survey of 202 male Taiwanese consumers. In this study, consumer judgements of two technological products varying in their level of complexity made in highly, moderately, and newly industrialised countries were obtained in a multi‐attribute context. The results show that the country‐of‐origin image of moderately and newly industrialised countries was less negative for technologically simpler products (i.e. a television) than they were for technologically complex products (i.e. a computer). It appears that the negative image of moderately and newly industrialised countries can be attenuated by making Taiwanese consumers more familiar with products made in these countries and/or by providing them with other product‐related information such as brand name and warranty. Newly industrialised countries were perceived more negatively as countries of design than as countries of assembly, especially in the context of making technologically complex products. The image of foreign countries as producers of consumer goods was positively correlated with education. The more familiar consumers were with the products of a country, the more favourable was their evaluation of that country. Consumer involvement with purchasing a technologically complex product such as a computer was positively associated with the appreciation of products made in moderately industrialised countries. Managerial and research implications are derived from these results.

This paper aims to examine the position of tourism in tourism dependent countries in light of newly industrialized countries and how trends in the industry impact these developing tourism dependent nations. International tourism, for example, is now a technologically advanced activity in which some developing countries are lagging behind. These developing countries are challenged in adapting to compatible and new technology, financing, staff training and the relevant to the future of the industry.

The study employed a qualitative research methodology using both primary and secondary data drawn from a study conducted on the South Coast of Jamaica with supporting literature from a global perspective.

Moves by major players in the international tourism industry to increase their influence and dominance of global markets may reduce consumer choice thereby creating a shift for tourism from old tourism dependent developing nations to newly industrialized countries of the world. This would mean that the old tourism dependent nations need to devise a new way of diversifying their tourism products to attract elite markets seeking clean and un-spoilt environments and destinations.

This paper is part of a PhD work, which has been published in a book. The key issues raised in the paper are still current and the challenges present now need government and policy makers ' attention.

The degree of integration among different economies is an important issue in international economics and finance. This article employs daily stock market data for the period 1988 through 1999 to investigate the return dynamics and the extent of the stock market linkages across six newly industrialized countries (NIC’s) of Asia, and documents the role of Japan and the US in this region. Primarily, the study finds that there are significant stock market linkages among the emerging equity markets of Hong Kong, India, Korea, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand. While dominant relationships do exist, no country is totally insulated from market movements that emanate from other countries in the region. Furthermore, the study documents the presence of temporal instability in the transmission mechanism that coincides with the Asian economic crisis. During the period in which the NIC’s experienced rapidly rising stock valuations, Singapore and the US had dominant causal influences on these Asian markets. However, in the period of financial crisis during the latter part of the 1990s decade, Singapore’s influence is greatly diminished while shocks from other countries, most notably India, play a more dominant role. Several important policy implications are derived from the results.