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China’s experience of industrial growth is noteworthy for several reasons, not least because it has made a massive use of selective industrial policies. The industrial development guidelines set by the Five-Year Plans are extensively based on the choice of “strategic” or “pillar” industries to be promoted and supported. What remains unclear is the way in which such industries are identified among many. The purpose of this paper is to propose a debate on how to improve the government choice of strategic sectors and suggests a methodology to make this choice more transparent and rigorous.

The methodology allows ranking the different industries according to their strategic importance in the Chinese economy. The authors employ an uncertainty analysis methodology to verify the robustness of the ranking.

The results point to a list of strategic sectors for China. Comparing the ranking of the strategic sectors to the list of strategic priorities described in the Twelfth Five-Year Plan, we find that, by and large, the ranking coincides with the list of strategic sectors of the Chinese government.

The authors argue that improving the transparency and the rigor of the choice of pillar industries can be crucial for the Chinese government to maintain social legitimization in the transition to a “market” economy.

Very little is known about the choice of strategic sectors in China in the international literature. By addressing the debate on the choice of pillar industries in China, the paper discusses a topic scarcely studied offering a unique and original contribute.

Economic globalization is making Strategic Management researchers increasingly aware of the important extent to which international business strategies are shaped by national, regional, and international institutions — by differing business‐state and management‐labor regimes, industrial organization, and capital allocation systems, techno‐economic processes, etc. As yet, however, relatively limited attention to the “institutional embeddedness” of corporate strategy has developed within Strategic Management education. This paper seeks to encourage debate on incorporating analysis of the institutional shaping of corporate strategies by discussing four issues recommended to be systematically addressed in Strategic Management texts, lectures, and case work. The topics are: (1) the transition from the “Fordist” to “Post‐Fordist” global economy; (2) comparative business systems analysis; (3) political forces of the global economy; (4) global warming and environmental management.

During the 1950s and 1960s the Japanese government promoted industrial organization in the form of a “competitive oligopoly” and fostered the institutionalizing of the strong competitive investment‐drive among large‐scale enterprises which came to characterize her economy. Reviews the economy of post‐war Japan as an economic system, and the necessity for government intervention and market competition to promote industrialization.

There is limited empirical research on the internationalization processes, strategies and operations of Asian multinational enterprises (MNEs) from countries at different levels of development. This paper examines and analyzes the internationalization strategies and characteristics of Asian MNEs within the investment development path (IDP) perspective.

Primary data are drawn from matched case studies of emerging MNEs from Taiwan (a newly industrializing country) and Malaysia (a fast developing country) in the textile and electronics industries.

The internationalization strategies of our Taiwanese and Malaysian case firms were founded on cost‐based competencies and other location‐based advantages, brought together by an extensive web of ethnic networks. Differences between our Taiwanese and Malaysian case firms were found and discussed. In general, the Taiwanese firms were more internationalized (at stage 3 of IDP) than the Malaysian firms (stage 2). They had more developed and elaborate production networks and greater own design manufacturing/own brand manufacturing participation than the Malaysian firms.

The research did not capture the operational strategies at the level of the subsidiary or JV. The findings were exploratory and formed the basis for research propositions presented. As indicated there existed a wide empirical research gap on Asian as well as Taiwanese and Malaysian MNEs. These need to be filled to provide further evidence and answers to the issues raised in the paper. Other potential areas of research could include longitudinal studies of Asian MNEs to examine whether they will resemble Western MNEs as they evolve, the impact of ethnic networks on the performance of Asian MNEs of both Chinese and non‐Chinese origins, and the role of the state in internationalization strategies.

Few studies have been done on emerging market multinationals and their internationalisation strategies.

To better understand the challenges and opportunities facing China, the IBM Institute for Business Value in cooperation with Oxford Economics surveyed 1,150 executives from across China. Survey respondents represented a variety of industries and included executives from Chinese corporations, start-up enterprises, the government sector and educational institutions.

This report shares the executives’ vision for the Chinese economy, and proposes actions to help spark growth and positive change.

The Chinese executives surveyed see the current economic environment in China as encompassing five main challenges – immature services sector, declining domestic consumption growth, lending decisions creating over investment in some sectors, declining export growth and environmental issues impacting economic development.

The article identifies the six most important ways to accelerate China’s growth according to the executives:

Despite challenges, Chinese executives are optimistic about the country’s economic growth prospects. In fact, 93 percent of executives believe China will maintain stable to high growth of more than 5 percent over the next five years. And almost a quarter of them believe China will be able to return to its recent very high growth rates in excess of 8 percent.

The purpose of this paper is to extend the theory of services‐led industrial policy in services dominated but industrially lagging developing Asian economies and discuss its implications for employment, competitiveness, and diversification.

An inductive approach using qualitative methodology is adopted reviewing the available literature and evidence from Pakistan. The critical synthesis of the history of economic growth and industrial policy has followed Kuhn's paradigm approach.

Focusing on Pakistan, the paper synthesizes the history of industrial policy to identify the major paradigm shifts, especially the structural reforms era of the 1990s. The evidence suggests that the reforms under the structural adjustment program (SAP) have proved to be the necessary but not sufficient conditions for inclusive growth and industrial competitiveness in services dominated economies. Services‐led growth without an integrated and competitive industrial sector can lead to severe external accounts deficits and unemployment. The traditional role of services as “driver of demand/growth” is extended as “driver of productivity/competitiveness” through forward linkages with other sectors of the economy. The services sector's enabling role as the “software” of the economy and its impact on total factor productivity growth, diversification, and inclusive growth is postulated.

A quantification of forward and backward linkages is needed to identify the potential of services sub‐sectors in driving growth and productivity, respectively.

The paper identifies the need to match the existing industrial policy regimes with the economic structures in services‐dominated developing economies. The role of forward linkages in the productivity growth has implications for measurement of services output in national accounts in order to fully capture the contribution of this sector.

Private politics refers to situations in which activists or NGOs try to push firms to conform to social standards (regarding, for instance, human rights and environmental protection) without public policy intervention. The existing literature on private politics has focused on large campaigns such as consumer boycotts, and looked at the impact of those boycotts on firms’ financial performance and on the likelihood that firms comply with activist demands. Even though these large campaigns are important, focusing on them leads to neglecting the fact that a large portion of the time and resources that activists consecrate to private politics is used to monitor firms and criticize them through Internet posting and media statements, rather than to launch high profile campaigns. Little is known, however, about what drives these activists when they criticize companies, why they target certain companies and not others, and whether this criticism should be considered as a primary step in the production of full-fledged campaigns. In this paper, we fill this gap by exploring a unique international database of CSR-based criticisms against Fortune 500 companies for the 2006–2009 period. This database allows us to look at the impact of a broad range of factors including industry differences, country/institutional differences and firm-specific dimensions, on the likelihood that a certain firm will be targeted by activist critique. Results indicate that criticism is driven by strategic intents. Similar to previous literature, large and visible firms in certain industries are more targeted than others. In addition, these firms also tend to come from countries with strong institutions and high standards of living.