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Aim of the present monograph is the economic analysis of the role of MNEs regarding globalisation and digital economy and in parallel there is a reference and examination of some legal aspects concerning MNEs, cyberspace and e‐commerce as the means of expression of the digital economy. The whole effort of the author is focused on the examination of various aspects of MNEs and their impact upon globalisation and vice versa and how and if we are moving towards a global digital economy.

The purpose of this paper is to examine patterns and determinants of trade among developing countries (South‐South trade), with emphasis on the role of production sharing in global economic integration of the Southern economies.

The paper begins with an analytical narrative of the emerging trends and patterns of South‐South trade using a classification system that helps delineating trade based on global production sharing (network trade) from total recorded trade. Then it undertakes a comparative econometric analysis of the determinants of South‐South and South‐North trade using the standard gravity model.

The share of South‐South trade in world trade has shown a significant increase over the past two decades. This increase has predominantly come from the dynamic East Asian countries, reflecting their growing engagement in global production sharing. The growth dynamism of East‐Asia centered production networks depends heavily on demand for final (assembled) goods in the Northern markets; South‐South trade is largely complementary to, rather than competing with, South‐North trade. While regional trading agreements (RTAs) could play a role at the margin, natural economic forces associated with growth and structural change in the economy and the overall macroeconomic climate as reflected in the real exchange rate, and the quality of trade related logistics are far more important in the expansion of South‐South network trade.

This is the first study to examine patterns and determinants of South‐South trade paying attention to the role of global production sharing. The findings are valuable for informing the contemporary policy debate on promoting South‐South trade. The trade data classification system developed here is expected to help further research on this subject.

The purpose of this paper is to systematically and critically review the extant literature on the design of global production and distribution networks to identify gaps in the literature and identify future research opportunities. The design aspects deal with strategic and structural decisions such as: opening or closing of manufacturing plants or distribution centres, selection of locations for manufacturing or warehousing, and making substantial capacity changes in manufacturing or distribution.

The authors examine the peer-reviewed literature on global production and distribution networks written in English. The search strategy is based on selected keywords and databases. The authors identify 109 articles from 1974 to 2012.

The authors categorize the literature according to research methodology: case studies, conceptual modelling, surveys, and mathematical modelling. The amount of literature up to 2,000 is rather sparse, while there is a positive trend from 2,000 and onwards. The content analysis shows that different research methodologies focus on different but complementary aspects. The authors propose a research agenda for further research on design of global production and distribution networks.

The authors identify research opportunities related to complementary actor perspectives, extended supply chains that explicitly include transportation and suppliers, contingency factors, and new perspectives such as facility roles within production and distribution networks.

This paper is to the author’s knowledge the first broad review that investigates the design aspects of the interrelationships between production and distribution facilities as well as transportation in global production and distribution networks across multiple research methodologies.

Despite the seminal works of authors like Bartlett, Ghoshal, Nohria, Doz, Williamson, among others, because they focused on mature multinationals, newcomers in international markets find scarce information about the design and implementation of international operations networks. In this paper we analyze the internationalization process of Brazilian and Chinese firms to understand the evolution of their networks, a process influenced by factors inexistent in studies about developed country multinationals, namely global production networks (GPNs) and country-of-origin effects. The key characteristics of their international operations networks seem to be well described by a stage-based approach where emerging country multinationals start as local optimizers and then evolve by taking different strategic positions within the GPN to which they are connected. That upgrading is possible when the implementation of the international operations network reaches a certain level of maturity.

This paper examines the different features of China's economic development in different stages of economic globalization. The study finds that the investment- and export-based growth model drove China's high-speed economic growth between 2000 and 2007, which came into existence around 2000 when China plugged into the global production network.

This paper also finds that China slowed down to the New Normal because of the disruption to the socio-economic underpinnings of this growth model. As China adapts to and steers the New Normal, supply-side structural reforms can channel excess capacity to the construction of underground pipe networks in rural areas of central China and fix capital while advance rural revitalization.

At the same time, enterprises must strive to build a key component development platform for key component innovation and the standard-setting power in global manufacturing.

The establishment of a domestic production network integrating the integrated innovation-driven core enterprises and modular producers at different levels can satisfy the dynamic demand structure of China in which standardized demands and personalized demands coexist.

The aim of this study is to propose a link between international business (IB) and economic geography, which are two streams of thought that have developed without one acknowledging the other. We use the Uppsala model and the Global Production Network as pillars to sustain this link. We expect that this research triggers a collaboration with allied social sciences in important debates surrounding the business-societal interface.

We selected papers produced by Johanson and Vahlne to understand the development of the Uppsala model over 40 years. The same was done with the Global Production Network, where we scrutinized the work of Henderson, Coe, Dicken, Hess and Yeung – scholars from the Manchester School of Geography – in the last twenty years. Based on Humphrey et al. (2019), we applied an inductive and inferential approach to uncover similarities and differences between the Uppsala model and Global Production Network.

The Uppsala model reinforces the strategic role of network position in the internationalization process, while the Global Production Network aims to explain how the governance of global firms scattered world-wide affects the development and upgrading opportunities of the various regions and firms involved. Despite these clear differences, the geographical nature of IB and shared similarities accounting the network as a channel to foster and provide access to important resources and practices regarding management, coordination and governance of dispersed parts of multinational enterprises give room to using these two theories as pillars to link IB and economic geography.

While attempts to link IB and economic geography are not new, none of these studies have focused on the Uppsala model and Global Production Network as pillars to create a link. We foresee an intense cross collaboration and an even possible renaissance of IB and economic geography to target the ever-changing business environment and its impact on social and economic development.

The objective of this study is to investigate how country risk, different political actions from the government and bureaucratic behavior influence the activities in industry supply chains (SCs) in emerging markets. The main objective of this study is to investigate the influence of these external stakeholders’ elements to the demand-side and supply-side drivers and barriers for improving competitiveness of Ready-Made Garment (RMG) industry in the way of analyzing supply chain. Considering the phenomenon of recent change in the RMG business environment and the competitiveness issues this study uses the principles of stakeholder and resource dependence theory and aims to find out some factors which influence to make an efficient supply chain for improving competitiveness. The RMG industry of Bangladesh is the case application of this study. Following a positivist paradigm, this study adopts a two phase sequential mixed-method research design consisting of qualitative and quantitative approaches. A tentative research model is developed first based on extensive literature review. Qualitative field study is then carried out to fine tune the initial research model. Findings from the qualitative method are also used to develop measures and instruments for the next phase of quantitative method. A survey is carried out with sample of top and middle level executives of different garment companies of Dhaka city in Bangladesh and the collected quantitative data are analyzed by partial least square-based structural equation modeling. The findings support eight hypotheses. From the analysis the external stakeholders’ elements like bureaucratic behavior and country risk have significant influence to the barriers. From the internal stakeholders’ point of view the manufacturers’ and buyers’ drivers have significant influence on the competitiveness. Therefore, stakeholders need to take proper action to reduce the barriers and increase the drivers, as the drivers have positive influence to improve competitiveness.

This study has both theoretical and practical contributions. This study represents an important contribution to the theory by integrating two theoretical perceptions to identify factors of the RMG industry’s SC that affect the competitiveness of the RMG industry. This research study contributes to the understanding of both external and internal stakeholders of national and international perspectives in the RMG (textile and clothing) business. It combines the insights of stakeholder and resource dependence theories along with the concept of the SC in improving effectiveness. In a practical sense, this study certainly contributes to the Bangladeshi RMG industry. In accordance with the desire of the RMG manufacturers, the research has shown that some influential constructs of the RMG industry’s SC affect the competitiveness of the RMG industry. The outcome of the study is useful for various stakeholders of the Bangladeshi RMG industry sector ranging from the government to various private organizations. The applications of this study are extendable through further adaptation in other industries and various geographic contexts.

The purpose of this paper is to extend the discussions on globalisation from production to R&D. It investigates how R&D and production interact with each other in their globalisation processes.

The research aim is developed by identifying the gaps in the reviewed literature. This paper is based on four case studies undertaken in one Chinese manufacturing, one Danish pharmaceutical and two Danish manufacturing companies. The cases provide a sound basis for developing an understanding of the interaction between the globalisation of R&D and production.

This paper identifies three approaches the case companies followed to globalise their production and R&D: interactive globalisation, separated globalisation and a possible combination. The paper indicates that research and development might have to be treated separately with regard to their globalisation, and proposes industry and country characteristics as the key factors for globalisation approach selection, and site capability and strategic decision as the impacting factors for globalisation evolution.

This paper emphasises the dispersion of R&D activities, which is seldom addressed by existing internationalisation theories. Its investigation provides a foundation for the further extension of current internationalisation theories to consider global R&D. Moreover, the theoretical gap in the existing literature between global R&D and production is noted. This paper bridges this gap by clarifying the interaction between R&D and production in their globalisation, conceptualising three globalisation approaches, and proposing tentative factors that have impacts on approach selection and management.

Any kind of production flow is obtained not from individual production organizations but from a more or less widespread Production Network of interconnected production modules located in different places and times. All of these modules are, consciously or not, necessarily connected, interacting and cooperating in a coordinated way to combine and arrange, step by step, the factors, materials, components, manpower, machines and equipment to obtain flows of products’ final goods, in particular’ and to sell these where there is a demand for them. The purpose of this paper is to determine, in logical and formal terms, the minimum conditions that bring about the formation of production networks and to discover the laws that explain their dynamics over time.

At the global level, the continuous and accelerated economic progress of mankind is witnessed. There is an increase in the quantity and quality of satisfied and yet to be satisfied needs, of attained and yet to be attained aspirations. The increase in productivity and in quality has become unstoppable and appears to guide the other variables in the system. It is natural to ask who produces and governs these phenomena. It does indeed seem there is a Ghost in the “Production” machine whose invisible hand produces growing levels of productivity and quality, increases the quality and quantity of satisfied needs and aspirations and reduces the burden of work, thus producing increasingly higher levels of progress in the entire economic system. This conceptual framework gives a simple answer: there is nothing metaphysical about this evolution towards unstoppable and irreversible progress, and it is produced by the spontaneous genesis and activity of selfish nodes and governed by the rules and laws of the production networks.

The author has identified ten “rules of selfish behavior” on the part of the nodes, whose application necessarily and inevitably produces three evolutionary dynamic processes “which refer to the network as an entity” which the author has called the “rules of the production networks” to emphasize their cogency: continual expansion, elasticity-resiliency and continual improvement in performance. The cognitive and creative processes that characterize the nodes do not allow us to predict the actual evolution of production networks; nevertheless, if it is assumed that nodes “consciously or not” follow the 10 “rules of selfish behavior”, then several typical trends, or behavioural schema, can be deduced which the author has called as the “laws of networks”, to highlight their apparent inevitability and cogency.

More than any other structure, Production Networks display Holland’s features and Arthur’s properties as their modules, viewed as autonomous entities with cognitive functions, represent a collectivity of agents that interact and exchange information with their environment to maintain over time their internal processes through adaptation, self-preservation, evolution and cognition, making individual and collective decisions as part of a network of micro behaviours.

This new conception of production through production networks, which takes into account the “rules” and “laws” regulating their behaviour, also sheds new light on the development of networks and their natural tendency to become globalized.

Although the concept of a network is becoming more popular in economic and business studies, it is yet to see an interpretation of production as deriving exclusively from the actions of increasingly larger networks. This paper presents an integrated view of production that does not discard the notion that production is carried out by organizations and companies but introduces the broader concept of the integration among organizations, which must be interpreted as nodes of a broader network that produces the flows of all the components needed to obtain the flow of a specific product. This represents an innovative view that will help us in understanding the difficulties policymakers encounter in governing production and controlling the basic variables that characterize it, specifically productivity, quality, quantity, prices and value. This perspective also allows to derive rules and laws for the behaviour of production networks that appear to be cogent and unvarying over time.

In this paper, the authors empirically investigate under which conditions production network management is effective to improve manufacturers' financial performance. For this, the authors explore contingencies between production networks and the three key dimensions of organizational environment.

A survey with senior managers was conducted for this research. The authors used a hierarchical regression analysis to test interaction effects and draw on follow-up interviews with chief operating officers (COOs) and senior managers to elaborate and explain the found associations.

Results indicate that manufacturers' financial performance is only associated with their network capability level if they operate in hostile competitive environments. In moderate competitive environments, improvements in the network capability level are not associated with greater financial performance. In particularly munificent environments, such production network upgrades are even associated with the opposite effect.

Results highlight in which organizational contexts upgrading production networks has positive performance implications and under which circumstances it is ineffective or even counterproductive.

The authors draw on unique survey data to add quantitative evidence to the predominantly conceptual and qualitative literature on global production networks. This is also one of the first studies to connect the topics of production networks and organizational environment.