How the management of the trophic cascade determines innovation (original) (raw)

Transnational firms and the changing organisation of innovative activities

Cambridge Journal of Economics, 2000

It is suggested that a transition is taking place towards new modes of organising transnational corporations' innovative activities. First, different units of multinational firms, including foreign-based subsidiaries, are increasingly involved in the generation, use and transmission of knowledge. Secondly, multinationals are developing external networks of relationships with local counterparts, through which foreign affiliates gain access to external knowledge sources and application abilities. As a result of this evolutionary process, multinationals' organisation is subject to both centripetal and centrifugal forces. Considerable efforts are then necessary to innovate coordination procedures and mechanisms, in order to enhance the generation, circulation and use of knowledge. A number of empirical works are reviewed, providing some evidence of the evolutionary process discussed in the paper.

The Dynamics of Influence in Corporate Coâ•’Evolution

This paper aims to offer new theoretical and empirical insights into co-evolutionary development. Theoretically, it advances a political perspective which focuses on the role of power and how this can be translated into influence as an evolutionary driver through the relational framework between an organization and external parties. Empirically, the paper elaborates this perspective by reference to how China's largest container terminal evolved within a changing environment, and how its evolution in turn impacted on the evolution of its sector. In this case, the key relational framework was that between the organization and government institutions. Application of a political perspective to the case study suggests a theoretical model that can inform future research and practice.

The Evolution of the American Corporation and Global Organizational Biodiversity

2012

* Professor, University of Siena and Central European University. An early draft of this Article was given at the Berle III Symposium held at Seattle University School of Law in January 2012. I thank the participants in that conference, and in particular Charles O'Kelley and Faith Stevelman, for their useful comments. I am also very grateful to the editors at the Seattle University Law Review for their very useful comments and their excellent editing of my Article.

In the Evolutionary Dynamics of Industries ♣

The paper explores the idea that properties at the level of firms coevolve with more aggregate properties at the level of market institutions in the dynamics of industries. We propose that the structure of network of vertical relations limits the effect of increasing returns at the firm level. The paper develops a set of empirical measures and discusses a detailed case study of the commercial jet engine industry. The analysis of the structural dynamics of the network of vertical relations between engine suppliers and airframe manufacturers during the history of the industry (1958-1997) explains a final configuration of the industry marked by the coexistence of increasing returns to investments in R&D and marketing activities, with an intense competition among a few large incumbents, a low level of concentration and a strong instability of market shares. The emergence of a hierarchical network with a core and a periphery leads to equalisation of technical and market opportunities within the core and prevents incumbents to exit the industry.

Evolutionary economics and the Stra.Tech.Man approach of the firm into globalization dynamics

Business, Management and Economics Research, 2019

This article aims to examine whether the “Stra.Tech.Man” approach (Vlados, 2004), which explores the dialectical synthesis between strategy, technology, and management inside all socioeconomic organisms fulfills the requirements to be an analysis of evolutionary direction. It tries to answer this question, in particular, by examining the theoretical foundations of evolutionary economics and the subsequent evolutionary theorization of the firm that stems analytically from evolutionary economics. With this goal in mind, an overview of the relatively recent literature is attempted by presenting some of the significant contributions to evolutionary economics and the evolutionary theory of the firm. Next, it examines the specific way of building the Stra.Tech.Man approach on the production process of innovation and change management, by analyzing how this can lead to the structuration of an evolutionary direction of business planning for any socioeconomic organism.

The Role of National Ecosystems of Innovation in Competitiveness of Corporations in Global Economy

The increasing dispersal of knowledge and technical expertise across nations is leveling the field of traditional competitive advantages. Scholarly work supports the view that a nation’s capacity to innovate and commercialize new technology products plays a central role in the growth and competitiveness of its firms. While market forces are important, national policies play a significant role in encouraging or inhibiting those forces and influence corporate strategies. Each country evolves its own innovation profile and the firms operate within a framework of a national system of innovation in which they are embedded. The conceptual framework developed in this paper depicts linkages between different elements of the national innovation system and is based on the concept of the idea-innovation chain by Hage & Hollingsworth (1997), MONIT studies in OECD (2002) and Romer model (1990) of endogenous growth. The structuring of various components of the conceptual framework would serve as ...

Hierarchy, coordination and innovation in the multinational enterprise

The role of hierarchy in the multinational enterprise (MNE) and the corresponding role of subsidiary autonomy is a core question in global strategy. It has been the subject of an ever-growing literature since Coasian analysis was first brought to bear on the subject by Buckley and Casson (1976). Yet in the decades since this seminal work, both the world and the MNEs within it have changed almost beyond recognition. Even such fundamental concepts as hierarchy and coordination have been altered in fundamental ways (e.g., Tallman and Chacar, 2011). As these developments continue, they challenge international business researchers to develop theory and models to understand the working of multihub MNEs. The hubs in advanced market economies and those in emerging and poor economies have vastly different capabilities and strategic motivations. Ensuring that these hubs do more than merely coexist; that they truly collaborate and create a whole that is more than the sum of the parts, calls for a boundary spanning function of a higher order.

Innovation management in the world under occidental dominance and in a new multi-polar world: a comparative perspective

International Journal of Comparative Management, 2019

This is a conceptual research study in the field of comparative management. For more than five centuries, the occident has been an economic, military, and cultural dominating force throughout the world, but now this long trend is reversing. Non-occidental countries are gaining momentum. China and India have become new world powers, anticipated to surpass the USA in economic might. The result will be global occidental dominance being replaced by a multi-polar world. The objective of this study is to conduct a comparisonfocusing on implications to innovation management-between the world under occidental dominance and the new multi-polar world. This approach is novel in comparative management. This study points out that multi-polarity will broaden the foundation for innovation, thus, giving rise to new and different innovation. Multi-polarity will enhance both the demand for and supply of innovation. An implication of multi-polarity for practice is that in multinational corporations operating in more than one major historical cultural sphere, it will be exceedingly difficult to maintain a uniform basis for the legitimation of innovation.