PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to review the literature and offer a more generalizable empirical investigation on the performance impact of implementing Industry 4.0, and the way important ...contingency factors (plant size, multinational status, country context) affect implementation efforts.Design/methodology/approachFollowing a systematic literature review, the empirical research is based on a large-scale survey of 705 manufacturing plants from 22 countries. Structural equation modeling is employed to discover the relationships between the main constructs of interest, complemented with subgroup analyses to offer a more detailed understanding of the main effects.FindingsWe provide evidence that technologies enabling Industry 4.0 have a positive impact on operational performance, including cost, quality, delivery and flexibility performance. Results of the analyses further indicate that (1) larger firms invest more in implementing Industry 4.0 technologies, (2) manufacturing firms in less competitive countries, especially in the South-East Asian region invest significantly more effort than competitive countries, while (3) multinational companies have no advantage over local firms.Research limitations/implicationsThe survey data employed in this study refers to the early years of companies embracing Industry 4.0 solutions, and thus does not contain the most recent advances in manufacturing technologies.Originality/valueThe paper represents one of the first studies in the literature to assess on a large-scale survey the performance impact of Industry 4.0 technologies, as well as the main contingency factors affecting the implementation of these technologies.
Abstract
In recent years, binding regulations in the “home states” of corporations have emerged mainly in the Global North with the aim of holding corporations accountable for human rights and ...environmental impacts throughout their supply chains. However, we still need a better understanding about to what extent such regulations contribute to enhance “foreign corporate accountability (FCA).” This article introduces a special issue that theorizes and empirically investigates foreign accountability dynamics. We do so by advancing an analytical framework that conceptualizes FCA and identify important contextual conditions that help to explain accountability dynamics. Applying this framework, we show that the drafting, implementation, and enforcement of such regulations are highly political processes, wherein competing ideas embedded within unequal actor constellations and institutional environments shape the possibilities to achieve more transformative change. By theorizing and empirically investigating FCA dynamics, we contribute to advance debates about the sustainability governance of global supply chains.
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BFBNIB, FZAB, GIS, IJS, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, SAZU, SBCE, SBMB, UL, UM, UPUK
Research background:
Since the end of COP 21 in Paris 2015 and even before, there is a huge interest for big companies to see their names at the top of the different ranking, as sustainability ...leaders. It is not only a matter of pride but also a business interest to promote sustainability values. The countries engage themselves to reduce global warming but this can only be done by reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Multinationals companies are in the position to bring a huge contribution to this objective. In this paper, we will try to evaluate different rankings done by various organisations, different companies that are in top positions in order to understand the real advancement.
Purpose of the article:
We want to see what is similar but also what differentiates one company from another. We will also analyse what the main key performance indicators are, used in to assess the evolution over time and how the companies are communicating their progress. We want to demonstrate if there is any common ground among different rankings or if there are huge differences in terms of results.
Methods:
Using descriptive and comparative analysis we demonstrate that different companies are entitled as champions of different rankings, using different metrics.
Findings & Value added:
In a global world, we can see that there is an important commercial interest of companies to appear in front of clients and investors as upholders of sustainability. Showing off a label of sustainability leader can help in doing business but it is not always corresponding with reality.
The purpose of the paper is to point out the factual state of the globalization process, the positive and negative aspects of this process, which relate to the aspirations of world powers to shape ...the world in technological, economic, informational, political and cultural terms. Globalization encourages the spread of integration, market openness, capital transfer, but at the same time the emergence of spiritual and material superficialities and gaps. Therefore, many point out the downsides of this process. On the other hand, globalization has a multiple impact on the economy of all countries, and it concerns foreign direct investment and the movement of people and capital from country to country. As production at the global level is rationalized and new technologies spread, countries can increase production, and thus the level of wages and living standards, and due to the unification of various regulations between countries, trade becomes easier and more useful for all participating countries. For this and similar reasons, some authors point out the advantages of globalization over disadvantages. The aim of the paper is to point out that the advantages should not be denied, but the greater presence of disadvantages should be noticed.
Considering the significant cross-national differences between tax systems, multinational banks are facing a challenge to secure compliance with the tax regulation of each country. In this regard, ...multinational banks tend to minimize tax risk exposure and the probability that national tax authorities will consider certain tax treatment as illegal. The paper studies the main sources of tax risk for subsidiaries of multinational banks in Serbia. It is pointed out that banks are facing important challenges to secure compliance with the tax regulation, particularly value-added tax and corporate income tax regulation. The paper also shows that subsidiaries of multinational banks in Serbia and neighboring countries disclose the information on the tax risk in notes to the financial statements only to a moderate extent. In addition, multinational banks disclose information on tax risk using different models in different countries, implying that they adapt the disclosure to the assessed level of the tax risk in each country.
Purpose: This paper aims to explore and describe how companies manage the level of standardisation of improvement practices in a multisite context. It seeks to explain the managerial strategies ...applied to change the standardisation level in manufacturing companies with multiple production sites worldwide.Design/methodology/approach: This paper collects data through interviews, observations and company documents from a large multinational producing company and, specifically, from of the largest production sites in the company. The research design resembles a grounded theory approach by being reflexive and open to emerging themes. The standardisation strategy was analysed at a company that strived to increase the standardisation of problem-solving practices within about 20 production sites as part of their corporate lean programme.Findings: Several managerial tools were applied at the corporate level to increase the standardisation level of problem-solving practices, such as developing standards and a company-specific toolbox aligned with an in-house maturity model. In addition, deploying change leaders and global implementation targets enabled audits and progress. However, consequences at the production-site level became minor adaptations of standards, the design of training models as a "roll-out", and a resource-demanding implementation process.Originality/Value: This paper empirically demonstrates strategic tools that corporate management teams apply to influence the company's standardisation level of practices. The study describes the purpose and consequences of the design of the toolbox, maturity model, training model, and implementation targets, which aims to simplify the complex task of managing standardisation in a corporate group. By applying a knowledge-based view, four processes (i.e. adaptation, integration, upskilling, and learning) were identified to improve the management strategies in multisite contexts.
Objective: The research objective is to discover associations between factors likely to have an influence on multinational corporations’ foreign direct investment in Jordan. The scope of the research ...and its objectives are driven by, first and foremost, the fact that there is increasing interest in MNCs’ investments in the MENA region and particularly in Jordan, and second there is a lack of academic research jointly examining the factors behind locational decisions. Research Design & Methods: This study has adopted quantitative methods (non-experimental) because we are able to measure the relationship between the set of variables and set of score. The study designed based on of international business literatures that includes economic, legal, social political factors. Questionnaire survey used to collect that data from sample of 50 companies in operate in Jordan and either owned by foreign inventors or are subsidiary of multinational companies. Findings: the study results indicate mixed views among MNCs because of the current situation and our research results demonstrate that MNCs’ location decision is immensely influenced by economic and political factors, and less by both legal and cultural factors. This indicates there is a similarity with other neighboring countries and significant difference from developed economies western countries. In addition, research finding also indicates that some MNCs mitigating their risk exposure by shifting their investments to relatively more stable business environments, such as the Gulf region and Jordan compared with other Levant countries as confirmed by the FT 2014. Implications & Recommendations: The finding of this research indicate that policy maker in Jordan should concentrate on supporting the macroeconomic environment and maintain its political stability to continue attract FDI. Contribution & Value Added: The existing MNC theory did not jointly examine the factors influencing location decisions, given the scarcity of national publications in the field of international business in Jordan, this research aims at enriching the national literature in this field.
Highly skilled workers are not only a crucial and relatively scarce input into firms’ productive and innovative processes, but are also a critical resource determining competitive advantage. An ...increasingly high proportion of these workers in the United States were born abroad and permitted to work on skilled worker visas. How do multinational firms respond when artificial constraints, namely, policies restricting skilled immigration, are placed on their ability to hire scarce human capital? This paper combines visa microdata and comprehensive data on U.S. multinational firm activity to demonstrate that firms respond to restrictions on H-1B immigration by increasing foreign affiliate employment at the intensive and extensive margins, particularly in China, India, and Canada. The most impacted jobs were R&D-intensive ones, but there is some evidence that non-R&D employment was also affected. The paper highlights a means by which firms can circumvent constraining policies and mitigate country-level risk, and it also suggests that, for the average multinational company (MNC), this means is imperfect; for every visa rejection, they hire 0.4 employees abroad. The most globalized MNCs are the most likely to respond to these restrictions by offshoring, highlighting that firm capabilities—in the form of prior internationalization—shape the decision and ability to offshore in response to skilled immigration restrictions; indeed, these firms hire 0.9 employees abroad for every visa rejection. More broadly, the paper provides evidence of a push factor for internationalizing knowledge activity: artificial constraints on resources result in firms circumventing restrictive policies in ways that may not be anticipated by policy makers.
This paper was accepted by Alfonso Gambardella, business strategy.
Funding:
This work was supported by the Mack Institute for Innovation Management.
Supplemental Material:
The online appendix and data are available at
https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2023.4715
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Research on the catching up of latecomer firms has generally overlooked whether, and how, subsidiaries of multinational companies (MNC) operating in emerging economies have developed innovation ...capabilities. Existing research on innovation capability building in MNC subsidiaries mainly employs quantitative research designs, comprising large samples of MNC subsidiaries using patent statistics to generate insights at a highly aggregated level of analyses. Accordingly, the existing research fails to capture the micro-level dynamics of learning and innovation capability development over time within individual MNC subsidiaries. To overcome this knowledge gap, we pursue a case study approach in this paper, drawing on qualitative data in order to generate an in-depth analysis of the processes underlying innovation capability building within a single MNC subsidiary. We examine the innovation capability development trajectory of a local Indian subsidiary of a Danish first-tier supplier of wind turbine blades. We adopt an analytical framework based on the literature on innovation capability building in latecomer firms, which is combined with insights from the literature on MNC subsidiary capability evolution. The paper points to the key role of the parent company and internal learning in the subsidiary as the basis for the advanced level of innovation capabilities achieved by the subsidiary, enabling it to become a supplier of innovations to its parent company. Contributions to the literature on innovation capability building in latecomer firms are presented and discussed.
•Limited research on innovation capability building in MNC subsidiaries.•Paper adopts a micro-level perspective on innovation capability building.•Case study of an Indian subsidiary of a first-tier supplier of wind turbines.•Learning through intra-corporate knowledge transfer, and internal learning.•Bidirectional knowledge flows as innovation capability building progressed.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
Global value chains (GVCs) have increased in importance and prominence within international scholarly literature over the last several years, with substantial contributions in the domains of ...international business, management, and corporate responsibility. The significance of GVC has been particularly highlighted over the past few years due to business interruptions and contextual turbulence (Covid pandemic, political, military, and socio-economic). Despite the growing attention of scholars and practitioners, relevant scientific research remains inconsistent, incomplete, and dispersed. In response, the present study is the first to comprehensively encapsulate the current state of research on GVCs through the lens of corporate sustainability by conducting a systematic review of all pertinently focused, peer-reviewed academic papers. This study defines and refines the association between sustainability standards, policies, and GVCs within an international business context. It also synthesizes the findings utilizing a multi-theoretical and multi-disciplinary framework to conclusively present avenues for future research and practical executive implications for international businesses, GVCs accounting, and business performance.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
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