The moderating effect of foreign direct investment intensity on local firms' intangible resources investment and performance implications: A case from China

Foreign direct investment (FDI) has been known to generate positive externalities to increase the productivity and competitiveness of domestic industries through knowledge and technology spillover. This study focuses on the indirect effect of FDI by investigating whether FDI intensity benefits local firms by enhancing the local intellectual property rights (IPR) environment. We argue that due to the inadequate IPR environment in emerging economies, local firms' intangible resources investment can be negatively related to firm performance. Further, we suggest that FDI intensity can improve the local IPR environment, thereby enhancing the appropriability of local firms' intangible resources investment. We find empirical evidence to support our arguments by examining 70 semiconductor firms in China from 1999 to 2006, and we discuss the theoretical and practical implications of the impact of FDI intensity on the local IPR environment.     

Monitoring the production of a supply chain with a revisited MRP approach

This paper examines the centralised monitoring of an upstream supply chain (USC) in the context of a mass customisation production system. We propose an adaptation of the material requirement planning framework to manage demand uncertainty at each stage of the USC. New analytical relations that exploit structural information on demand beyond the frozen horizon are developed for efficient decision-making and appropriate information sharing among the productive supply chain units. A numerical example to illustrate the implementation of the new analytical relations is provided, and a synthesis of benchmarks performed in the automotive industry is presented.     

Supplier‐Switching Inertia and Competitive Asymmetry: A Demand‐Side Perspective*

Building on strategic management, operations strategy, and supplier management literatures, this article presents a framework for supplier selection from the demand‐side perspective. We highlight the role of a purchasing firm's switching inertia in the supplier‐selection process and demonstrate the usefulness of our framework for the industrial automation industry. Empirical data for this study was collected from 171 corporate and plant‐level executives in pharmaceutical, chemical, and paper‐and‐pulp manufacturing industries in the United States. A series of Web‐based individually customized discrete choice experiments asked the respondents to either switch to the new supplier or stay with the existing supplier. Based on the results of these experiments, we demonstrate the existence of switching inertia in the supplier‐selection process and discuss the managerial implications for incumbent and challenger supplier firms.     

Think really different: Continuity and specialization in the English dual form adverbs

This paper analyses variation between ‐ly and ‐ø in English dual form adverbs by examining conversational data from York, U.K. Using multivariate analysis and the comparative method we assess the constraint ranking, significance and relative importance of external factors (age, sex, education level) and internal factors (lexical identity, function and meaning). The results show that ‐ly is dominant and has increased dramatically in apparent time. However, cross‐tabulations with individual lexical items reveal that this correlation with speaker age is restricted to a single item–really. In conjunction with evidence from the history of English, we suggest that this does not reflect ongoing developments in English adverb formation, but is the result of continuous renewal in the encoding of ‘intensity’. In contrast, separate analysis of the other adverbs shows that variation between ‐ly and zero is retained in part as a socio‐symbolic resource, in particular for marking less educated male speech. Underlying this social meaning however, is a linguistic constraint which operates across all speakers. The zero adverb encodes concrete, objective meaning–a tendency which can be traced back 650 years or more. This provides yet another example of the interface between social and historical developments in language variation and change.     

National Family Survey, 1975

Over the past two decades in Australia there has been growing community and governmental concern over the steady increase in the number of unmarried mothers and deserted wives seeking public assistance. Many people feel that this increase reflects a basic change in attitudes to marriage and family life. However, very few family studies have been undertaken and there is little data available to explain these changes. It has been increasingly recognized that there is a lack of basic knowledge about the family in this country, and both government and voluntary agencies have only limited data to help in planning family services at state and national levels.     

He's like, she's like: The quotative system in Canadian youth

Due to the recent and rapid newcomer, be like , the English quotative system is a good place to catch language change in action. However, since most previous analyses target people in their early twenties, little is known about how be like is diffusing. In this paper we conduct an analysis of Canadian youth between ten and nineteen years old and compare the results with an earlier study. There is a dramatic increase in be like in real time. In apparent time, the content of the quote and grammatical person are significant and the constraints are parallel for all ages except one. The effect of content of the quote has reversed among the oldest speakers, aged between 17 and 19. Moreover, there is a clear shift in the social evaluation of be like : sex is significant and strong for 15–16 year olds onwards, revealing that age and sex interact in sociolinguistic change. Furthermore, we establish ongoing grammaticalization of be like .     

Variation in the English definite article: Socio‐historical linguistics in t'speech community1

This paper provides a sociolinguistic analysis of variation in the English definite article, a.k.a. definite article reduction (DAR), in the city of York, northeast Yorkshire, England. Embedding the analysis in historical, dialectological and contemporary studies of this phenomenon, the findings uncover a rich system of variability between the standard forms as well as reduced and zero variants. These are involved in a system of multicausal constraints, phonological, grammatical, and discourse‐pragmatic that are consistent across the speech community. However, the reduced variants are not derivative of each other, but reflect contrasting functions in the system. Interestingly, the reduced variants are accelerating in use among the young men, suggesting that DAR is being recycled as an identity marker of the local vernacular. This change is put in sociohistorical context by an appeal to the recently developing interest and evolving prestige of Northern Englishes more generally.     

Developing the eclectic paradigm as a model of global strategy: An application to the impact of the Sep. 11 terrorist attacks on MNE performance levels

We expand the eclectic paradigm into a model of global strategic management and apply the latter to the analysis of the impact of the Sep. 11th terrorist attacks on the MNEs' performance to investigate the effect of exogenous shocks on the global strategies of firms. First, we integrate MNE resources and capabilities, strategy, and structure with the eclectic paradigm. Then we focus specifically on location attractiveness to examine how MNEs adjust internal factors with the exogenous distortions caused by an extreme environmental shock. We suggest that this adjustment is carried out at four levels: resources and capabilities, strategy, structure, and choice of location which jointly determine MNEs' performance. Although we restrict the application of this model of global strategic management to the post-Sep. 11th, our model may be applied to other extreme events that change, at least partly, the worldwide, or regional, economic order.     

How do CEOs matter? The moderating effects of CEO compensation and tenure on equity ownership in international joint ventures

We propose that CEO compensation and tenure moderate the relationship between multinational corporations' (MNCs) R&D intensities and their percentages of equity ownership in international joint ventures (IJVs). Transaction cost economics (TCE) suggests a positive relationship between MNC R&D intensity and IJV equity ownership, but this relationship has not been confirmed consistently in prior research. We examine the moderating effects of CEO compensation and tenure on the relationship between MNC R&D intensity and IJV equity ownership, thereby bringing more nuanced explanations from agency theory and upper echelons theory into the discussion. Our proposed relationships were tested using a sample of 202 IJVs formed between U.S. MNCs and foreign partners in high-tech industries for the period 1993 to 2003. We found an overall positive relationship between MNC R&D intensity and the percentage of equity ownership in IJVs. Moreover, CEO tenure and bonus compensation each weaken the positive R&D intensity-equity ownership relationship in our sample, while CEO stock options compensation amplifies it. These findings indicate that CEO compensation and tenure influence decision making about equity ownership in IJVs, suggesting that scholars and boards of directors should consider these CEO-related factors when evaluating strategic decisions regarding IJVs.