EIBA-zine - Issue No. 6 - November 2009

1. Letter of the EIBA President

   1. From the President 2009, Jose Pla Barber 

      

      Dear Colleagues,

      As President of EIBA, I am delighted to welcome you to the 35th EIBA Annual Conference hosted by the Faculty of Economics at the University of Valencia, Spain from the 13th to the 15th of December 2009.
      
      This year’s conference theme is “Reshaping the boundaries of the firm in an era of global interdependence”. Boundaries of the firm are increasingly porous. Questions such as which activities should be conducted “inside” or “outside” the firm, which activities should be done “local” or “abroad” and which activities should be done “alone” or with “other” firms have become urgent in today’s business context. New organizational forms, such as inter-firm networks, global strategic alliances, alliances with NGOs, cross-border mergers and acquisitions, franchising organizations, offshoring/outsourcing structures, international new ventures, international entrepreneurs and on-line communities, frame a broader picture and force researchers towards a new reconceptualization of the role and scope of international firms in this era of global connectivity. New thinking concerning the ways in which these international firms configure themselves internally to coordinate and control their different units and develop organizational learning capabilities extend the reach of previous more traditional research. Moreover, the manner by which these firms interact with their local environment and the perceived social and environmental consequences of their actions force a much more complex set of relationships across firms, governments and societies.
      
      We are extremely proud of the response to the Call for papers, as we received 408 submissions, most probably the highest number in the history of EIBA’s annual conferences. The selection of the submitted proposals and the organization of the reviewing process was a challenging task requiring a tremendous amount of work by the track chairsleaders. Therefore, express our special gratitude to Gabriel R. G. Benito (BI-Norwegian School of Management), Esther Sánchez-Peinado (University of Valencia), Ulf Andersson (Copenhagen Business School), Alex Rialp (Autonomous University of Barcelona), Bent Petersen (Copenhagen Business School), Jaime Bonache (Cranfield Management School), Ram Mudambi (Temple University), Esteban Garcia-Canal. (University of Oviedo), Rebecca Piekkari (Helsinki School of Economics) and Xose H. Vázquez (University of Vigo).
      
      During the first day of the conference we will have the doctoral tutorial and a plenary session as a tribute to John Dunning and dedicated to his International Business legacy. This session will feature six distinguished IB scholars including Klaus Macharzina and Danny Van Den Buckley as co-chairs, John Cantwell, Peter Buckley, Sarianna Lundan and Seev Hirsch. A second plenary session, organised by Danny Van Den Bulckly, will be held in honour of Prof. Yves Doz. This session will discuss one of the main issues of this year’s theme: Strategic Alliances and Strategic Control in Multinational Enterprises. Five prominent scholars will take part: Yvez Doz, Mats Forsgren, John Hagedoorn, Torben Pedersen and Alain Verbeke. Two interesting semi-plenary sessions will be organised by Örjan Sölvell and Juan J. Durán to cover respectively new research and practical topics. During the Gunnar Hedlund award session the shortlisted students will present their doctoral thesis. The more practical session will deal with the experience of some leading Spanish Multinationals. Together with these plenary and semi plenary sessions, the presentation of 278 interesting papers have been selected for presentation from the more than four hundred submitted ones. The core of the conference will configure 146 competitive papers and 132 workshop papers. There also are sixty posters.

      The venue of the conference will be ADEIT (Fundación Universidad-Empresa), located in the heart of Valencia's historic downtown. For further details on the academic and social conference program, accommodation and other practical information please visit the conference web page at www.adeit.uv.es/eiba09/ . The conference website will be regularly updated.

      With your help, we aim to organise an academically and socially successful EIBA conference.

      Looking forward to seeing you in Valencia, I remain with very best regards.

      José Pla-Barber
      Professor, EIBA President 2009
       

2. Letter of the EIBA Chairman

   1. From the Chairman, Danny Van Den Bulcke 

      From the Bells of Tallinn to the ‘castanettes’ of Valencia
      
      Dear Colleagues,
      
      During the Spring Board meeting at the end of April, the Board members could already savour the many attractions of Valencia and get to know the team in charge of the scientific and social parts of the upcoming conference which will be the 35th in EIBA’s history. After almost two decades, 19 years to be precise, EIBA has (finally) returned to Spain. It was Juan José Duran who organized one of our memorable conferences in 1990 in Madrid.
      
      José Plà Barber, as EIBA President and teamleader, introduced us to the historic and modern aspects of his beautiful city, and also - during the late Spanish hours - to its many culinary delights. Valencia is known as the city of Arts and Science and has the largest cultural educational complex in Europe with its Science Museum, L’Hemisféric and L’Oceanografik. It will be more than worthwhile to spend a few extra days in Spain’s third largest city.
      
      The University of Valencia goes back to 1499. It is now a leading modern European university that covers almost every branch of teaching and research. It has about 45,000 students on three campuses and a teaching staff of 3,500. The Faculty of Economics counts 8,800 students and delivers 6 Official Degrees. For the venue of the conference José Pla Barber has opted for the Fundación Universidad-Empresa, which is located in the historical city centre, close to the historic buildings and monuments and most of the hotels.

      

      A break during the Spring Board meeting in Valencia

      Fifteen of the 23 National Representatives attended the Board meeting. Together with the chairman, the executive secretary Nicole Coopman, the editor of IBR Pervez Ghauri and the Dean of the Fellows Klaus Macharzina were also present.

      

      Our local hosts in Valencia

      From the Faculty of Economics of the University of Valencia José introduced the key members of his team, i.e. the Chair of the Academic Programme Joaquin Allegre and the Chair of the Social Programme Francisco Puig. Fidel Leon will act as the local liaison for the Doctoral Tutorial.
      
      As my term of office as chairman of EIBA will end after the Valencia conference, the Board already discussed the process of the selection of my successor and potential candidates. Another item on the agenda was the future venues for the EIBA conferences. With regard to the 2010 conference in Porto, Ana Teresa Tavares assured the Board members that she was making good progress. Meanwhile the location of the 2011 meeting in Bucharest was confirmed as King’s College, London had expressed a preference to host EIBA in 2012 rather than the year before. While my successor will not have to worry about the destinations of the EIBA conferences for the next three years, it remains important to decide on future venues as early as possible.
      
      When Elsevier decided to stop the publication of its many Book Series and to sell the rights to Emerald Publishing, also the EIBA Book Series ‘Progress in International Business Research’ changed publisher. However, contrarily to Elsevier, Emerald succeeded in publishing the third volume on time. As both Emerald and the organizers of the Tallinn conference were interested to produce a fourth volume, the Board accepted my proposal that I would step in as book editor until new book editors could be appointed.
      
      Although the Board members had known that John Dunning was seriously ill, his death at the beginning of the year was still a serious shock. Several proposals were made as to how best commemorate John’s memory. Some national representatives were in favour of a special award linked to the name of John Dunning. However, the ensuiing discussion showed that it would be difficult to establish such a prize without the necessary funding. Therefore, I took it on myself to come up with a proposal before the annual meeting in Valencia. For more information about how EIBA intends to commemorate our leading scholar, see the Special Edition of EIBA-zine November 2009: A Tribute to John Dunning.
      
      For those of you who were in Tallinn and enjoyed the performance of the “bell ringers” during the gala dinner (see the EIBA Photogallery of the Tallinn conference), the sounds in Valencia will be quite different and may very well be replaced by castanettes. Whatever the social programme in Valencia will be, I am very sure that it will be an unforgettable event. This year’s conference will be another illustration of the diversity in the cultural and scientific richness of the European countries that will also be reflected in many of our academic papers. To recognize and learn from this diversity is one of the strengths of our Academy.
       

3. Looking back at the Tallinn Conference 2008

   1. Report on the 34th EIBA Annual Conference in Tallinn 

      By Enn Listra, Conference Chair and Past President 2008

      Conference theme and panel sessions
      
      The 2008 conference theme was “International Business and Catching up Economies: Challenges and Opportunities” with the aim to facilitate scientific discussion on a wide variety of changes that are taking place in the catching up economies and its consequences for international business. In addition, other papers on the main topics of IB were welcome.

      The 34th EIBA Annual Conference was hosted by Tallinn School of Economics and Business Administration of Tallinn University of Technology and by the Tartu University and was held at the conference center Olümpia in Tallinn, Estonia. Scientific support was provided by Jorma Larimo from Vaasa University, Finland.

      The conference was organized from the 11th to the 13th of December 2006. The EIBA doctoral tutorial and board meeting were held the first day, 11th of December. The Opening Plenary Session, scheduled on December 11, addressed the main conference theme with the focus on Estonian developments. A presentation was given by Erkki Raasuke, CEO of the Swedbank Estonia.

      The EIBA Fellows Plenary Session (Friday, December 12, 15.30-17.00) was held on „The Nation State & the Global Corporation” organised by Seev Hirsch with the participation of Eli Hurvitz, Andres Sutt, Francesca Sanna-Randaccio and Louis T. Wells.
      
      Conference tracks

      1. International Business in Catching Up Economies (Emerging Markets)
         Chair: Matija Rojec, University of Ljubljana
      2. Internationalisation Process and International Entrepreneurship
         Chair: Niina Nummela, Turku School of Economics
      3. Knowledge Management in International Business
         Chair: Torben Pedersen, Copenhagen Business School
      4. Corporate Strategies in International Business
         Chair: Jorma Larimo, University of Vaasa
      5. Technology Development and Innovation
         Chair: Heinz Hollenstein, KOF Swiss Economic Institute, Zurich
      6. Human Resources Management
         Chair: Vesa Suutari, University of Vaasa and Ingmar Björkman, Swedish School of Economics
      7. International Marketing and Cross Cultural Issues in International Business
         Chair: Arnold Schuh, Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration
      8. International Finance and Accounting
         Chair: Lars Oxelheim, the Research Institute of Industrial Economics, IFN, Lund University
      9. Contemporary Issues of International Business Theory and Methodology
         Chair: Rebecca Piekkari, Helsinki School of Economics
      10. Foreign Investment, Trade and Policy Issues
          Chair: Christian Bellak, Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration
      11. Corporate Governance and Corporate Social Responsibility Issues
          Chair: Rob van Tulder, Erasmus University, Rotterdam

      A total of 234 papers and panels were submitted divided in 11 tracks of which 224 were accepted after review. The most successful track was “International Business in Catching Up Economies (Emerging Markets)” (Track 1) with 34 papers, closely followed by the track on “Internationalisation Process and International Entrepreneurship” (Track 2) and “Corporate Strategies in International Business“ (Track 4) each with 33 submitted papers. Least popular was the track on “International finance and accounting” (6 submitted papers).
      The submission and review process was facilitated by the electronic system used in earlier conferences. 226 colleagues signed up as reviewers. All of them used the electronic system.

      Table 1: Distribution of the accepted papers

      Tracks *	Nr Competitive	Nr Workshop	Total per track
      Track 1	15	12	34
      Track 2	15	14	33
      Track 3	11	10	24
      Track 4	17	12	33
      Track 5	7	6	14
      Track 6	6	8	17
      Track 7	8	11	21
      Track 8	4	2	6
      Track 9	6	3	10
      Track 10	9	4	17
      Track 11	7	6	15
      Total	105	88	224

      
      
      *Including Poster and Panel Submissions. Twenty posters were included in the programme.

      Participants
      The total number of registered participants was 254. The geographical distribution of the participants is shown in Table 2.

      Table 2: Distribution of participants per country

      Country	Nr registered participants	Country	Nr registered participants
      Australia	3	Italy	4
      Austria	9	Japan	1
      Belgium	6	Lithuania	1
      Brazil	9	Netherlands	6
      Canada	4	New Zealand	4
      Czech Republic	2	Norway	17
      Cyprus	1	Poland	6
      Denmark	9	Portugal	8
      Estonia	10	Romania	1
      Finland	39	Russia	1
      France	9	Slovenia	3
      Germany	21	Spain	11
      Greece	3	Sweden	17
      India	1	Switzerland	4
      Iraq	1	Taiwan	1
      Ireland	2	Turkey	1
      Israel	3	United Kingdom	31
      		United States	5
      Nr countries represented			35
      Total nr registered participants			254

      
      Awards
      Prizes were awarded during the Gala dinner on Saturday, December 13, i.e. Best Thesis Proposal Award, IMR Best International Marketing Paper Award, IJoEM Best Paper on Emerging Markets Award, IBR Best Paper of the Year Award, and the Distinguished EIBA Honorary Fellow of the Year Award.

      Dissemination
      The Conference was well covered by the media: articles on the conference were published in local newspapers and the University Bulletin and dispatches were sent to several press agencies. Also TV-interviews and a Radio interviews were given by the President, the Chairman and some other participants.

      Conclusion
      The overall cooperation between the two organising universities went smoothly. The biggest problem he had to cope with was the economic crisis. He lost quite a few sponsors after the crisis struck Estonia. Yet he still hoped to break even if Tallinn University would be willing to waive some invoices.
       

   2. Special Panel at the Tallinn Conference 2008 

      Special Panel organized on the occasion of the 50th Anniversary of the European Union
      at the Tallinn Conference 2008

      The European Union at Fifty:
      Contrasting Insider and Outsider Perspectives about the European Union and Foreign Direct Investment

      Co-chairs:
      John Dunning, University of Reading (excused because of illness) and
      Daniël Van Den Bulcke, University of Antwerp
      
      Members:
      Tamar Almor, College of Management of Israël
      Gabriel Benito, BI Norwegian School of Management
      Fabienne Fortanier, University of Amsterdam
      Vitor Corado Simoes, ISEG, Technical University of Lisbon
      
      The panel concentrated on the foreign direct investment (FDI) trends and the regulatory issues on Multinational Enterprises of the European Union (EU). While both inward and outward investment and disinvestment from the EU countries were dealt with, the developments during fifty years were analysed both from the inside and the outside, i.e. by panel members who represented the views from member countries and non-member countries.

      John Dunning’s seminal book ‘American Investment in the British Manufacturing Industry’ which was published in the year that the EU got started, offered an opportunity to look back at the role of US Multinationals in Britain and the European Union and to find out to what extent the challenges, on the one hand for European and other enterprises and on the other hand for EU host and home countries changed compared to half a cenntury ago.

      During its 50 years of existence the European Union has expanded from 6 to 27 countries. The widening of the EU occurred in six waves, of which the most important ones (Britain and Scandinavian countries, Southern Europe, East and Central Europe) had important consequences for both inward and outward investors.
      
      The effects of those territorial extensions for inward FDI, disinvestment and outward investment were taken into consideration in presentations about both the newest member Countries, Southern Europe and the original founding nations. While the EU has attracted investment from outsiders such as the US, Japan and more recently from emerging countries such as China and India, the European Union, together with its member countries, tried to encourage and facilitate outward investment.
      
      The panel discussed the EU’s investment policy and presence from different perspectives, i.e. from a member of the founding countries (The Netherlands) , from countries that joined later (UK and Portugal), from a country that decided not to join (Norway) or from outsiders, such as the Mediterranean countries (Israel) and the newly emerging economies (China). The panel also covered different generations as it is composed of members who experienced the start of the EU during their student years and those who were born during its existence.

       

4. EIBA's Doctoral Tutorial 2008

   1. EIBA's Doctoral Tutorial 2008 

      By Danny Van Den Bulcke, EIBA Chairman

      Marion Hebbelynck of EIASM, who takes care of the administrative side of EIBA’s Doctoral Turorial, received 39 applications for the 2008 Tallinn consortium. In fact there were 38 candidates as one applicant had already a Ph.D !! Evidently it did not make much sense to invite someone for a contest for the Best Doctoral Thesis Project when he had obtained the degree.

      Students with 24 different nationalities had sent in their applications. Twenty one of the students were Europeans, while ten came from Asia, two from Oceania (Australia and New Zealand), and one each from South America and Africa. Within Europe, Western Europe was represented with nine doctoral students, compared to four for Northern Europe, and two each for Southern Europe and Great Britain. Interestingly two students came from the Baltic countries and one from the Balkan. The European batch was dominated by Germany with six students and Finland by four. The Asian group was quite diversified as there were candidates from China, Taiwan, India, Pakistan, Indonesia, and Malaysia.

      A look at the country of study also results in a high number as 19 different countries were counted. Great Britain remains on top as a preferred country of destination for doctoral studies with eight students, ahead of Finland and Germany, which respectively hosted six and five doctoral students. In total twenty four students had opted for universities in continental Europe, of which Western Europe and Northern European institutions took in respectively ten and eight Ph.D students. Somewhat surprisingly nineteen of the students, that is almost half, prepared their thesis in their country of origin. This seems to be a higher proportion than in previous years and might indicate a decline in mobility of doctoral students.

      

      The selected Ph.D students in Tallinn

      Regretfully only about ten students could be invited to come to Tallinn to defend their thesis project before the Faculty co-chaired by Udo Zander and John Cantwell and as members, Ulf Andersson, Francesca Sanna Randacio, Jean-François Hennart and Lucia Piscitello. Two members of the Faculty could not attend the meeting in Tallinn, but had sent in their remarks beforehand to allow their colleagues to put them to the students.

      

      The Faculty of the Tutorial in Tallinn

      Of the ten selected students seven were Europeans, while the three others originated from Asia and Oceania. Within the European group two came from a Northern country, compared to two each for South and West Europe. With regard to the countries where they carried out their doctoral studies the distribution was only slightly different, i.e. Great Britain one, North Europe three, West Europe three, and South Europe one. One of the Non- Europeans studied in North America, while another one did so in Oceania.

      That only one out of four applicants could be invited to come to the conference venue to introduce the thesis project is a problem the EIBA Board is well aware of. Yet, it has not been possible to open up the Tutorial to more students, while at the same time maintaining the existing system, which allows to give a lot of feedback to the participating students and is one of the strenghts of the EIBA Tutorial.

       

   2. Impressions from the Winner of the Best Thesis Proposal 

      By Pooja Thakur, Ph.D Candidate Rutgers University
      
      EIBA’s 23rd doctoral tutorial was held on 11th December 2008 in the beautiful city of Tallinn. This year the tutorial administration received thirty-nine applications of which ten students were invited to present their doctoral proposals. One of the participants could not make it to the conference and so in the end there were only nine participating Ph.D candidates.

      Although the doctoral tutorial officially started on the eleventh, we had an informal dinner the night before which gave us an opportunity to meet the faculty and the other participants. I thought this was an excellent way to break the ice and made us more comfortable while presenting the next day. We started early the following day with the presentations that were interjected with breaks at regular intervals. Each of the doctoral students made presentations that lasted around twenty minutes and this was followed by feedback from the faculty that were also for twenty minutes.

      We had five faculty members on the panel who are prolific researchers and well respected within the international business community. The faculty had thoroughly read our extended abstracts and gave us detailed and very useful feedback. The one thing that amazed me was that the quality of feedback given to the last student presenter was as good as that given to the first. Inspite of the highly productive yet long and tiring day, our faculty never lost focus or patience. One of the faculty members was unable to attend the doctoral tutorial due to poor weather conditions and even she emailed us her suggestions. We saw this as a commitment of the faculty and we all greatly appreciate their help.
      
      Due to the high selective application process, all the proposals presented during the tutorial were of extremely high quality. All the participants were very well prepared and had some unique dissertation topics. We quickly became friends and even went out for a celebratory dinner after the doctoral tutorial. We also hung out together during the rest of the conference and even managed to sneak in some trips to the lovely Old Town.

      The award for the Best Doctoral Thesis Proposal was announced at the Gala dinner and I can say that I was genuinely surprised when I was told that I had won. All the other participants had such good presentations that I was convinced that I was not going to win. It was a very close contest and I am thankful to the faculty panel for considering me and selecting me for this award. Thank you Prof. Danny Van Den Bulcke and EIBA for having lauched the doctoral tutorial more than twenty years ago and having made sure that it was organized for the twenty third time in Tallinn.
      
      I would also like to take this opportunity to thank my advisor Prof. Farok Contractor and my dissertation committee members: Prof. John Cantwell, Prof. Michelle Gittelman and Dr. Mark Bach.
      
      As I pen up I would like to thank everyone involved in this tutorial. I made some good friends and also learnt a lot from the leading scholars in our field. I would highly recommend this doctoral tutorial to all the doctoral students.
       

5. EIBA Fellows

   1. Changing of the Guards - A message from the Dean of the EIBA Fellows, Klaus Macharzina 

      There is good news; since my term as Dean will be ending with this year´s annual meeting in Valencia, the Fellows had to elect a new Dean – a task which has been successfully accomplished under the guidance of our Secretary/Treasurer. I will be pleased to hand over to my successor, Professor Daniel Van den Bulcke, at that meeting hoping that he will find “the house in order”.
      
      Looking back to our Fribourg meeting in 2006 where I was honored to be inducted by my predecessor and Foundation Dean, Professor John H. Dunning, time has been flying so fast as if it had been yesterday. In spite of this, during the past three years I think the Fellows were able to help further develop our scholarly field in teaching, education, research and outreach into the real world of International Business and Management, and to accomplish some tasks with a view of supporting EIBA, in particular our group of upcoming young researchers. Apart from individual activities of the Fellows a number of instruments have been established towards these aims, first and foremost the “Fellows Session” at our annual conference.

      In Catania 2007 the topic of this session was “International Corporate Governance”, chaired by the Dean, and Professors Shirley Daniel, University of Hawaii, Lars Oxelheim, Lund University, and Marjan Svetlicic, University of Ljubljana as panel members. In Tallinn 2008 the topic was “The Nation State and the Global Corporation”, chaired by Professor Seev Hirsch, Tel Aviv University, and Mr. Eli Hurvitz, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries, Israel, Mr. Andres Sutt, Bank of Estonia, and Professors Francesca Sanna-Randaccio, University of Rome, and Lou Wells, Harvard University as panel members. In Valencia 2009 the session will be in memory of, and dedicated as a tribute to John H. Dunning and his Legacy in International Business, co-chaired by the (outgoing and incoming) Deans, and Professors Peter Buckley, University of Leeds, John Cantwell, Rutgers University, Seev Hirsch, Tel Aviv University, and Sarianna Lundan, University of Maastricht as panel members.

      A special mention should be given to the EIBA Fellows showcase on “The European Union at Fifty”, presented at the 50th anniversary meeting of the AIB in Milano 2008. This session was initiated by Professor John Cantwell, Rutgers University, and organized by Professor Daniel Van den Bulcke, University of Antwerp, with Professors John H. Dunning, University of Reading and Rutgers University, Juan Duran Herrera, Universidad Autonoma Madrid, Marjan Svetlicic, University of Ljubljana, and Vitor Corrado Simoes, Universidade Técnica de Lisboa as panel members.
      
      A major instrument to support our young researchers is the “EIBA Fellows Award to a Promising Young Researcher”. This award has been sponsored for the second time by the German Wandel & Goltermann Foundation. In 2008 Dr. Jonas Puck had been selected from among a number of very good applications from all over Europe and one from the U.S. The purpose of the award is to help broaden the research program of young scholars, to widen their network of research contacts and to open opportunities to engage in international research collaboration at an early stage of their academic careers. The prize money amounts to € 15,000 which the awardee has used for his project on “The normative value of TC economics and institutional theory for IJV to WFOE conversions in the Peoples Republic of China”.

      As an innovation Dr. Puck had successfully applied for an Award Recipient Panel at last year´s EIBA conference in Tallinn on the topic of “Theoretical perspectives and empirical evidence on post-entry ownership changes”, including himself and Professors Macharzina, Hennart, Ambos and Holtbrügge as panelists. It should be noted that Dr. Puck had been offered a professorship shortly after receiving the award, as was the case with our first awardee in 2005, Dr. Jahan Peerally, who took up an Assistant Professorship at Montreal. Professor Puck now teaches as a full professor at the Economics and Business University, Vienna. He has recently completed the final report about his project of which you will find a short summary in this newsletter. Should anyone be interested to obtain the long version Professor Puck (Jonas.Puck@wu.ac.at) no doubt will be happy to submit a copy.

      In order to make EIBA more known and visible, and to improve the interaction with the real world of International Business and Management the Fellows have been electing honorary members from academia, business, government, politics and other societal institutions since 2005. In the last three years Dr. DeAnne Julius of Chatham House, The Royal Institute of International Affairs, United Kingdom, Mr. Eli Hurvitz of Teva Pharmaceutical Industries, Israel, and most recently Drs. Neelie Kroes, European Commissioner of Competition, have been elected to this illustrious group, preceded by Mr. Jorma Olila of Nokia, Finland, and Dr. Karl Sauvant, formerly with UNCTAD, no at Columbia University, who were elected in 2005 and 2006, respectively. The announcement of our new Honorary Distinguished EIBA Fellow of 2009 has been included in this newsletter.

      Finally, we also have taken care of ourselves in further developing our group by adding new forces with fresh engagement and innovative ideas. Over the last three years five new Fellows were elected, including Professors Jean-Francois Hennart and Marjan Svetlicic in 2007, Pervez Ghauri and Örjan Sölvell in 2008, and Sarianna Lundan in 2009, which makes for a total of 18 EIBA Fellows at present. The most rewarding element of my tenure as Dean was the felt colleagiality among our group, in particular as regards the close and delightful interaction with our Foundation Dean, Professor John H. Dunning, OBE, who forged the development of the body of the Fellows in a distinct manner.
      
      Needless to say, that his passing away in the beginning of this year marked the most saddening incidence during my term of office. Professor John Cantwell has kindly agreed to prepare the obituary for this newsletter on behalf of the Fellows.

      The most influential scholar in international business, John Dunning has been our great mentor. His legacy is not only linked to the leadership in establishing and developing IB from an economist´s standpoint but rather to his forward-looking programmatic approach in positioning it as an interdisciplinary field of study in his late works. He presented this program for the future IB research agenda in a paper which I had invited him to prepare as keynote address for the VIIIth World Congress of the “International Federation of Scholarly Associations of Management (IFSAM)” in Berlin in October 2006, and for which he chose the title “A New Zeitgeist for International Business Activity and Scholarship”. It is in this spirit of the new zeitgeist that we will keep up his memory, now and in the future, with respect to the sharpness of his thought, the brilliance of his word, the nobleness of his mind, and the kindness of his behavior.
      
      In closing I would like to thank all of the Fellows for their support, cooperation and friendship, in particular I thank Professors John Cantwell and Vitor Corrado Simoes for having served as Secretary/Treasurer with enthusiasm and distinction. My best wishes for a successful tenure go to the new Dean, Professor Daniel Van den Bulcke.
       

   2. 2nd EIBA Fellows Research Award: Jonas Puck 

      In March 2008 I applied for the EIBA Fellows Research award. By that time, I was a Lecturer of International Management at the Department of International Management, University of Erlangen-Nuremberg and was pursuing my postdoctoral qualification. In June I received an email from Prof. Macharzina, Dean of the EIBA Fellows, stating that I was the recipient of the award. I will never forget the moment I fully understood the content of this Email. To me, receiving the award was not only a great and unexpected honor but also a great chance for my career in the field.

      The title of my project is “The normative value of transaction cost economics and institutional theory for IJV to WFOE conversions in the People’s Republic of China (PRC)” and is an extension of a previous project that I conducted with Dirk Holtbrügge (Nuremberg) and Alex Mohr (Bradford). In this previous project we analyzed factors that influence post-entry ownership changes. We found that, while a large body of research has dealt with entry mode choice in general and foreign firms entering the PRC in particular, there has, until recently, been comparatively little interest in the change of an IJV into a WFOES and in factors that lead firms to change their ownership mode in foreign markets after entry. As a result, we came up with an empirically tested model of ownership changes. However, the normative value of the model had not been tested by then. Doing so is the aim of my project that I’m conducting in cooperation with the Bradford School of Management and with support of the EIBA-Fellows Research Award funding. By now, I’ve finished my visits in China and England and am about to finish my work on the questionnaire. Even though there are still a number of hurdles to take, I’m personally happy about the progress of my project.

      During my work on the project, I was able to strengthen my network within the research community. I conducted a Panel at the 2008 EIBA Conference in Tallinn and am still thankful for the agreement to participate of a number of established researchers in the field (Bjoern Ambos, Jean-Francois Hennart, Dirk Holtbrügge, Klaus Macharzina, Hafiz Mirza, Alex Mohr). I perceived the panel as very stimulating for my project and believe it might be worthwhile for future awardees to do the same. During my project, I furthermore came in contact with Gerald Yong Gao (University of Missouri) and Dean Xu (Hong Kong University) who are working on a similar project using a real options perspective and we now agreed to cooperate with our projects. In addition, I had a number of interesting discussions with practitioners during my journeys and held two project-related seminars that will be very fruitful for future research.

      I want to repeat my thanks to the EIBA Fellows and the Wandel and Goltermann Foundation for the creation and funding of the award. Even though I’ve not yet finished the project, I believe the award has strongly affected my life as a researcher. I believe it is a great tool to support young researchers in many ways. The award contributed to my network, my project management skills, and last but not least to my career as I’m now a Full Professor of International Business at WU Vienna.
       

   3. Distinguished Honorary EIBA Fellow 2008: Eli Hurvitz, Chairman of Teva 

      Introducing Teva – Ten key facts:

      1. We are older than our Nation State - which is only 60 years old. At Teva we have already celebrated our 100th anniversary. The company was established in Israel in 1901;
          
      2. Teva's Market Cap has increased from $200 million in 1987 to almost $35 billion- before Barr!
          
      3. Sales have grown from $90 million in 1985 to over $12 billion in 2008!!
          
      4. World’s largest generic pharmaceutical company - Teva is Number One - with its market share in the US increasing from 8% in 1997 to over 21% in 2008;
          
      5. Strategy of Leadership and focused strategic geographic growth;
          
      6. Generic market position achieved by starting in the US in 1985, through internal growth and a series of mergers, with Biocraft, Copley, Sicor, Ivax, and soon Barr as well as Berk, Biogal and Biochemie in Europe. Very recently a JV was started up in Japan. All these M&As are examples of a focused step by step geographic growth strategy;
          
      7. In 1985 Teva employed 1700 people worldwide. Only 400 of these employees were located outside of Israel. In 2008 the company operated in over 60 countries and its global employment reached 30,000 people;
          
      8. API- global production ability and capability backward (and forward) integration;
          
      9. Strong R&D and strategic use of local science and academic resources as a unique relative advantage;
          
      10. Innovative- branded portfolio- Israel's first innovative drug- Copaxone the world's largest selling treatment for Multiple Sclerosis.

      Company Overview
      Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. is a global pharmaceutical company specializing in the development, production and marketing of generic and proprietary branded pharmaceuticals and active pharmaceutical ingredients. Teva is among the top 20 pharmaceutical companies and among the largest generic pharmaceutical companies in the world.
      With more than a century of experience in the healthcare industry, Teva enjoys a firmly established international presence, operating through a carefully tailored network of worldwide subsidiaries. Headquartered in Israel, 80% of Teva's sales, which totaled US$9.4 billion in 2007, are in North America and Europe. Teva has almost 30,000 employees worldwide and production facilities in Israel, North America, Europe and Latin America.

      Teva is among the most traded shares on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange and among the most widely held Israeli shares on NASDAQ. It is also traded on Seaq International in London and the Frankfurt Stock Exchange.

      The Nation State and the Global Corporation

      Opening statement of Eli Hurvitz, Chairman of Teva during the Fellows’ Panel in Tallinn

      “As I have been asked to open the discussion on the panel’s theme entitled “The Nation State and the Global Corporation", it might be useful to start with a brief description of my background, so that you may better understand my views on this subject.
      
      I am Chairman of the board of Teva Pharmaceutical Industries ltd, the world's largest generic pharmaceutical company. I have had the honor of serving as the CEO of this company for over 25 years, and as chairman for the last 7 years.

      Teva is the largest public company in Israel, as well as the world’s leading producer of generic pharmaceuticals. We believe that we may be Israel's first truly multinational company. Teva has had a successful history of using a highly focused approach and did not try to operate as a conglomerate. With revenues growing from $91 million in 1985 to over $12 billion in 2008, Teva has bred its own class of professional managers and scientists. We are proud to have served as a bridge from Israeli science to the market and having been an important source of talent and capital for Israel's growing biotechnology sector.

      I have been asked many times what it means to be a global corporation. I hope that I have been always consistent in my reply. Teva, as a corporation registered and incorporated in Israel, was and remains an Israeli multinational company. International and global ownership, with shares registered on multiple foreign stock exchanges are actually irrelevant to Teva's corporate identity - or as my colleagues in the industry are prone to say - to Teva's "DNA". Global operations, global sales, global commerce, all of these dimensions do not negate the national identity of a corporation. Cross border cooperation, transfers, sales, joint R&D, streamlined production, etc. do not contradict - and indeed may even be seen to complement - the national identity of any given global corporation.

      Let me jump ahead with an example or two to try and emphasize my point. Does anyone question Coca Cola being an American company? Notwithstanding its worldwide success, does anyone really consider Sony to be anything other than Japanese? Is Nokia anything other than Finnish notwithstanding their global activities? IBM? Microsoft? The list is much longer than those examples. Many companies have succeeded on a global basis - many dominate their industry. Their success around the globe is undisputable. Yet each of these corporations has its own identity, the combination of many factors, one of which is its national identity.

      In the 1980s we were a local Israeli corporation that also operated in Africa, and a producer of raw materials for the generic pharma industry. We wanted to move ahead, however. We knew that if we had been located in a large country, in a large market with the same market share that we had at home, with the pharmaceutical knowledge and experience that we had acquired –we could have been a one billion dollar company. Yet, we dreamed only of reaching a level of sales of US$ 100 million.

      We developed in essence an in-house executive program- not unlike the one that is run at the Harvard business School, and we decided that in order to grow, we must reach out to foreign markets. We studied the markets of Western Europe and the United States. When we saw that Europe was - and still remains - splintered as a pharmaceutical market we decided to focus on the United States with a so-called three prong strategy of Generics, Specialty Generics and Innovative Products. We determined the Critical Success Factors ((CSF) that at the time were revolutionary and preceded later developments in the innovative pharma market place. We decided that in innovative products we would only develop products based on academic research carried out in local Israeli institutions, but already then, we saw our core business as Generics.

      We built a flexible organization; we formed over one hundred ad hoc groups together with employees and managers, outside consultants and experts. We reviewed processes tackled each and every topic in production, QA, QC, etc. – from how to wear the sterile clothing thru the protocol for checking raw materials, active ingredients, etc. We changed the culture of our production dramatically (and learned interesting lessons on corporate culture through this experience) and in 1985 entered the US market. We set ourselves the goal of being among the leaders in generics, which later was developed further into our current strategy of leadership.

      At a Financial Times Conference in London in the late 1980s where the "traditional" industry members met, and the topic was the growth through mergers, I was the only speaker representing the "small" generic companies in the industry at the time, and my topic was how a small company can survive in a world of giants. I started by saying that the answer was simple-and consisted only of two words - Be Big. I stressed that if you come from a small country that does not yet have its own wealth resources, and you have opted for a growth strategy, you must achieve leadership in one of your CSF and cultivate and nurture your inherent traits and culture, and motivate your employees that “we too can be BIG”. We can be better since in generics - where the price is all that matters – and being better than your competitors in generics always comes down to pricing. If you are better on each line item of your P&L statements - you will succeed!

      When we consulted our experts and asked them what would happen when the Chinese would enter our markets, we had heated discussions. Yet, we remembered the advice from our management professors who told us that if you have an advantage you have to use it to the utmost and be even better. When you have a disadvantage, you need to make it irrelevant. We translated this into "generic" language – and made it clear that our price was always the lowest – and as it is a non issue, we now could concentrate on the rest, i.e. – supply system, quantities, etc. Our price adjustment system was automatic- we always met the competition’s lowest price- current and future.

      We come from a small country with a small but very diverse market. Honing our skills in this small market, identifying our strengths and weaknesses has enabled us to expand on a global basis. Yet, we remain who we are, and who we want to be. Our culture was developed and flourished in places that often tried to extinguish it, perhaps helping our ability to thrive under difficult conditions, not to give up, to pursue our goals, yet not forget who we are or where we came from. We merged with many companies and in each merger learned new things from our partners. We learned to respect different cultures and even in difficult issues such as dismissing redundant employees in Hungary, where we had acquired a communist state owned pharmaceutical manufacturer whose management was practically appointed by the communist party, we succeeded to obtain the consent and agreement of the local and national authorities to reduce the workforce by over 700 employees. We dealt directly with the employees, helped them seek other employment, and supported some of them to start their own small businesses. Today we have around 5000 employees in Hungary and they are among the best and brightest employees we have.

      Being Israeli means to me a degree of involvement and identification with the common cause, the task at hand that goes way beyond the call of duty. A commitment to strategy, to goals that are infectious is what is needed. Many of the managers and employees in the companies that we have acquired over the years on different continents have told us that our enthusiastic involvement and commitment has been inspiring to them.

      Of course, our cultural background - as I have learned over the years while being at the helm of Teva – had "drawbacks" as well. Our inherent lack of discipline, of questioning authority, of “knowing better” is factors that can be acquired elsewhere, and with determination can be overcome. Indeed, at each of Teva's manufacturing plants there exists a similar culture, open, direct and transparent, not overly formal, with local management.

      We have learned from our experience that small can be good, and that small can even be excellent. When one focuses on the real advantages - utilizing size when possible - corporations can achieve their goals, globally, while maintaining their true identity. I believe it's always important to maintain one's national identity.

      We strongly believe that these characteristics are at the basis of our success and our current market position. We have maintained this positiion by keeping the corporate headquarters at home and by striving to lead by example and by consensus with the best values both from our partners and from Israel. This is reflected in what could be seen as complex organizational matrices, aimed at coordinating that what needs to be done but keeping the local culture and customs as they are. After all, this means working with the locals instead of against them”.

      

       

      Eli Hurvitz with the Dean of the Fellows and the EIBA Chairman

       

   4. New Honorary Distinguished EIBA Fellow of 2009: Neelie Kroes, EU Commission 

      By Klaus Macharzina, Dean of EIBA Fellows

      On behalf of the EIBA Fellows I am pleased to announce that Neelie Kroes, European Commissioner of Competition has been elected Honorary Distinguished EIBA Fellow for the year 2009. This is only the fifth year the award has been confered. In 2005 we elected Mr. Jorma Olila of Nokia, in 2006 Dr. Karl Sauvant, formerly with UNCTAD, now at Columbia University, New York, in 2007 Dr. DeAnne Julius, formerly with Chatham House, The Royal Institute of International Affairs, London, and in 2008 Mr. Eli Hurvitz of Teva Pharmaceutical Industries, Israel. This year we will, however, not be able to follow our usual policy of inducting the new Fellow at our annual Gala Dinner because Mrs. Kroes cannot come to Valencia due to other obligations. The Fellows have agreed to award her the Honorary Fellow at our annual meeting in Porto. So she will hopefully be able to follow my invitation - which she has accepted - to attend our Porto Gala Dinner in 2010, in order to receive the award, and speak to us in person.

      Mrs. Kroes was a Member of Parliament in the Netherlands for the People´s Party of Freedom and Democracy from 1971 – 1977, and again from 1981 – 1982. In 1977 she was appointed State Secretary for Transport, Public Works and Water Management, an office which she served until 1981, and again from 1982 – 1989, this time as Minister. Thereafter, she joined the Rotterdam Chamber of Commerce and served on a number of boards of companies such as Ballast Nedam, ABP-PGGM Capital Holdings N.V., NI Bank, McDonald´s Netherlands, Nedlloyd, Nederlandse Spoorwegen, and Lucent Technologies. In 1991 she was appointed Chairperson of Nyenrode University, and in 2004 to her present office
      .
      She studied Economics at Erasmus University in Rotterdam from which she received her MSc. in Economics and her Drs. (doctorandes) research degree. She also has an honorary doctorate from the University of Hull. In the “extra mural” dimension she has been serving in many cultural and social organizations. She is a Knight of the Order of the Netherlands Lion, and a Grand Officer of the Order of Orange-Nassau. In 1993 she was awarded the International Road Federation Man (!) of the Year, and she placed medium ranks in the Forbes Magazine´s List of The World´s 100 Most Powerful Women several times. A daughter of a Dutch heavy transportation entrepreneur she has the nickname “Steely Neelie” but her credo apparently extends to “open standards” and “open source”.
      We are looking forward to having the honor of meeting Mrs. Kroes in Porto in December 2010 and to offering her our warmest congratulations on the Award.

       

6. EIBA Awards

   1. Winners of the EIBA Awards 2008 

      Copenhagen Prize
      Henrik Dellestrand & Philip Kappen, Uppsala University, Sweden
      "Headquarter allocation of resources to intra-MNE transfer projects"

      IMR International Marketing Award
      Claude Obadia, Advancia-Negocia, France & Irena Vida, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia & James Reardon, University of Northern Carolina, U.S.A.
      "Revisiting importers' roles in export performance models"

      

      Irene Vida and Claude Obadia with Martyn Lawrence from Emerald

      International Journal of Emerging Markets
      Churu Lin & Elizabeth L. Rose, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand & Peter Zettinig, Turku School of Economics, Finland
      "Internationalisation patterns of Chinese entrepreneurial firms"

      IBR Best Paper of the Year Award
      Xuefei Ma & Andrew Delios, National University of Singapore
      "A new tale of two cities: Japanese FDIs in Shanghai and Beijing, 1979 - 2003"

      Best Doctoral Thesis Proposal Award
      Pooja Thakur, Rutgers University, U.S.A.
      "Externalisation of Core Activities and their Geographical Coverage: In-House versus Offshoring versus Outsourcing of Clinical Trials"
      
      AND
      
      The fourth Distinguished EIBA Honorary Fellows Award was handed over in 2008 to Eli Hurvitz, CEO of Teva Company.
       

   2. Copenhagen Prize Winner: Henrik Dellestrand 

      Reflections from the 2008 EIBA Conference in Tallinn

      The conference in Tallinn was the second EIBA conference that I attended and I was quite busy during this conference, attending the doctorial consortium, having two papers accepted and attending different sessions. All good fun and looking back at the conference I have to say that all the late hours spent at the office was indeed worth it. You get to meet new and old friends and colleagues, get feedback on your own work and hopefully also get some good ideas attending other people’s presentations.

      I arrived in a snowy Tallinn on a Wednesday evening, attending a pre-conference dinner together with the other participants in the Doctorial Tutorial. This provided an opportunity for the faculty and the Ph.D students to get to know each other before the tutorial started. It was really relaxed and everyone was friendly, with a little bit of anticipation in the air from the students’ side for the upcoming event. I had been talking to some friends of mine whom previously had participated in the tutorial, and their take on the tutorial was that it was tough but really good for the progress of the thesis work.

      The tutorial started early Thursday morning and I was the second student to present my work. I think it went quite well, and indeed it was worth it. I got really good feedback, it was tough but really constructive and I have really benefited from the comments and suggestions given by the panel of professors. The day progressed with presentations dealing with a wide variety of IB topics. So, by attending, I did not only get excellent feedback on my own research, I also got a comprehensive overview of what other people were doing, and I could relate the feedback my fellow Ph.D students received to my own work as well. Throughout the conference, the participants at the doctorial tutorial met up for informal lunches and a dinner as well as drinks and this made the conference even more fun. I think every Ph.D student should apply for and try to participate in this type of event; it is beneficial both in terms of building networks but also for the high quality feedback received.

      After an exhausting day it was time for the conference to officially start and I met up with friends from all over Europe, catching up with them since last time we met, identifying possible interesting sessions as well as coordinating schedules. Out of my two papers accepted for the conference, I had managed to convince one of my co-authors to present one. This was a Friday morning session, but a decent crowd turned up and the session turned out to be really good. We got good feedback from the session participants and the other papers presented were really interesting. My colleague and I walked away from this morning session satisfied, with new ideas for a paper spurred by the other presentations. Later I presented the second paper accepted for the conference with one of my co-authors in the audience. This session went well. After the conference, we have been able to (hopefully) develop the papers even further based on comments, both from session participants and reviewer comments received before the conference.

      The conference ended with a big gala dinner at the Estonia Concert Hall. The setting of this dinner was wonderful with nice food, drinks and entertainment. The people attending the doctorial consortium were speculating on who was going to be singled out as having the most promising thesis proposal. We all sat at the same table, talking about the conference - and enjoying a few drinks as well - when I was approached by the chairman of the EIBA board, Danny Van Den Bulcke. Danny informed me that I was not the one who was going to get the award, it was instead going to Pooja Thakur from Rutgers University (congratulations again Pooja, it was well deserved), although Danny told me to be ready anyway since I was going to get a best reviewer award! This was indeed good news since I believe it to be a very nice recognition for the important work of reviewing, a task I think should be taken seriously. Just moments later I was then approached by Torben Pedersen from Copenhagen Business School. Knowing Torben from the Nordic Research School of International Business for PhD Students (Nord-IB) I thought he just wanted to engage in some small talk. Imagine my surprise when Torben told me that one of my papers, co-authored with another PhD student from Uppsala Philip Kappen, had been singled out for the Copenhagen Prize! When I told Philip about this he did not believe me. However, it turned out to be true. This was great, Philip and I had been working hard on the paper together, but we were not sure what other people thought of it, but this was some sort of confirmation that our ideas worked. It turned out to be a night of celebration that continued well past midnight. On the plane back home to Sweden the following day, besides being a bit tired, I was also keen on continuing to work on my old and new ideas, inspired by what had been taking place at the EIBA conference in Tallinn.

       

      Henrik Dellestrand and Philip Kappen with Torben Pedersen from CBS

7. Events

   1. Sanjaya Lall Visiting Professorship in Business and Development at Oxford University 

      by Francesca Sanna-Randaccio, University of Rome 'La Sapienza'

      An important initiative to keep alive the memory of Sanjaya Lall was recently undertaken at Oxford University, by establishing the Sanjaya Lall Visiting Professorship in Business and Development at the Saïd Business School. The first visiting professor will be appointed in 2010. Initial funding for the professorship is made available by the Sanjaya Lall Memorial Fund, following substantial fundraising efforts made by Mrs Rani Lall ( see Oxford University Gazzette 30 July 2009: University Acts).
      
      Sanjaya Lall was a prodigiously productive and innovative development economist and a key protagonist of Third World industrial development. He has been an advisor and consultant for a wide spectrum of governments and international development organisation deeply influential on the thinking of leading development institutions. He served, for many years, as the Principal Consultant to UNCTAD on its World Investment Report, and to UNIDO on its Industrial Development Report. Among his many important legacies is his extensive work on the role of multinationals (MNCs) in developing countries. According to Lall, the characteristics of the local firms and of the host country are decisive determinants of the extent to which the potential benefits created by the presence of foreign MNCs are exploited. He saw the development of technological capabilities at the firm and national levels as a precondition for a developing country to benefit from globalization. He also maintained that there is no ideal policy on FDI, as government strategy has to suit the particular conditions of the country at the particular time, and evolve as its needs change and its competitive position in the world alters.

      

      The panel members during the Sanjaya Lall session in Fribourg

      In 2006, to honour this great scholar and friend, I organized the EIBA Fellows Panel devoted to: “Multinationals, Technology and Development: in honour of Sanjaya Lall”. Sanjaya was one of my supervisors at Oxford University, and I greatly admired him both for his bright mind and for his personal qualities. The panel chaired and introduced by John Dunning, included presentations by John Cantwell (on the emergence of new countries as contributors to technology generation in the world economy), Anne Miroux (on Lall’s role as principal consultant to the World Investment Report), myself (on FDI and development, highlighting the main policy issues) and Karl Sauvant (on Emerging Countries MNEs). All presentations focused on the main lessons learned from Sanjaya Lall works, explaining why such lessons remain very important. During this occasion, two lovely photos were taken by our official paparazzo (Danny Van Den Bulcke) (see below).
      _______________
      See A. Saith (2005) “Sanjaya Lall: Demystifying Technological Change”, Development and Change 36(6): 1215-1218; G. Wignararaja and B. Harriss-White (2005) Obituary, Oxford Development Studies 33(3&4): 331-332, and the special issue of Oxford Development studies in honour and memory of Sanjaya Lall (Oxford Development Studies (2008) 36(1)).
       

   2. Launch of the Center for Competitiveness, University of Fribourg, Switzerland 

      The University of Fribourg announced the creation of the Center for Competitiveness. Its mission is to promote scientific knowledge and rigorous learning in the area of competitiveness, with special emphasis on the role of economic and social policy. The Center is linked to the Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness (ISC), led by Professor Michael Porter of the Harvard Business School (HBS).
      
      

      Based at the Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences of the University of Fribourg, the Center for Competitiveness is dedicated to extending the research in the field of competitiveness and disseminating it to students, scholars, practitioners and citizens on a global basis.

      The Center for Competitiveness collaborates with regional, national and international institutions as well as with private entities. Its activities are conducted in collaboration with other Centers and Institutes for Competitiveness such as the ISC of the Harvard Business School, the Center for Strategy and Competitiveness of the Stockholm School of Economics and the Center for Enhancing Competitiveness of the NIDA in Bangkok.

      

      Activities of the Center for Competitiveness
      Course on microeconomics of competitiveness (MOC)
      An important task is to conduct MOC courses in collaboration with the ISC of the Harvard Business School. These courses are also operated in collaboration with several important universities located around the world. The courses offer a unique opportunity for students to get online access to Michael Porter’s courses as well as to do networking with students following the same kind of courses abroad.

      Research
      The main research activities are conducted in the field of the determinants of competitiveness, innovation, cluster mapping and the role of clusters to upgrade prosperity, the governmental policies fostering competitiveness, as well as the role of multinational enterprises (MNEs) on the technological and economic upgrading of host and home countries. As far as policy issues are concerned, a particular attention is given to competition policy. Some of the research is conducted by doctoral students. More research is conducted in collaboration with the ISC as well as other competitiveness Centers and Institutes.

      Advisory activities
      The Center also conducts specific research and inquiries regarding regional and national issues of competitiveness. Performance indicators are developed. The Center is also involved in cluster initiatives.

      Public and media activities
      In purpose inter alia to promote and to share the main ideas developed in collaboration with Michael Porter’s Institute, the Center regularly publishes articles for newspapers and business magazines.

      Direction
      The Center for Competitiveness is directed by Prof. Philippe Gugler, Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences of the University of Fribourg. Prof. Philippe Gugler is member of the board of the European International Business Academy (EIBA) and has been affiliated to the ISC of the Harvard Business School since 2004.

      

      www.unifr.ch/competitiveness
      philippe.gugler@unifr.ch
       

8. New Publications

   1. International Business in Transition - edited by Marian Gorynia 

      International Business in Transition
      Edited by Marian Gorynia
      
      Publisher Difin, Warsaw 2009, 328pp.
      ISBN 9788376410463

      by Danny Van Den Bulcke based on the Introduction of the Volume

      Poland has withstood the financial and economic crisis better than many other countries. It has been called 'one of the few bright spots in a recession-torn Europe hit hard by the economic crisis’ (Newsweek, October 26, 2009). The IMF carried out a recent revision of its GDP estimates for 2009 and added one per cent to its previous prospects for Poland. If this is confirmed Poland will be the only European country with a positive growth rate in 2009. Warsaw has also moved up in the ranking of cities most likely to attract companies considering an expansion during the next five years.

      Marian Gorynia’s book presents an excellent background to evaluate Poland’s economic policies and the strategies followed by domestic and foreign owned companies during the country’s increasing integration in the global economy. The book deals not only with the tansition in international business towards globalization, but also and more specifically with the transition of the East and Central European countries to a market oriented economy, with a focus on Poland.

      Although Marian Gorynia, EIBA’s National Representative for Poland, is listed as editor, he could easily be called the principal author of the volume. Indeed, of the seventeen chapters, Marian is the sole author of six of them, while he has one or two co-authors for eight other contributions (three with Rado Wolniak and five with Rado Wolniak and Jan Nowak). Three other chapters were co-authored with other colleagues.

      The book refers to, and in a way is an extension of Marian Gorynia’s previous book, “Studia nad transformacj i internacjonalizacj gospodarki polskiej” (“Studies on the transformation and internationalization of the Polish economy”), published in the year 2007 which recorded his 20 years of cooperation with the journal EKONOMISTA. It contained articles published by himself or together with colleagues in Polish in this periodical during the years 1988–2007. The book besides transition problems investigated as well the issue of the internationalisation of the Polish economy.

      After the latter publication he thought that problems of international business in transition countries that had been widely discussed by him and a number of colleagues also deserved to be published in the form of a book covering nearly twenty-years of research. In this new volume the key criterion for selecting a particular article was its previous publication in a reputable periodical or in the form of a book chapter. It is worth mentioning that two of the seventeen presented articles were published in journals listed in the ISI Master Journal List (the 2nd and the 16th article).

      The present book covers a wide range of issues and approaches. Some contributions assume a macroeconomic perspective others offer a company, branch or region specific focus. The analysis covers economic policy and company strategy issues, problems of international trade and foreign direct investment, and includes insights on issues of competitiveness at company and country levels.

      The first article (Strategic shift in export trade, 1995) presents and attempts to analyze changes in the volume and structure of Polish exports recorded during the initial four years of transition (1990–1994). In this paper the authors undertake the task of determining to what extent the success of foreign trade can be attributed to: a favorable international situation, government economic policy and an adaptive company behavior.
      
      The second text (The Polish Economy`s International Competitiveness and Economic Policy, 1998) is devoted to relations between economic policy and international competitiveness of the economy. The article sets out two propositions:
      • Government economic policy should assist firms in achieving competitiveness.
      • Economic policy should facilitate the creation of competitive abilities in an integral manner, that is, by supporting the competitive position of exporters in foreign markets as well as the competitiveness of domestic producers in an open home market.
      
      Both, the third (Foreign Direct Investment and Competition Strategies of Domestic Firms in Poland, 2000) and the fourth article (Internationalisation of a Post-Communist Economy – Opportunities and Threats: The Case of Poland, 2002), focus on the specific nature of the internationalisation process in transition economies. The third study elaborates on the contribution of foreign firms to the development of the Polish economy and influence of such firms on the competitiveness of Polish companies. The fourth paper raises such issues as: premises for deeper internationalisation of competitive relations, crucial problems of development of Polish foreign trade in the period of market transition of the economy, and main aspects of foreign direct investment in Poland.

      The fifth text (Internationalisation of Economy versus Economic Policy under Integration and Globalisation, 2002) presents a set of recommendations for economic policy. In the article it is argued that economic success measured by the growth of welfare will be a result of the impact of three interrelated categories: competitiveness, internationalisation and effectiveness. The Participation of Transitional Economy in Globalisation – The Case of Poland (2002) aimed to determine whether the rate of integration of the Polish economy with the international environment keeps pace with the general rate of globalisation in the world. Moreover, the authors attempt to delineate some policy implications from the analyzed situation.

      In the seventh contribution (National Differences in Technology Transfers in East European Transition Economies, 2002) the reasons for the limited impact of external knowledge adoption are studied based on the process of technology transfers in East European transition economies. This analysis is supplemented by examples from Croatia, Hungary and Poland.

      The eight article (Polish Firms in the European Union. Their Internationalisation Projections and Perspectives, 2003) discusses possible projections and perspectives for the internationalisation process of Polish firms. The authors highlight the importance of competitiveness upgrading and advancing the internationalisation of Polish companies.

      In the ninth and tenth chapter (On the Path of Poland’s Globalisation, 2003; Globalisation of a Transitional Economy: The Experience of Poland, 2003) Poland’s integration with the global economy over the last decade is examined. The authors use international trade and foreign direct investment as the dimensions of this integration. Both studies point out that in the years 1990–2000, the Polish economy was rapidly integrating with the world economy, however, Poland’s participation in the globalisation process was somewhat unbalanced.

      The eleventh paper (Competitiveness of Polish Firms and the European Union Enlargement, 2004) discusses a three-dimensional concept of competitiveness of the nterprise (its competitive position, competitive potential and competitive strategy). Furthermore, it presents the results of empirical studies on the competitiveness of Polish firms in comparison with European Union firms in the light of Poland’s anticipated entry into the EU.

      The twelfth contribution (Competitiveness of firms from Ziemia Lubuska and Poland’s accession to the European Union, 2005) also explores the competitiveness issue. It focuses on the competitive strategy of Polish firms located in Lubuskie Province bordering with Germany. The article is based on the theoretical concept of enterprise competitiveness and competitive gap and presents results of empirical research.

      Chapter thirteen (Co-operation strategies of Polish companies as a response to foreign investor’s expansion into the Polish market, 2005) focuses primarily on the forms of co-operation between Polish and foreign companies – those which have subsidiaries or branches in the Polish market as well as those which enter the market through other forms of internationalisation.

      The fourteenth paper (Motives and Modes of FDI, Firm Characteristics and Performance: Case Studies of Foreign Subsidiaries in Poland, 2005) is of exploratory character and attempts to determine and interpret the interdependencies between the motives and modes of setting up subsidiaries by foreign investors in Poland, and the main characteristics and performance of these subsidiaries. It is worth mentioning that this article received the Best Paper Award at the IMDA Thirteenth Annual World Business Congress in 2004.

      With the title ‘Polish Economic Policy, Internationalisation and Globalisation’ (2006) chapter 14 identifies the three most important factors which determine Poland’s economy’s position in the international environment. These factors are: completion of the transformation process, integration with the EU and globalisation/internationalisation. The focus is on the determinants of and recommendations for required economic policy.

      Chapter 15 (Poland and Its Investment Development Path, 2007) attempts to explore the concept of the investment development path (IDP) and its key component, the net outward investment position, as applied to Poland. It analyzes the available macroeconomic data identifying the IDP for Poland and formulates the reasons for, and consequences of, the country’s current IDP position.

      In the last contribution (Multinational Enterprises and the Competitiveness of Transitional Host Economies: The Case of Poland, 2007) Poland’s export competitiveness is analyzed and linked to the export propensity and innovativeness of the subsidiaries of multinational enterprise (MNE). The paper re-examines the hypothesis that MNE subsidiaries in Poland make a significant contribution to host country competitiveness by raising overall export performance.

      This publication should be positively received by a wide range of readers interested in international business in transition economies and will undoubtedly enhance the level of discussion on the relevant issues that are analyred in the volume.
       

   2. Research on Knowledge, Innovation and Internationalization - edited by Jorma Larimo and Tiia Vissak 

      Research on Knowledge, Innovation and Internationalization
      Edited by Jorma Larimo and Tiia Vissak

      Volume 4 in the EIBA Book Series ‘Progress in International Business Research’ 
      Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Hardback, 310 pp
       ISBN 9781848559561, Price € 97.95

      The fourth volume in the Book Series Progress in International Business Research consists of a selection of 12 competitive papers from the 34th EIBA (European International Business Academy) annual conference, which was held in Tallinn, Estonia in December 2008 with the theme ‘‘International Business and the Catching-up Economies: Challenges and Opportunities’’. It addresses two main issues – (1) the internationalization process and (2) the role of knowledge and innovation for internationalization – that are important in the current economic slowdown both for catching-up and for other economies, scholars, and practitioners.

      The volume is divided into four parts. The contributions in the first part concern the internationalization processes of multinationals and international new ventures and the changes of different factors during these processes. In the second part, attention is devoted to foreign operation methods: online internationalization, the methods used in the beginning of internationalization activities, and the comparison between internationalizing with goods and services. The third part focuses on the importance of knowledge for internationalization: how knowledge is acquired from subsidiaries or headquarters and how the state could help firms in it. The fourth part discusses the importance of knowledge and innovation for the international expansion and performance of enterprises from Central, Eastern, and Southern European transition economies, and for those entering these countries. The volume provides new theoretical, managerial, and policy insights in the field of international business research and it should interest scholars, top managers, and policy makers, but also others intrigued by these issues.

      Part I starts with the chapter ‘‘The Internationalization Processes of the Multinational Corporation: A New Research Agenda,’’ which is a conceptual paper by Desireé Blankenburg Holm, Rian Drogendijk, Jukka Hohenthal, Ulf Holm, Martin Johanson, and Ivo Zander. The authors examine the assumptions and features of the Uppsala internationalization model (Johanson & Wiedersheim-Paul, 1975; Johanson & Vahlne, 1977). They state that for studying the internationalization processes of today’s multinational companies (MNCs), it is necessary to have a wider view than the one proposed by the Uppsala model as the latter still has several gaps and neglects some important issues regarding such firms’ internationalization processes.

      The second chapter deals with the question‘‘Why Do Some International New Ventures Become Global Start-Ups? An Exploratory Study of the Finnish ICT Industry’’. It is an empirical paper by Niina Nummela, Kaisu Puumalainen, and Sami Saarenketo. They use the classification developed by Oviatt and McDougall (1994) for analyzing international new ventures (INVs). The authors pay attention to three important dimensions: (1) the time dimension (at what age they entered their first international markets), (2) the extent of these firms’ international sales (are they global or only international), and (3) the scope of their international sourcing (which resources they acquire from abroad)..

      The third chapter ‘‘A Behavior-Based Analysis of the Changes of the Structure, Systems, and Culture in the Internationalization Processes over Time’’ is an empirical paper by Bernhard Swoboda, Martin Jager, Dirk Morschett, and Hanna Schramm-Klein. The chapter focuses on changes in 20 partial dimensions of German family-owned firms’ internal (organizational) structures, information and strategic planning systems, and organizational culture (including leadership characteristics and cultural transfer) along with changes in their target countries and establishment chains/operation modes in 10 years. Based on survey and interview data, the authors show that internationalization is not always an incremental (linear) process: over time, many companies follow periods of expansions and reductions (e.g., divestment).

      Part II starts with the chapter ‘‘Global Online Entrepreneurship: The Review of Empirical Literature,’’ which is a conceptual paper by Anna Morgan-Thomas, Marian V Jones, and Ji Junzhe. The authors analyze 45 empirical works published in 1997–2008 in peer-reviewed academic international business, information technology, entrepreneurship, and economics journals and those containing quantitative and/or qualitative data in the field of global online entrepreneurship (GOE). The authors compare these studies’ main objectives, theoretical frameworks, methodologies, main findings, and other characteristics and also develop research implications.

      The fifth chapter ‘‘Internationalization Patterns of Chinese Private-Owned SMEs: Initial Stages of Internationalization and Cluster as Takeoff Node’’ is an empirical paper by Susanne Sandberg. The chapter analyzes the takeoff and initial stages of internationalization of Chinese SMEs and the importance of clusters and other network relationships for such firms. Based on case study data from five privately-owned firms from the Yangtze River Delta region, the author concludes that these companies follow different internationalization paths.

      The sixth chapter ‘‘Internationalization of Goods and Services: A Comparison of the Internationalization of Service Providers and Manufactures in Switzerland’’ is an empirical paper written by Ralph Lehmann. The chapter studies how the internationalization of service and manufacturing firms differs and whether service exporters need different export promotion measures than manufacturers. Based on interview materials and survey data from 132 Swiss service providers and 198 production enterprises, the author concludes that service exporters are often younger and that their companies are smaller. Also they sense the psychological, linguistic, and cultural distance more strongly than manufacturing firms as they have to create personal contacts with their customers.
      
      Part III starts with the chapter ‘‘Do Japanese Investors Use their Joint Ventures with European Partners in Europe as Trojan Horses to Capture Their Knowledge?,’’ which is an empirical study by Jean-François Hennart and Shinichi Ishii. The chapter investigates if the partnership behavior of Japanese partners in joint ventures (JVs) with European partners is better explained by (1) the Trojan Horse Hypothesis (THH; assuming that Japanese firms establish JVs to steal their partners’ knowledge and dissolve JVs – liquidate them, buy out their European partners, or sell off their stakes to their partners or other firms – as soon as they have achieved their goal; or by (2) the ‘‘cooperative specialization’’ view (CS; arguing that Japanese firms set up JVs to achieve long-term cooperative specialization.

      The eighth chapter deals with ‘‘Innovation Processes at Unit Level: A Study of Headquarters’ Involvement, Innovation Impact, Transfer Performance, and Adoption Success’’ by Francesco Ciabuschi and Oscar Martín Martín. The chapter investigates the impact of headquarters’ (HQ) involvement in innovation development and transfer at their business units’ level. The empirical part of this paper is based on face-to-face interview data about 71 innovations in 52 business units from 14 countries from Europe, Asia, and the USA.

      Part III ends with the ninth chapter ‘‘External Facilitation in the Internationalization of High-Tech Firms,’’ which is an empirical paper by Anita Juho and Tuija Mainela. They study how internationalization can be facilitated through an external development program. Based on a longitudinal case study of two small high-tech Finnish firms that participated in a one-year business development program Global Clusters, the authors conclude that internationalization depends on the firm itself (e.g., its knowledge, experience, technology, relationships with other companies, and other resources), the network consisting of institutions and actors whose main task is facilitating internationalization and the firm’s ability to participate in such a network and benefit from it, for instance, to learn and create relationships.

      Part IV starts with the tenth chapter ‘‘Market Concentration and Innovation in Transnational Corporations: Evidence from Foreign Affiliates in Central and Eastern Europe,’’ which is an empirical paper by Liviu Voinea and Johannes Stephan. The chapter studies if local market concentration impacts R&D and innovation activities of transnational companies’ foreign affiliates in five transition economies: Romania, Poland, Croatia, Slovenia, and East Germany. The authors investigate how the innovation activities of foreign affiliates operating in concentrated home markets (those where competition is low, e.g., where monopolies or large oligopolies exist) differ from the activities of those operating in nonconcentrated markets.

      The eleventh chapter ‘‘Escaping the Trap of Low-Cost Production and High Dependency: A Case Study of the Internationalization Networks of Small Subcontractors from the Baltic States’’ is an empirical paper by Hans Jansson and Mikael Hilmersson. The authors analyze how small exporting subcontractors from emerging markets leap over the barrier of low technology and high dependency. Based on a case study of eight small and medium-sized internationalizing enterprises from the Baltic Sea Region the authors state that Baltic subcontractors have been seriously affected by the current economic crisis: it has increased their vulnerability as demand has decreased, and they are getting out-competed by new low-cost producers.
      
      The final chapter ‘‘Information Provision by Public Authorities and Business Partners in Southeast Europe: Effects on Firm Performance’’ is an empirical paper by Alexandra Kaar and Alma Šehi . The authors study how local employees, public authorities, and local business partners (suppliers, customers, competitors, and other firms in the region) provide information about the host country environment to foreign firms investing to Southeast Europe (SEE), how this helps them to overcome the liability of foreignness and affects their success in the particular foreign market.

       

   3. Handbook on Small Nationals in the Global Economy - edited by Daniel Van Den Bulcke, Alain Verbeke and Wenlong Yuan 

      Handbook on Small Nations in the Global Economy.
      The Contribution of Multinational Enterprises to National Economic Success
      Edited by Daniel Van Den Bulcke, Alain Verbeke and Wenlong Yuan
      
      Edward Elgar Publishing, Cheltenham 2009, Hardback, 304 pp
      ISBN 9781843765929, Price £ 95.00

      Table of Contents

      1. Small nations in the global economy: An overview (Daniel Van Den Bulcke, Alain Verbeke and Wenlong Yuan)
      2. Globalization in the Netherland (Annelies Hogenbirk, John Hagedoorn and Hans. van Kranenburg)
      3. Belgium’s diamond of comptetitiveness. A comparison between foreign and domestic companies (Filip De Beule and Ilke Van Beveren)
      4. Porter’s diamond and small nations in the global economy. Ireland as a case study (Sean Cassidy, Frank Barry and Chris van Egeraat)
      5. Upgrading the international competitiveness of a transition economy. Slovenia in the European and global economy (Andrea Jaklic, Matija Rojec and Marjan Svetlicic)
      6. Multinational enterprises from small economies.Internationalization patterns of large corporations from Denmark, Finland, and Norway (Gabriel Benito, Jorma Larimo, Rajneesh Narula and Torben Pedersen)
      7. The competitive advantage of Canada. A firm-level analysis (Wenlong Yuan and Alain Verbeke)
      8. Chile as an example of the augmented diamond (Robert Grosse)
      9. The development trajectory of a small island economy. The successful case of Mauritius (Jahan Peerally and John Cantwell)
      10. New Zealand and the challenge of global competition (Peter Enderwick and Joanna Scott-Kennel)
      11. The competitive position of a developing economy. The role of foreign direct investment in Cambodia (Ludo Cuyvers, Reth Soeng and Daniel Van Den Bulcke)

      From the introduction to the volume
      
      Professor Michael Porter (Harvard Business School) published “The Competitive Advantage of Nations” in 1990. This path breaking book conveyed the message that the success (and international competitiveness) of specific industries in a nation critically depends on the configuration of - and interplay among- four sets of parameters: factor conditions; demand conditions; related and supporting industries; and strategy, structure and rivalry. The outcome of a favourable configuration and interplay, according to Porter, then leads to a strong national “diamond” and therefore, to an internationally competitive industry, as measured by exports or outward foreign direct investment. In Porter’s work, success in international markets follows prior domestic success in terms of innovation, productivity improvements, clustering, etc.
      
      However, in the case of small open economies, favourable diamond conditions are unlikely to exist for each of the four sets of parameters simultaneously, if only domestic elements are taken into account. Here, linkages with other nations, whether on the sourcing side or the demand side, are often critical from the outset to create strong industries. More specifically, both inward and outward foreign direct investments may be important tools to gain access to external resources that can complement national diamond determinants, and lead to high, sustainable domestic production and employment per capita vis-à-vis other nations (sustainability implies the absence of government shelter as a critical factor explaining observed success). Foreign direct investments should therefore be viewed not simply as an outcome of domestic economic success, but as critical inputs to achieve such success. For example, inward foreign direct investments by multinational enterprises may imply an infusion of technological and managerial knowledge, and therefore productivity improvements in the domestic economy. In contrast, outward foreign direct investments may provide access to raw materials (resource seeking investments), to foreign demand (market seeking investments), to strategic assets (strategic asset seeking investments) or to production efficiencies not achievable in a domestic context (efficiency seeking investments), in each case raising the living standards in the domestic economy, as compared to the situation without multinational activity.
      
      The main thesis advanced in this book is that small nations increasingly need to rely heavily on both home grown and foreign multinational enterprises to achieve domestic economic success in industries characterized by international competition, as these firms augment the domestic diamond determinants with foreign components, thereby permitting sustainable high production and employment per capita as compared with other nations.
      The book consists of eleven chapters. This chapter synthesizes the findings of the following country-based chapters: The Netherlands, Belgium, Ireland, Slovenia, Canada, Chile, Mauritius and New Zealand and highlights common features as well as differences in the success stories. Three Nordic countries, Denmark, Finland and Norway, are discussed in a seaparate chapter. This enables to derive a number of implications for managers and public policy makers that should help to increase the contribution of multinational enterprise activity in general, and inward and outward foreign direct investment flows specifically, to domestic economic success in small open economies. As noted above, two domestic success indicators, namely sustainable high production and employment per capita vis-à-vis other nations, in specific industries, constitute the rationale for the selection of the case studies. These provide wide geographical coverage, including North America (Canada), South America (Chile), Africa (Mauritius), Western Europe (Belgium, Ireland, the Netherlands and Nordic countries), Eastern Europe (Slovenia), Asia (Cambodia) and Oceania (New Zealand). This selection also covers a diversity of national circumstances, with low, middle and high income countries represented, as well as economies that are developing, in transition from socialism, and highly industrialized. The countries also vary widely in terms of size, whether measured by area, population or GDP.
      
      For the most part, the various country-based chapters discuss the foundations of domestic economic success of each nation selected using essentially the same template so as to increase the reader friendliness, intellectual rigor and conceptual integrity of the book. The template begins with a short description of the strengths of the national economy in terms of Porter’s diamond determinants, with a focus on the most successful international industries, as measured by sustainable domestic production (whether by home grown firms or subsidiaries of foreign multinational enterprises), and employment per capita vis-à-vis other nations.
      
      This is followed by a description of the role of inward and outward foreign direct investment and multinational enterprise activity in the successful industries considered, including the historical evolution of overall inward and outward investment flows. Building upon this background, for each of the industries, both inward and outward investments are analyzed, focusing on the specific reasons why inward investment was attracted into the nation studied: to what extent did internalization-arbitrage occur, i.e., the combination of the firm specific advantages of foreign multinational enterprises from specific foreign nations with domestic location advantages?
      
      The geographic concentration (associated with clustering benefits) of domestic production and employment in the successful industries is then studied, including discussion of the role of multinational activity in domestic cluster functioning. The last section of each case assesses the impact of government policy (or the lack thereof) on the success of the industries studied to establish whether specific types and processes of government intervention were particularly effective in facilitating “internalization arbitrage” through linking (a) inward foreign direct investment with domestic location advantages, and (b) outward FDI with both domestic and foreign location advantages, thereby creating internationally competitive value chains. The key question is whether some types of government policy might be viewed as best practices that merits replication by other nations, or whether they were effective primarily in a specific institutional context, a particular path-dependent trajectory of events or an idiosyncratic cultural environment.
      
      What more is known about the research thesis on the basis of the country case studies? Are there best practices policies of general applicability, or do governments need to base their strategies on their specific institutional context, particular path dependent trajectory of events or idiosyncratic cultural environment?
      What distinguishes the more successful cases? While governments were activist in the sense of ensuring companies had access to good information, low taxes, and minimal bureaucratic obstacles, they were realistic in their targets.
      
      In short, a successful country strategy consists of three elements. First, the border must be made as permeable as possible to international trade and investment flows. Second, the sectors targeted for priority development must be ones where there is at least a latent location advantage that can be ”unlocked”. This could be strategic location, favourable climate, or underutilized resources (such as a pool of cheap labour or unused trade quota. Third, once the investment process begins and some early positive outcomes are achieved, including higher government income, this must be reinvested in developing location advantages at the macro- and sectoral levels. These new location advantages must be crafted in such a way that they complement and augment the firm specific advantages of foreign companies especially, so as to bind these firms more strongly to their new host environment.
      
      None of this is easy. Making markets accessible often means stepping on the powerful toes of vested interests. Identifying and unlocking true latent location advantages at the macro- and sectoral levels, and differentiating these from the hopes, dreams and often self-delusions of decision makers is tricky. Building complementary location advantages takes time, and though generally accessible in principle, may be perceived as undue favoritism benefiting foreign investors. Nothing worthwhile is easy. However, the success stories outlined in this book suggest that the effort is worth making, and that with an appropriate policy regime FDI can, indeed, add both new facets and sparkle to the diamonds of small open economies.
      
      From a conceptual perspective, the country cases do confirm that Porter’s single diamond components (domestic factor conditions, domestic demand conditions, domestic related and supporting industries, domestic strategy, structure and rivalry) reflect merely a set of initial conditions, which can be improved upon through both inward and outward investment, thereby creating resource linkages between the home and host environments of the MNEs involved.
       

   4. Itinerarium Amicorum Daniel Van Den Bulcke - edited by Filip De Beule 

      

      Itinerarium Amicorum Daniel Van Den Bulcke
      Edited by Filip De Beule
      
      University of Antwerp, Antwerp, 2009, 171 pp.
       

      Travels with Danny: Introduction to the Volume
      By Filip De Beule, Lessius University College, Antwerp, Belgium

      When Danny Van Den Bulcke became emeritus professor an international workshop was organized both in Antwerp and in Ljubljana in December 2004, the year he had his 65th anniversary.

      The conference papers written by leading experts in IB (International Business) was published by Palgrave in 2005 (Cuyvers and De Beule, 2005). The book was handed over to Danny by the rector of the University of Antwerp, Professor Van Loon in the presence of the editors Ludo Cuyvers and Filip De Beule.

      At the same time it was attempted to make a lighter book with contributions of colleagues who had travelled with Danny, had attended conferences or international workshops with him or had hosted him for a lecture at their university or school. Many of them had special recollections of those travels or visits, especially because somehow they thought him to be responsible for mishaps or all kinds of adventures or problems. Quite often these problematic trips were related to meetings that were organized by the European International Business Academy (EIBA) and the Academy of International Business (AIB). Danny played an active role in both of these academic associations and wad respectively President and Chairman of EIBA and Chairman of the West European Region and Vice President of AIB. Even before he became Chairman of EIBA he played an active role behind the scenes in prospecting and choosing the venues for the annual conferences during more than twenty years. Other experiences of this globetrotting IB professor are situated in Asia, where he was responsible for setting up cooperation agreements and carried out teaching assignments in a great many countries.

      A friend from the time he was a student at Ghent University, Louis Uytterschaut, kept track of Danny’s travels around the world in what he called a ‘Liber Itinerarium’ by collecting the postcards forwarded to him during the period 1984-2004. Somehow he had succeeded in getting Danny to promise that he would send a postcard from the places he visited. Both kept their promise, i.e. Danny bought cards and stamps in no less than 52 countries and Louis collected them in an album, which he handed over to Danny at the time of his retirement. His short introductory text (in Dutch) is included in this volume.

      Although about 30 contributions were received, some quite short but other much longer, they were not published. While on the one hand, the number of contributors kept asking when it would finally get ready and on the other hand Danny’s 70th anniversary was fast approaching, it was decided to ask for additional ‘Danny stories’.

      To make the distinction between the contributions written in 2004 (December) and 2009 (January), the dates will be indicated. Since his retirement Danny has continued to work like before by accepting teaching assignments abroad and participating in conferences and symposia. Consequently the number of countries visited by Danny has increased even more. Of course, it is not the number of countries that is important, but the fact that he has friends all over the world. Those who were able to contribute are only a small sample of the global friendships he developed all the while making sure that the discipline of International Business would benefit from common initiatives.

      When the academic activities were followed by a reception in December 2004, Danny’s sons in law, also on behalf of his two daughters and five grandchildren, made a much applauded intervention in which some unknown sides of his personality were described. This presentation, together with the speech from the rector, is also included in this volume. In fact a number of other contributions in Dutch are taken up in part one of the volume.

      In total there are 75 contributions to this volume. It is impossible to summarize and classify the stories told in these contributions. Yet, it might be interesting to mention that two of them claim to have saved Danny's life and three admitted that the best picture of their wives was made by him.

      While it is sure that Danny will be delighted that his travels have received so much attention from his friends and colleagues from all over the world, it is doubtful that –given his typical critical attitude – what has been written about him is sufficiently complete and correct. On the one hand, it would not be all that of a surprise to hear him say that the volume concentrates on the period of the 1990s and the first decade of the 21st century and is strongly focused on Asia. Although the 1970s and 1980s are barely covered, it is unlikely that he was sitting still at that time. Also by some coincidence the African continent is not represented, although he had projects there in countries such as Cameroon, Burundi, Rwanda, South Africa and Madagascar. On the other hand the stories told by the corresponding authors reflect their reality and does not necessarily coincide with Danny's appreciation of the same experiences. But, it is up to him to take up the challenge of writing his own 'memoires' about his globetrotting while attending international conferences and lecturing abroad. The contributors to this volume will certainly be his most avid readers. Hopefully he will find the time to take up this challenge.

      To end on a sad note: two of the contributors to this 'Itinerarium Amicorum' passed away before this volume came out. André De Moor died in 2004 and was not even able to attend the special events at the time of Danny's retirement, while the outstanding International Business scholar, John Dunning who was a keynote speaker during the International Conference in Antwerp in December 2004 and contributed a chapter to the Festschrift left us in February 2009.

      Hard copies of ‘Itinerarium Amicorum’ are no longer available, but the book is available on the following website: http://www.ua.ac.be/main.aspx?c=*CIMDA&n=4548

       

   5. New Book 'Cas en Marketing: Cas Pedagogiques et Corriges' 

      Cas en Marketing. Cas Pédagogiques et Corrigés
      Editors: Sylvie Hertrich and Ulrike Mayrhofer
      Publisher:Editions Management & Société
      Collection Etudes de cas, Cormelles-le-Royal
      ISBN : 978-2-84769-093-4

      This book presents 12 case studies covering major aspects in the field of marketing: marketing analysis and strategy, market-study, consumer behaviour, brand management, product, pricing, distribution and communication policies, experiential marketing, international marketing, sports marketing, tourism marketing. All cases are based on real situations in companies (Carrefour, Compagnie des Alpes, Futuroscope, Lenovo, Levi Strauss, Procter & Gamble, etc.) The two editors of the book, Sylvie Hertrich (Ecole de Management Strasbourg, Université de Strasbourg) and Ulrike Mayrhofer (IAE de Lyon, Université Lyon 3 and Groupe ESC Rouen) have developed a rich expertise concerning the creation of case-studies: they have written more than twenty cases in collaboration with companies and have received eight times the prestigious Golden Pen Award, given by the Centrale de Cas et de Médias Pédagogiques, Chambre de Commerce et d'Industrie de Paris. The authors are recognised specialists in their field, having gained a rich experience in teaching, research and/or marketing practices: Abdelmajid Amine, Olivier Badot, Gabriele Brambach, Denis Darpy, Mitsuyo Delcourt-Itonaga, Saskia Faulk, Isabelle Frochot, Jean-Luc Giannelloni, Bruno Godey, Sylvie Hertrich, Patrick Hetzel, Björn Ivens, Mattias Kaestner, Chantal Lai, Ulrike Mayrhofer, Fabien Ohl, Suzanne Pontier, Nathalie Prime, Élisabeth Robinot, Claire Roederer, Gary Tribou, Björn Walliser.
       

9. Personalia / Careers

   1. Becoming a Teacher and Scholar. The 'Hooks' I used - by Jean Boddewyn 

      Becoming a Teacher and Scholar. The’Hooks’ I Used.
      By Jean Boddewyn
      Emeritus Professor of International Business
      Baruch College, City University of New York

      This is a slightly revised version of a letter Jean Boddewyn sent to the AIB Fellows who occasionally exchange communications on major events in their academic and personal lives.
      Jean Boddewyn was one of the founding fathers of the Academy of International Business (AIB), President of AIB in the 1990s and Dean of the AIB Fellows until a few years ago. In previous issues of EIBA-zine the life story of John Stopford, John Dunning, Lawrence Welch, Jim Leontiades and others were told.

      I never thought of being a teacher when I grew up. It was boredom with a job in U.S. industry that made me pay attention to an ad for a part-time Instructor job that got me started for the next 50 years! Before that, I had worked in a Belgian department store (Galeries et Grand Bazar du Boulevard Anspach) where I loved my job which I quit to emigrate to the United States in 1955. It turned out to be a good decision because the Grand Bazar went out of business after I left!

      My first teaching job was in Cost Accounting which I had learned at the University of Louvain with Professor Dereume. He was one of the teachers that made me admire their profession and later inspired me to emulate their dedication and skills such as clarity, eloquence, originality and caring for the students’ learning.

      In particular, I had an instructor at the University of Washington to whom other doctoral students kept referring: “Robinson did this, Robinson said that!” but I could not figure out what course(s) he was teaching so that, one day, I asked: “But what does Robinson teach?” The answer “He teaches Robinson!” convinced me that one had to be oneself and unique in imparting knowledge and aspirations to others.

      Dwight Robinson and Joseph McGuire at the University of Washington encouraged me to polish and submit two term papers that got accepted and published in the Journal of Marketing and in a book edited by McGuire. These two feats got me well started in research which has been largely conceptual and theoretical in nature although I also did empirical work (e.g., my doctoral case study of the Protection of the Washington State Wine Industry, and a multi-country survey of the standardization/adaptation of marketing practices).

      When I first came to the States as an exchange student from Belgium in 1951-1952, I was exposed to the pro-market publications of the Foundation of Economic Education (e.g., Henry Hazlitt’s Economics in one Lesson and Frédéric Bastiat’s pamphlet on the Candlemaker’s Petition) which shaped my libertarian perspective on political economy. Starting with my dissertation, I got attracted by the politics of business as part of a broad consideration of all the environmental factors bearing on organization, management and marketing.

      As a scholar, one reads a multitude of books, articles and papers but much of my teaching and research has been marked by a few key readings. Thus, when John Fayerweather at New York University asked me to teach three brand new courses on Comparative Management, Comparative Marketing and European Business Systems, I immersed myself in political science (e.g, Robert Dahl), cultural anthropology (e.g., Karl Polanyi) and functional sociology (e.g., Talcott Parsons) who convinced me that one had to analyze and integrate the actors, processes, structures, functions and environments involved in any phenomenon – in other words, a “system” view is often necessary to do research. Thus was I started on finding “hooks” with which to organize my thinking, teaching and researching.

      From John Fayerweather, I adopted the view that the central issues in international business management were: What resources did the firm have to transfer abroad (an economic viewpoint), what adaptations had to be made in this transfer to a foreign society (a socio-psychological and socio-cultural angle), what entering another sovereignty implied (a political perspective) and what “unification” mechanisms were needed to counteract the “fragmentation” created by operations dispersed over several countries (an organizational consideration) – a most useful integration of various disciplines.

      From Aristotle (via R.P. Baggozi’s book on Causal Models in Marketing) I borrowed a categorization of the types of explanations we all use because nothing happens unless: (1) it is possible (hence the notion of “conditions, as with the resource-based view); (2) it is wanted (that is, there must be some “motivation” as in the market, resource, efficiency and strategic-asset “seeker” classification), and (3) it is willed because “precipitated” or “triggered” by some external (e.g., a competitor’s move) or internal (e.g., a manager’s decision) developments. This categorization helped me understand early on that John Dunning’s eclectic paradigm was originally only about “conditions – that is, for foreign production to take place, it must be “possible” on account of OLI advantages. Ever since that Aristotelian discovery, I have always asked myself whether the explanation of a particular phenomenon touched base with one or more of these three types of justifications.

      I have also been fond of A.O. Hirschman’s “exit, voice and loyalty” typology even though it leaves out such alternative behaviors as “no entry” and “opportunism.” It works well with a “system” view because Hirschman, like Parsons, stressed that the various parts of a society – the economy, polity, community and culture – are interdependent, cooperate and compete with each other to ensure the functioning of societies. In the same vein, Wolfgang Streeck and Philip Schmitter outlined the ways through which “social order” is achieved – as in the following statement that combines the Community, the Market, the State and Private Government (e.g., industry self-regulation): “Most people and organizations behave themselves because they want the esteem of other members of society, they fear losing markets if they do not get it, they are afraid of the strong arm of the law and/or they want to lessen uncertainty about their rivals’ behavior by insuring that common industry-wide rules apply to all practitioners.”

      I like these conceptual frameworks because they have helped my organize my lectures, structure my research endeavors and check the arguments used in the papers I review. A last one is borrowed from the late Graham Astley who pointed out that much of IB research is not “international” at all but rather “universal” – that is, applicable to both “domestic” and “cross-border” situations. When you think of it, practically all the theories we use (comparative advantage, transaction-costs, institutionalism, the resource-based view, internalization, etc.) apply as much to trade and investment between New York and California as to the same activities between two countries – a point also made by Jack Behrman and Robert Grosse. To be truly international, a problem must include dependent and independent variables that really cross national borders and do not find an equivalent within a single country – a very exacting requirement.

      Et voilà! This set of lenses has helped me think, learn and share during my career in academia, and I bet you have acquired, developed and used a similar conceptual toolkit that has served you well in your lifework. Why not share them with us?

      Jean Boddewyn
       

   2. EIBA-AIB - Comments by Jan-Erik Vahlne at the AIB Conference 2009 

      EIBA-AIB
      Comments by Jan-Erik Vahlne at the AIB Conference in San Diego, on the occasion of the JIBS Decade Award received by Jan Johanson and himself.

      The 1977 JIBS article on ‘The internationalization process of the firm’ is undoubtedly one of the most quoted papers in the IB literature. Numerous Ph.D theses have been written to check out if this model was also applicable to the country of origin of the student and many scholars tried to find out if the findings of the 1970s were still valid in the era of globalisation and changing economic conditions of the following decades.
      
      Already in 2002 at the EIBA conference in Athens the work of Jan-Erik Vahlne and Jan Johanson was recognized in a special panel with the title’ The Internationalization Process of the Firm in Retrospect’. This panel was the first’ Special Commemorative Panel Session about Influential International Business Contributions’, of which the seventh will be organized in Valencia in honour of Yves Doz. In Athens Jan-Erik Vahlne already indicated as to how the Uppsala model could be adapted to take into account the more recent developments. That the authors finally received the AIB-JIBS Award in San Diego, June 29, was more than overdue.

      The text below was written out by Danny Van Den Bulcke, and is based on some notes used by Jan-Erik Vahlne for his speech in San Diego. Therefore Jan-Erik should not be blamed for any errors or wrong interpretations.
      
      “0ur model on the internationalization process published in JIBS in 1977 has suscitated a lot of interest. How did this happen and why do we think that it has been referred to so often?

      JIBS has been of immense importance not only to us but also to the whole IB-community in Sweden. I, for my part had a paper (co-authored) published in JIBS already in 1974 and I think we were the first in Uppsala, at this very young department of business, being published in an international journal. And in 1975 Jan published his co-authored paper on “the four cases”, which came to be an important stepping-stone to our model. And then JIBS published our model. We indeed have JIBS and its large audience to thank for the status of our model.

      With regard to the model, not only the old version but also the new one, I would like to make the following comments. The latter version will be published in the anniversary issue of JIBS that is Volume 40, issue 9, of December 2009. Yet, it is already available on the net.

      I have to admit that when we started we were not very familiar with international publications on international business and multinationals. We just went out to collect a lot of data on Swedish domestic companies and their activities. It was induction indeed. Hence, we came to focus on different phenomena as compared with the international economists, who mainly observed and explained international production. We worked with trade data, mainly about exports, while they looked at international movements of capital that is direct investments. Contrary to the international economists we studied the organization of export activities or the supply of international markets. They constructed static models under equilibrium, while we thought that a dynamic approach was more realistic. They assumed rationality while we thought rationality was limited. Our assumptions were more realistic and firm relevant which is of course important for micro-level studies.

      To some extent we were, however, “prisoners” of the ontology and epistemology of the economists. Take for example the market concept. A market was defined as the national market for a particular product. In reality perhaps, it comprised only a particular type of customers. More importantly: we thought that a market consisted of a large number of suppliers supplying homogenous products to a large number of customers with homogenous demands. This we have now changed. In the new paper, presenting the revised model we assume a different type of market, that is a different type of environment, namely markets regarded as networks of relationships. We think that this is a more realistic assumption especially for producers´ goods.

      We got this more realistic understanding of what a market is really like from a research programme performed in Uppsala on ‘the network view of industrial markets’. In such a network view of industrial markets, it is assumed that the following characteristics apply:

      • Resource heterogeneity;
      • Long lasting relationships;
      • Relationships developing over time via informal processes, implying growing knowledge about each other, trust, commitment – mutual;
      • Interrelated routines leading to increased effectiveness and efficiency;
      • Product development in relationships;
      • The relationship in itself as an important resource;
      • Mutual interdependence, lack of some control over one’s own business, but some control over the business of partners;
      • Privileged access by the focal firm to information about its network partners; and
      • Embeddedness of the firm in a web of connected relationships

      What happens in relationships!!! Business exchanges happen in relationships. Product development, e.g. the learning about opportunities.The network is enabling but also to some extent hindering these developments.

      If you are an insider you have access to the resources of the network; if you are an outsider you have not. Being an outsider is to suffer from outsidership. An outsider has to work his way in to be able to do business. It is necessary to start interacting. That is the necessary effort to go through and succeed in entering a new market. The father of the research on the multinational corporation, Stephen Hymer, has stressed that entering foreign firms are at a disadvantage, because of the liability of foreignness (we would call it psychic distance), as compared with indigenous firms. In a sense the newcomers know little about the market and are themselves not very much known either. They must have an advantage, a firm-specific advantage, that more than off-sets disadvantages, in order to be able to compete successfully on this market. In our 1977 JIBS paper we focused on this lack of knowledge and how to overcome the disadvantages.We are now arguing there is a more important liability to the entering firm: that of outsidership in relation to relevant networks on this market.

      The mechanisms of the revised model are basically the same as of the old one with some additions, such as trust-building in relation to commitment decisions and creation in relation to learning. The important change is situated in the network aspects, making the mechanisms fit even better.

      How did it all start? The analysis of export strategy and organization studies was at the basis. During the 1960s I myself had studied the four Swedish firms’ internationalization process, while Jan had concentrated on the Sandvik case. We found that what occurred was ‘learning by doing’, and that this did not fit with the textbooks prescribing optimal choice of market and mode. We introduced the establishment chain concept in which firms would start close to home before deciding on locations much further away.

      Why was this model born in Uppsala? Sweden as a small country was and is very dependent on international trade (export) and hence many of its firms developed into multinationals. Also the influence of the internationally experienced professor, Sune Carlsson, who started a new department at the University of Uppsala, was instrumental. He forged the researchers into a real team based on the exiwting synergies in their research and the continued mutual trust even when there were changes in its composition. During the 1960s and early 1970s no one worried about funding or jobs. Research was carried out on the basis of curiosity and fun. Induction!!

      Why has the Uppsala model been successful?

      It was built on replicable empirical findings.The establishment chain and psychic distance was mistaken for the model. It was simple. Early on the focus was on Sweden and the internationalization of its firms, but soon studies in other countries followed. Researchers looking for previous research found the Uppsala model a useful tool. It was built on more realistic assumptions, was firm relevant, and was based on bounded rationality, path dependence, opportunities driving the process. It was also different from neo-classical economics. Consequently its concepts of learning and commitment became widely used. As such it was a forerunner of the resource based view (RBV). The focus was on market knowledge as a problem and went counter to the view of the neo-classical economists who considered markets as well known and given. On the other hand Edith Penrose and later the RBV did not consider markets. Also the model was based on firm relevance as compared with the “economic models” that were restricted to macro economic relevance.

      We started by trying to explain why firms established sales subsidiaries. Initially, we regarded it as a bounded-rationality decision-information problem. Gradually we found that information was a minor issue in comparison with the accumulated knowledge and that change was part of a more or less continuous process and not so much a matter of decisions. Slowly we also realized that we could explain other steps in the internationalization process in the same way, including direct investment, – hence the internationalization process model was constructed. A failure of the paper was that the model was most often considered as a risk reduction model in spite of our efforts to emphasize the importance of opportunity seeking. This is made clear in the 2009 version of the so-called Uppsala Model”.
       

   3. My Travels with Danny - by Vitor Corado Simoes 

      My Travels with Danny:
      25 years of Photographic Memories and EIBA Conferences
      By Vitor Corado Simoes

      Contribution to the ‘Itinerarium Amicorum Daniel Van Den Bulcke’ that looks back at the history of EIBA through the perspective of the Portuguese travelling companion of a globetrotting photographer (from the Itinerarium Amicorum, edited by Filip De Beule).

      

      “When one travels with Danny, it seems that the probability of having the car breaking down, missing flights, unexpected landings (though not necessarily in the Hudson river) and other odd situations is quite high. This is part of a globetrotter’s charm...

      Fortunately, such instances have been absent from my travel experiences together with Danny (I don’t know why, but maybe because I have a moderating effect on him or just by plain chance). Apart from carrying his heavy bag under the Brazilian sun to visit the Contemporary Art Museum of Niterói, a masterpiece of Oscar Niemeyer, with a wonderful view over Rio de Janeiro, I have not experienced the troubles reported by other, very reliable, friends. In fact, I have travelled with Danny in all kinds of situations and conditions such as in turbulent airline flights, boat trips on wonderful lakes, bus rides in snowing countrysides, late-departing trains, random walks, and nothing happened... except, of course, the strengthening of our friendship.

      I still have a vivid memory of my first walk with Danny. It was in a superb spot, Villa Serbeloni in Bellagio, overlooking Lake Como, during pleasant Fall weather in 1983. John Dunning had invited us to contribute a chapter to a book he was preparing and we spent a week together at the Villa Serbelloni, at the courtesy of the Rockefeller Foundation, to discuss our work. By that time I was not yet in academia, but John’s invitation sparkeled my appetite for research and made me make the right choice later on. I am not sure, but most probably Danny also told me about EIBA during our stay in Bellagio. What I know is that in early 1986 I received a photo from Danny showing how magnificent the Scottish mediaeval heritage was... at least as portrayed by the EIBA Glasgow Gala Dinner arranged by Neil Hood. The cover letter reminded me that I should show up at the next EIBA conference. The invitation has been so compelling that I decided to attend the EIBA meeting in London. It was my first EIBA conference, a very special one since it was jointly held with AIB.

      In December 1987 Danny had agreed to organize the conference in Antwerp, at a time when EIBA was not doing all that well. It was a superb conference, not only by its high academic level, but also because of the fantastic social and cultural events. Three aspects are still very present in my memory, assisted by Danny’s photos, of course. First, there was the pre-conference get-together walk through old Antwerp, and the explanations given about the wonderful masterpieces by well-known Flemish painters. Secondly, there was the chamber music concert in a small chapel from which a lovely Christmas spirit emerged. From then on, I have always associated the EIBA conferences in December with a Christmas atmosphere that is often very typical for the country where the conference takes place. Third, there was the exquisite ‘beer & cheese’ Gala Dinner party. I have a picture, taken by Danny (who else?), with different types of Belgian cheese and several half-liter glasses of beer that brought the spirit of the EIBA members and certainly myself into higher regions...

      ‘Then, we took Berlin’ (to say it with the words of singer poet Leonard Cohen), with Hans-Günther Meissner at the helm of EIBA. Danny’s pictures of the Berlin Wall, and the armed East German soldiers in front of the Wall, still impress me today. However this was also the conference during which I found out that EIBA had a couple of first-class entertainers: i.e. Roland Schuit, playing Santa Claus, and Danny, with his undercooled sense of humour, acutely remembering comic situations that most of us had failed to fully grasp. Some of us were a little jealous by the way he got the attention of the nice girls of the conference secretariat by thanking them for their hard work during the conference with Belgian chocolates. By this time, Danny had already invited me to become the representative of the (then, tiny) Portuguese chapter, and offered me a seat at the EIBA Board.

      One of the most ‘magic’ moments we lived together was a year later in Helsinki, singing in the snow in front of the statue of Sibelius. I still have several pictures of the students’choir from the Helsinki School of Economics, with EIBA President Reijo Luostartinen as the soloist. By that time, Reijo had succeeded to convince me about the economic advantages of small countries. Eventually a study group called SMOPEC was formed.

      EIBA records show that between 1979 and 2008, i.e. during a period of 30 years Danny missed only one EIBA conference, i.e. the one held in Madrid by Juan Duran. The reason was that he was starting to experience the Chinese ‘attraction’ and could not interrupt his teaching assignment in Beijing to come to Spain. But even absent, Danny left his fingerprint, or should I call it photoprint, all over the conference. As a matter of fact the wonderful photo on the cover of the EIBA Madrid programme, featuring some of the (then) members of the Board, with a bullfighting advertisement in the backstage had been taken by Danny in Jerez de la Frontera, when the Board met there a few months before for the interim Board meeting.

      At the Gala Dinner at the end of the Copenhagen conference, the organizer Harald Vestergaard had hired a professional stand-up comedian to imitate EIBA Board members. Harald contracted a very good entertainer to replace Danny. But the almost unanimous decision of EIBA’s ‘citizens’ was that, although he was really good, he had not been able to match Danny’s quality. Nobody else attempted to contract an entertainer to replace Danny again... until we came back to Denmark many years later to be told stories written by Hans Christian Andersen.

      Meanwhile, I had become cognizant of Danny’s efforts to ensure the continuity of EIBA and its mainstay the annual conferences. If this is still a hard task today, it was even more daunting in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Danny was continuously looking for new possible venues and scanning the academic horizon to identify qualified and motivated future organisers. His arguments were compelling, and his ability to convince the still undecided was (and still is) very strong. After one had only tentatively admitted the possibility to organise the conference, he did not lose his ‘prey’ anymore. And it has to be added that after one had succumbed to his charming perseverance he provided enormous advice and support until the very day the meeting was held. That is how, he convinced me to host the EIBA in Lisbon in 1993, the year after the conference in Reading organised by John Cantwell.

      The Reading conference was memorable because Danny had succeeded in convincing Peter Buckley, then chairman of AIB-UK to have a joint conference on the occasion of John Dunning’s retirement from Reading University. It was there that John Dunning promised his wife Christine to work less hard after the publication of the impressive volume Multinational Enterprises and the Global Economy. We had a very late dinner at a magnificent palace, some miles away from Reading, after the bus driver lost his way in the woods. Danny could not be blamed for this, however.

      As conference organizer in Lisbon, I started to appreciate another facet of Danny’s commitment to EIBA and his devotion to the future of our profession, i.e. the Doctoral Tutorial. The mix of professionalism and welcoming attitude he put in the Tutorial was remarkable. Until then I was not aware of the care, commitment and effort he put in the preparation and the organisation of the Tutorial he was responsible for during no less than 17 years, i.e. between 1987, when he launched this initiative, to 2004, the year of his 65th birthday. I still remember the suggestion he made in Lisbon to have a get-together dinner for the faculty and the students on the evening before the Tutorial to allow them to get better acquainted and thereby improving the quality and efficiency of the presentations and discussions. This tradition has been continued since then and certainly contributed to the success of this important initiative.

      From Lisbon to Warsaw... More photos to revive my memories. I remember the visit to Chopin’s home and Gunnar Hedlund and Marina Papanastassiou playing the piano. I think it was also in Warsaw that I carried Danny’s bag for the first time. More photos in Urbino, the wonderful and picturesque city. Apparently this was a fascinating place for Danny judging by the many pictures he took of the typical and not so typical sights as well as Federigo de Montefeltro’s nose, used as a logo for the conference brochure by Roberto Schiattarella.

      From Urbino up North to Stockholm, to learn how seriously ill Gunnar Hedlund was. I remember our visit to the room in the City Hall where the Nobel Prize dinners are held after the prizes have been awarded. It was interesting to see how eager Danny was to capture such beauty in his, still analog, camera. Maybe he dreamed that there was also a Photo Nobel Prize, and that he might even win it. I think he would be entitled to it, not just for atmospheric quality of the pictures, but also for the kindness and friendship to send, every January, the photos from the previous EIBA conference to his friends and colleagues.

      The next Conference was in Stuttgart, efficiently organized by Klaus Macharzina. After Stuttgart we went to Jerusalem, the first and only time that EIBA left the shores of the European continent. The situation was relatively peaceful at that time, although there was a lot of commotion and enormous traffic jams because it coincided with the visit from the US President Bill Clinton. Yet, Eugene Jaffe and Seev Hirsh ran a successful conference in which the special session with representatives of the different religions in the regions under the chairmanship of John Dunning was quite memorable and showed the wide interests of the EIBA membership.

      In Manchester Danny became a ‘red devil’, and enjoyed the opportunity provided by Fred Burton to visit Manchester United’s famous stadium ‘Old Trafford’ and to take photos of the field. I myself was honoured to be able to thank the Mayor of Manchester (in full regalia) on behalf of the EIBA Board for his hospitality during our visit to the City Hall. Danny succeeded in capturing this important moment with his camera, which allowed me to show the picture around later on and impress my family and colleagues.
      
      By that time, Danny had already become a specialist on China. Earlier than most of us he had anticipated the growing role of international business and regaled his EIBA colleagues with the stories of his visits to this newly emerging and intriguing country. He also discovered the charms of a still-Portuguese group of three small islands, but about-to-become part of China, i.e. Macau. Danny’s Chinese connection is still very much alive, and he still follows Sino-European relations closely. Last year he convened a special panel at the AIB Conference in Milan about ‘Europe at Fifty’ in which he dealt with that theme.

      I missed the Maastricht EIBA meeting and consequently I did not get any pictures. When we met in Paris the following year, I did not attempt to challenge Danny to speak French, even though he himself spoke the language of Molière at the beginning of his speech during the Gala Dinner held on a boat on the river Seine. To compensate for a nasty picture he took of Juán Durán and me during that trip he allowed me later to pose with two charming Spanish young ladies. I also have an unforgettable photo with two nice Greek girls of the Athens conference secretariat, with the Acropolis in the background. Danny was very proud of the fact that he had succeeded to get a woman IB professor to host an EIBA conference for the very first time in 28 years. And rightfully so, because Marina Papanastassiou did an excellent job. That the so-called ‘glass ceiling’ was broken again a few years later when Grazia Santangelo would host us in Catania and also for the third time in 2010 when Ana Teresa Tavares will do so in Porto, is to a large extent due to Danny’s efforts to do away with the gender barriers.

      The following year we were back in Copenhagen. I remember Danny trying to choose the best angle to capture the beauty and architectonic irreverencey of the CBS building. As it happened with Harald Vestergaard a dozen years before, Torben Pedersen decided to challenge Danny by going public with the story about a strange trip from Calgary to Banff for the AIB conference a number of years before and an even stranger night at the hotel in Banff. I must admit that it became extremely mysterious and that I am still wondering what happened. I have never seen the photos. I may say: in Danny’s pictures, I trust.

      From North to South, from Copenhagen to Ljubljana. From out-dated technology to digital photography. At last, Ljubljana heralds a new era: we have now Danny’s EIBA pictures at the EIBA website in a photo gallery. This enables us to fully appreciate Danny’s photographic capabilities, and to revive the nice moments of EIBA socialisation after the intensity of the discussions about the papers in the meeting rooms. I especially remember three photos from that conference. The first one, with my good Brazilian friend Carlos Hemais who died one year later and was already very ill when he came to the conference. The second picture, features Danny awarding John Dunning with EIBA’s Lifetime Achievement Award in International Business. And, last but not least, a third photo with the participants, including myself, of the panel session about the book in honour of Danny’s career, edited by Ludo Cuyvers and Filip De Beule, entitled Transnational Corporations and Economic Development – From Internationalization to Globalization. Clearly, Danny’s photos have, to a significant degree, become my memory.

      Up North, again: Oslo, in 2005. That wonderful half-village, half-city, where one feels relaxed and close to nature, together with the organizational skills of Gabriel Benito brought us another successful conference. Looking at some 50 photos, out of the more than hundred taken by Danny, and displayed at the EIBA website, one wonders how Danny can do so many things at the same time during a three day conference: EIBA chairman and chairing of the Board Meeting, the General Assembly, the AIB West European Region, organizer and chair of two panel sessions, the Doctoral Tutorial, speaking at the Gala Dinner... and last but not least the unofficial photographer. And there also is EIBA-zine, another product of Danny’s entrepreneurship. During the EIBA conferences many participants respond positively and enthusiastically to Danny’s request to contribute a short article for the next EIBA-zine issue. However, for one reason or other, such good intentions rarely materialise and, time and again, as a result Danny takes it upon himself to write most of the articles. This is another facet of Danny’s multi-variate capabilities: a photographer, a journalist, and an outstanding academic. So many features in just one man!
       
      In 2006, EIBA moved to Fribourg hosted by Philippe Gugler, in order to clarify the vexata questio of which chocolates taste best: i.e. the Swiss or the Belgian ones, corporate ownership notwithstanding? Danny was courageous enough to take Belgian chocolates to Switzerland and claim that they were better than the Swiss, although he admitted that the difference was marginal, in order not to upset his hosts too much. More important, however, was that, we found a rejuvenated Danny, after the back surgery he had undergone at the beginning of the year. A Danny who could carry his bag again. Contrary to what I had expected he did not show up in Fribourg with a brand new, 200-grams light, camera. Against all medical advice he persisted to handle a heavy camera with several lenses. After more than 20 years I was still not able to predict Danny’s moves. Neither did I realise that after the conference he made a trip to Zermatt to see the Matterhorn, a mountain that had fascinated him since his youth. No wonder for someone who was born in a “plat pays”, to recall Jacques Brel.

      From Fribourg, we moved to Catania, Sicily, to experience in loco how old Mediterranean societies function, and how surprising baroque architecture can be. And of course, the Etna volcano. I was not successful in convincing Danny to join me for a trip to Agrigento, as he had already been there during the interim Board meeting. I had the feeling that Danny was taking less pictures of the meeting, perhaps because he was too impressed by the snow covered top of the Etna or fearful of the mafia. Looking at the EIBA website I even have the impression that he himself was photographed more often. In retrospect, the most important feature at Catania was a special plenary session organised by Danny about the second edition of John Dunning magnum opus Multinational Enterprises and the Global Economy. Documented also by Danny’s camera, this was the last EIBA venue where John Dunning made a presentation. John Dunning, the man (and dear friend) who made our lives intersect in Bellagio.

      Yet, thanks to Danny, I was also asked to be on a panel in June 2008 together with him as well as John Dunning, Juán Durán and Marjan Svetlicic. This heralds another facet of Danny: namely his ability to identify interesting topics and suscitate a lively discussion among the panel members and the audience about the issues involved, such as ‘The European Union at Fifty’. He reserved the top place for himself, however, featuring in the programme twice, with opening and closing addresses on different topics! But this time he lost: we took so long in our presentations that he got no time left for his last one.

      My earlier impression of Danny giving up his ‘duties’ as EIBA’s photographer was not confirmed in Tallinn in December 2008, however. Although he informed us that at the end of 2009 he will step down as Chairman of EIBA, I hope he will continue to come to the EIBA meetings to organize panel sessions and to capture the academic sessions and social activities with his camera”.

      Lisboa, 3 February, 2009

      Vítor Corado Simões

      
       

10. Varia

    1. Call for Papers - Focused issue of 'Management International Review' 

       Call for Papers

       Focused Issue of Management International Review
       Multinationals and the changing rules of competition: Challenges for IB research
       Guest Editors: Pervez N. Ghauri & Grazia D. Santangelo
       DEADLINE: MARCH 30, 2010

       About the Focused Issue
       The new global order that has emerged in the last decade has changed the rules of competition. The emergence of new technology producers and the rise of multinational enterprises (MNEs) in emerging markets (EM), among other developments, have indeed challenged the competitiveness of established players. EM MNEs are acquiring firms and brands in developed markets (DM) and the effects of these activities on the competitiveness of DM economies and firms are far from being entirely clear. Likewise, DM MNEs are investing heavily in EM for cost-related reasons and increasingly to source new knowledge, access talents and exploit skilled human capital. These investing strategies pose questions regarding their final effects on the competitiveness of the DM MNEs’ activities in their home countries. The overall picture is further complicated by the financial crisis, the scale of which is still to be fully comprehended.

       These developments challenge IB theories and paradigms, and raise the following research questions:
       - Are EM and EM MNEs a new “ecology” of places and firms?
       - Does EM MNEs’ strategy call for alternative conceptualizations of corporate strategy?
       - Do we need new IB theories explaining FDI and international outsourcing?
       - Can the internationalization process model be applied to EM MNEs?
       - Is the firm-specific advantage (FSA) concept still useful?
       - Is there a need for a re-conceptualization of FSA to distinguish between EM and DM MNEs’ activities?
       - How can EM MNEs be conceptualized within the eclectic paradigm?
       - Are the OLI advantages equally relevant when looking at DM and EM MNEs?
       - Is the paradigm still valid?

       Papers in this focused issue should address these questions. We especially welcome contributions proposing new conceptual viewpoints and comparative assessments of the suitability of alternative theoretical perspectives such as transaction costs, resource-based view, institutional theory and economic geography. To this end, it would be particularly valuable to explore how theories such as these can be combined. Empirical studies are also favored. Possible paper topics include, but are not limited to:
       * The impact on their home country of DM MNEs’ activities in EM.
       * The impact of EM MNEs’ activities on the host DM.
       * Determinants and effects of M&As and alliances by EM MNEs in DM.
       * Knowledge and talents’ sourcing in EM by DM MNEs.
       * The role of institutions in attracting and regulating MNEs’activities.
       * The impact of economic geography and location onthe activities of MNEs both from DM and EM.Submission Information.

       Papers should be submitted electronically to MIRfocusedissue@unict.it. The deadline for submission is March 30, 2010. All papers will be subjected to double-blind peer review. Authors should submit their manuscripts as a word-file attachment which does not reveal their identity in the document (remove personal information from file properties in the tools options-security tab). A separate cover page revealing author’s name and affiliation should also be submitted. Manuscripts should be formatted using MIR style guidelines, available at http://www.mir-online.de. Tel. +39.095.7340119 Fax +39.095.7340139
       http://www.fscpo.unict.it/docenti/prof.ssa_Santangelo.html

       ----------------------------------------------------------------
       Università di Catania - C.E.A.
       Servizio di Posta Elettronica
       http://www.cea.unict.it

        

        

    2. Call for Papers - Revue Management International 

       Call for Papers
       
       Revue Management International, Fall 2011
       “Location Strategies of Multinational Enterprises (MNEs): Towards New Practices and Theories?”
       
       Invited Editors:
       Ana Colovic, Groupe ESC Rouen
       Anthony Goerzen, University of Victoria and Visiting Scholar at Groupe ESC Rouen
       Ulrike Mayrhofer, IAE de Lyon, Université Jean Moulin Lyon 3, and Groupe ESC Rouen

       In a context of economic globalisation and growing regional integration, multinational enterprises (MNEs) face an ongoing need to reshape their investment strategies and, more specifically, to optimize the choice of location for their activities. In fact, MNEs currently conduct 28% of their R&D abroad, and scholars expect this trend to become more marked in the coming years with these activities increasingly migrating to emerging economies.

       The process of MNE internationalization and the examination of their foreign location choice are some of the central issues in International Business research. The literature on MNEs and their location strategies has evolved considerably in recent years. The topic was developed first from an economic perspective where researchers have attempted toexplain the strategic decisions of MNEs, mainly focusing on the reasons for internationalization and the determinants of market entry mode choices (e.g. Dunning’s eclectic paradigm). These models allow a better understanding of why companies choose tolocate activities in foreign markets and which options they have for entering new markets.

       During the 1990s, a new approach emerged, called the New Economic Geography, concentrating on the geographic dimension of location strategies. This analysis emphasizes that economic activities tend to agglomerate in certain regions and shows why some regions tend to attract certain activities (clusters). Several recent contributions also emphasize the importance of economic drivers such as market size and investment incentives.
       
       A second research stream explains the location choice based on institutional and cultural factors. This stream suggests that MNEs’ location strategies are influenced by the institutional and the cultural environment. According to this stream, MNEs prefer to locate foreign operations in host countries that are close or similar to their home country because this will substantially minimize uncertainty and thus increase chances for success. The literature on institutional and cultural effects includes legal, political and cultural dimensions. For example, some authors find that differences between the MNEs home-country and host-country political systems are likely to increase costs and uncertainty, and consequently to influence the effectiveness of MNEs operating in that foreign environment. Recent reviews on the effects of culture in the field of International Business discuss the influence of national culture placing the emphasis on the differences in national cultural values between home and host countries and the potential consequences on international operations.

       Related to this is the debate in the literature as to the ‘regional’ vs. ‘global’ character of MNEs’ operations. Recently, Rugman analyzed the 500 largest multinational firms and concluded that the great majority of these firms concentrate their activities in their home region - North America, Europe or Asia-Pacific. The author argues that most companies are not global but rather regional or in some smaller proportion bi-regional. This can be explained by the fact that distance still plays an important role, despite the globalisation of markets. In this perspective, the multidimensional character of the concept of distance (including cultural, administrative, geographical, economic and technological aspects) that influences the international expansion of should be taken into account. Flores and Aguilera (2007) analyze location choices of the top 100 US MNEs in 1980 and 2000. Their findings suggest, first, that the extent of MNEs' activities around the globe is more extensive than assumed by regionalists' arguments and well beyond Ohmae's Triad, but still less widespread than claimed by the globalists - the two main traditions within the globalization - regionalization debate.

       The literature on location strategies of multinational corporations shows that the field needs further theoretical and empirical development to better understand the complexity of location choices. Therefore, we invite authors to submit articles on the following themes:

       • Configuration/reconfiguration of the global value-chain of MNEs
       • Comparison of location strategies of MNEs (countries of origin, industries, performance, etc.)
       • Location strategies for specific functions: production, R&D, marketing, etc.
       • Attractiveness of territories for MNE location (countries, regions, cities)
       • Contribution of location strategies to the performance of MNEs
       • Relationships between headquarters and foreign subsidiaries
       • Changing roles of headquarters and foreign subsidiaries
       • Disaggregation and functional fragmentation of the value chain

       The above is only a suggestive list - we would also encourage authors to explore issues of location strategies that extend beyond this list. Both theoretical and empirical papers are welcome. Papers should be submitted by e-mail to Management International (micetai@hec.ca) no later than November 15, 2010 for publication in the special issue of fall 2011. A more complete invitztion with references to the literature can be found at the website of the journal. The presentation of submitted papers must strictly follow the style guide of management International (http://revue.hec.ca/mi). Papers selected for possible publication will be evaluated through a peer review system on a double blind basis.