This paper shows empirically that in an intra-industry oligopolistic scenario the location of a firm’s innovative activities plays an important role in determining its partner selection in R&D alliances. Such a role is mainly attributed to a strategic use of R&D alliances as a means to limit...

Globalism has become an emblem for a whole series of dramatic changes in the international economy. The hyperbole in the media and popular novels that suggests a whirling era of giant companies, shifting money, and hapless governments, often hides the distinctive features of changing markets....

The institutional approach treats organisational forms and behaviour as contingent upon institutions that are durable and socially embedded and so several authors have argued that the nature and modes of operation of multinational enterprises (MNEs) vary according to their national origins. This...

This paper addresses an issue of great importance for the future organization of the consumer electronics industry: the "battle" of control over component-based digitization. We are now witnessing the dismantling of the Japanese Model that has prevailed in consumer electronics over the past 30...

This paper tries to bring new insights on the dynamics of inter-firm by focusing on cognitive and organisational dimensions. We consider the knowledge bases created inside the agreement and the characteristics of such knowledge bases (such as tacitness, level of generality, degree of...

This paper analyses the association between inter-firm collaborative agreements and the technological capabilities of the largest European electronics firms between 1984 and 1997. To this purpose we collected information about 2,240 R&D agreements sponsored by the EU and 1,970 non sponsored...

The purpose of this paper is to show why to build ‘learning organisations’ must be a central element of knowledge management. The paper argues that the wide use of information technology has a contradictory impact on knowledge management. On the one hand it extends the potential for...

The paper addresses two recent interrelated phenomena: High- tech regional knowledge clusters, and globalization of R&D activities by multinational corporations (MNCs). Combining MNC literature; regional development literature; and literature on social networks, the paper discusses determinants of...

The growing importance of knowledge-based competition has prompted many firms to build international cooperative ventures for skills acquisition and knowledge building. Based on an empirical study of a close collaboration in the knowledge intensive area between a British and a Japanese...

Observers around the world are impressed by the rapid growth of China’s economy. While outside observers tend to focus on the success story of unprecedented growth policy documents and recent domestic debates in China have pointed to the need for a shift in the growth trajectory with stronger...