The global operations of European firms

This Policy Brief is part of the EU-EFIGE (European Firms in a Global Economy) project which aims to address policy questions on the casual link between firm characteristics and internationalisation. Authored by Giorgio Barba Navaretti, University of Milan; Matteo Bugamelli, Bank of Italy; Gianmarco Ottaviano, Bruegel Senior Fellow; and Fabiano Schivardi, University of Cagliari, this paper is based on a comprehensive survey of 15,000 firms across seven EU countries. The findings of this paper set the foundation for deeper investigation into key policy challenges affecting European firms on the global stage.

Uneven Growth: A Framework for Research in Development Economics

The textbook paradigm of economy-wide development rests on the premise of "balanced growth"; that is, on the presumption that all sectors will grow in unison over time as a country gets richer. This view has served us reasonably well in some circumstances, but is not particularly useful for accounts of modern (under)development.In many developing countries, economic growth has been fundamentally uneven: software development, the outsourcing of services, sectoral technological change, quick compositional shifts between agriculture and other sectors, the rise of particular exports, "special" economic zones, and so on. This paper will discuss both the sources of uneven growth, and its implications, with greater emphasis on the latter. The paper will argue that much of the distributional issues, or the reactions to globalization that we see in modern developing societies can be viewed as reactions to a growth process that is fundamentally uneven and is indeed perceived as such.Balanced Growth; Economic Development; Globalization

Investigating the Relationship between Employee Perceptions of Servant Leadership and Employee Job Satisfaction, Employee Job Performance and Employee Turnover Intention in an Outsourcing Pharmaceutical Contract Manufacturing Company

Research has begun to recognize the importance of leadership in developing strategies geared towards improving job satisfaction and employee performance while at the same time reducing turnover intention. The purpose of this quantitative correlational-predictive study was to explore servant leadership principles and its relationship with job satisfaction, job performance and employee turnover intention. Specifically, the researcher sought to understand: 1) whether there was a relationship between employee’s ratings of their manager’s servant leadership style and employee job satisfaction, employee job performance and employee turnover intention, and 2) determine if, and to what extent the specific dimensions of Van Dierendonck and Nuijten’s (2017) 18-item servant leadership instrument predict employee intrinsic, extrinsic, and overall job satisfaction. Data was collected from 194 employees. Participants in the survey included 57 females and 43 males. There were several applicable statistical conclusions drawn from the research as it pertains to servant leadership namely: a) the Pearson’s correlation coefficient indicated that servant leadership has a strong positive relationship with job satisfaction (r (86) = .731, p \u3c .001) and employee turnover intentions (r (86) =. -414, p \u3c .001, b) linear regression analysis showed that servant leadership predicts overall job satisfaction (R² =. 536, p \u3c .001) which means that 53.6% of job satisfaction is attributed to servant leadership. Together, these findings are consistent with past research which used Van Dierendonck and Nuijten’s (2017) 18-item servant leadership instrument to investigate the same variables but in different industries. Findings did not reveal that a relationship existed between servant leadership and job performance. Further research in this area is recommended. This study contributes new knowledge into the academic and outsourcing pharmaceutical manufacturing industry. By providing a snapshot of how servant leadership principles impact job satisfaction and turnover intention, leaders and decision makers now have empirical evidence to introduce this leadership model into the outsourcing pharmaceutical manufacturing industries and similar industries as a viable leadership model aimed at improving both employee job satisfaction and turnover intention

Brexit and the provision of financial services into the EU and into the UK

Brexit is likely to lead to the relocation of UK financial services firms to the EU in order to be able to access EU markets, mainly through the EU passport. The same applies to the EU firms intending to be active on the UK markets. The access conditions to the EU markets are numerous and complex, laid down in EU and national legislation and regulation, and applied by the national supervisory authorities. The European Supervisory Authorities or "ESAs" have published elaborate statements, called Opinions, on the detailed access conditions and the way they intend to apply these. The two main objectives are the full application of EU law, and the avoidance of authorizing EU firms that would be "empty boxes" for activity that would in fact be exercised in the UK, and this mainly by delegating activities to another firm. Underlying is a policy of competition between national economies for relocations of EU firms, or of business activities to be developed on the UK financial markets

Project Quality of Offshore Virtual Teams Engaged in Software Requirements Analysis: An Exploratory Comparative Study

The off-shore software development companies in countries such as India use a global delivery model in which initial requirement analysis phase of software projects get executed at client locations to leverage frequent and deep interaction between user and developer teams. Subsequent phases such as design, coding and testing are completed at off-shore locations. Emerging trends indicate an increasing interest in off-shoring even requirements analysis phase using computer mediated communication. We conducted an exploratory research study involving students from Management Development Institute (MDI), India and Marquette University (MU), USA to determine quality of such off-shored requirements analysis projects. Our findings suggest that project quality of teams engaged in pure off-shore mode is comparable to that of teams engaged in collocated mode. However, the effect of controls such as user project monitoring on the quality of off-shored projects needs to be studied further

Business models and stock exchange performance : empirical evidence

In recent years stock exchanges have been increasingly diversifying their operations into related business areas such as derivatives trading, post-trading services and software sales. This trend can be observed most notably among profit-oriented trading venues. While the pursuit for diversification is likely to be driven by the attractiveness of these investment opportunities, it is yet an open question whether certain integration activities are also efficient, both from a social welfare and from the exchanges' perspective. Academic contributions so far analyzed different business models primarily from the social welfare perspective, whereas there is only little literature considering their impact on the exchange itself. By employing a panel data set of 28 stock exchanges for the years 1999-2003 we seek to shed light on this topic by comparing the factor productivity of exchanges with different business models. Our findings suggest three conclusions: (1) Integration activity comes at the cost of increased operational complexity which in some cases outweigh the potential synergies between related activities and therefore leads to technical inefficiencies and lower productivity growth. (2) We find no evidence that vertical integration is more efficient and productive than other business models. This finding could contribute to the ongoing discussion about the merits of vertical integration from a social welfare perspective. (3) The existence of a strong in-house IT-competence seems to be beneficial to overcome