Trust, Organizational Controls, Knowledge Acquisition from the Foreign Parents, and Performance in Vietnamese International Joint Ventures

Successful adaptation in strategic alliances "calls for a delicate balance between the twin virtues of reliability and flexibility" [Parkhe 1998]. On one hand, the joint venture must be flexible enough to respond to the uncertainties of competitive business environments because it is not feasible to plan for every possible contingency. Yet, on the other hand, unfettered flexibility invites dysfunctional behavior, such as opportunism and complacency. This delicate balance accompanies a parallel balance between trust and control of the joint venture. The primary goal of this study is to empirically examine this relationship in the context of Vietnamese international joint ventures (IJVs) by building on the model of knowledge acquisition and performance in IJVs established by Lyles and Salk [1996]. This study makes three major contributions to the literature. First it confirms several findings of the original Lyles and Salk study [1996]. Second, we strengthen Lyles and Salk's original model by incorporating multiple measures of both interorganizational trust and control as independent variables. Finally, this study represents one of the first in-depth examinations of business in the emerging Vietnamese economy.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/39713/3/wp329.pd

Scavenging Poultry for Poverty Alleviation: A review of experiences with a focus on Bangladesh

Report prepared for International Livestock Research Institute.Food Security and Poverty, Livestock Production/Industries,

The Fight for the Middle: Upgrading, Competition, and Industrial Development in China

When China acceded to WTO in 2001, there were fears that Chinese firms would lose market share in key sectors to foreign-invested enterprises (FIEs). Although aggregate data often indicate a shift in favour of FIEs, indigenous firms in many cases have slowly increased market share and deepened their technical capabilities. Through an analysis of aggregate data and three sectors, we show how the dynamics of competition between Chinese and FIEs in China's domestic market enhance the upgrading prospects for Chinese firms. China represents a new model of development in several important respects: industrial upgrading efforts are often domestically-driven, within this domestic market there is intense competition between both domestic and foreign firms, and this competition is driving and stimulating the upgrading efforts of domestic firms.China, industrialization, FDI, upgrading, value-chains, emerging markets, automotive

Trust, Organizational Controls, Knowledge Acquisition from the Foreign Parents, and Performance in Vietnamese International Joint Ventures

Successful adaptation in strategic alliances "calls for a delicate balance between the twin virtues of reliability and flexibility" [Parkhe 1998]. On one hand, the joint venture must be flexible enough to respond to the uncertainties of competitive business environments because it is not feasible to plan for every possible contingency. Yet, on the other hand, unfettered flexibility invites dysfunctional behavior, such as opportunism and complacency. This delicate balance accompanies a parallel balance between trust and control of the joint venture. The primary goal of this study is to empirically examine this relationship in the context of Vietnamese international joint ventures (IJVs) by building on the model of knowledge acquisition and performance in IJVs established by Lyles and Salk [1996]. This study makes three major contributions to the literature. First it confirms several findings of the original Lyles and Salk study [1996]. Second, we strengthen Lyles and Salk's original model by incorporating multiple measures of both interorganizational trust and control as independent variables. Finally, this study represents one of the first in-depth examinations of business in the emerging Vietnamese economy.

Sharing the burden: Empirical evidence on corporate tax incidence

This study assesses the burden of capital income tax passed onto labor through wage bargaining over economic rents, using estimations based on a unique pseudo-panel data set from Germany for the period 1998 to 2006. Tax return data cover the universe of corporations subject to corporate income tax, and labor market variables reflect the full record of employees covered by Social Security. We find that wage bargaining after a reduction in tax rates does not increase the wage bill if employment effects neglected by previous empirical studies are taken into account. Any increase in the total wage bill by higher wage rates set is equally compensated for by lower levels of employment. If adjustments in employment due to the increased user cost of capital are taken into account, a cut in corporate income taxes by 1 euro increases the wage bill by 0.47 euro. The identification of these effects comes from variation in the firm-specific average corporate tax rate across firms and over time resulting from two substantial tax reforms. The endogeneity of the firmspecific tax rate is controlled for by an instrumental variable approach. The instrument for the observed average tax rate is the counterfactual tax rate that a corporation would have faced in a particular period, had there been no endogenous change of its tax base, constructed using a detailed microsimulation model. --tax incidence,wage determination,corporate income taxation,corporate tax return data

"The Strategic Effects of Firm Sizes and Dynamic Capabilities on Overseas Operations: A Case-based Comparison of Toyota and Mitsubishi in Thailand and Australia"

In international business, much attention has been directed to the international expansion of firms based on their use of resources and competitive capabilities that have been built up in a home country to create a competitive advantage over host-country firms. More recently, the organizational capabilities and competitive advantages of Japanese manufacturing firms in general (in autos, electronics, etc.) have been analyzed as important factors in the establishment of overseas transplants. The theoretical framework of the overseas application of home-country management resources has been effective as a basic tool in analyzing the fundamental issue of international operations of the firm. However, the existing models, which tend to emphasize application of country-specific resources, does not sufficiently explain the frequently encountered question of why multinational enterprises (following, MNEs) from the same home country pursue different strategic paths and actions when managing overseas operations. The present paper attempts to incorporate a dynamic and firm-specific perspective and empirically analyze how differences in the financial resources and organizational capabilities of MNEs from the same home country affect the strategy and competitive behavior of their operations in the same local country. The analysis will center on the two Japanese auto assemblers, specifically Toyota Motor Corporation and Mitsubishi Motors Corporation, which have local production facilities in both Australia and Thailand. These two countries provide interesting case studies because in both the local operations experienced a serious crisis in recent years. The crisis for local auto producers in Australia began in the 1980s with the removal of protectionist policies and the rapid liberalization of the auto market. In Thailand, exceedingly severe conditions for local auto assemblers were caused by the 1997 Asian economic crisis. The present paper will focus its attention on the differences in the responses by Toyota and Mitsubishi to these crises, which we characterize as "larger competent firm" and "smaller competent firm" respectively. The two firms in question have both maintained international competitiveness in production in their common home country of Japan, in addition to building top-level local competitiveness in their Australian and Thai operations. However, when faced with a growth opportunity and a subsequent crisis, the responses of the local operations of the firms were markedly different. It is anticipated that behind these differences in firm conduct lie interfirm differences in firm scale (i.e. financial power) and dynamic organizational capabilities (e.g., capability-building capability) in their home country. The present paper will attempt to delineate these interfirm differences and their effects on firm conduct to explain why two firms from the same home country would show such different patterns of conduct even though they face the same local opportunities and crises.

CURRENT ISSUES AFFECTING TRADE AND TRADE POLICY: AN ANNOTATED LITERATURE REVIEW

This review provides a base of literature describing current issues and research on the impacts of lobalization and the industrialization of agriculture and recent approaches to analyze and model agricultural trade and trade policies. Three key factors of the survey are differentiated goods, global economic integration and international supply chain linkages. The review covers 182 publications, which are presented alphabetically by author with a brief annotation describing how it relates to the above criteria. The articles are also indexed by keyword. A brief summary highlights the documented literature and includes a series of issues for future discussion and research.International Relations/Trade,

The Effect of Green Supply Chain Management Practices on the Sustainable Performance of the Textile Industry

The aim of the current study is to examine the effect of green supply chain management practices (GSCMP) on the sustainable performance (SP) of the textile industry of Indonesia. For this purpose, data was collected from the supply chain mangers of the textile industry through the questionnaire by using a convenient sampling technique. The Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) has shown that there is positive and significant relationship between the green manufacturing (GM) and SP. In the same vein, it is also found that green design (GD), green distribution (GD), eco-design (ED) and green manufacturing (GM) also have a positive and significant relationship with the SP in the textile industry of Indonesia. These findings indicate that textile industry in Indonesia has a greater importance on the GSCMP to increase the SP. Therefore, it could be explained that GSCMP are considered to be an important predictor to enhance the SP. The findings of the current study could contribute a body of literature in the form of empirical findings which could become a new area of research in future. The research limitations and future directions are also discussed at the end of the study