How do MNC R&D laboratory roles affect employee international assignments?

Research and development (R&D) employees are important human resources for multinational corporations (MNCs) as they are the driving force behind the advancement of innovative ideas and products. International assignments of these employees can be a unique way to upgrade their expertise; allowing them to effectively recombine their unique human resources to progress existing knowledge and advance new ones. This study aims to investigate the effect of the roles of R&D laboratories in which these employees work on the international assignments they undertake. We categorise R&D laboratory roles into those of the support laboratory, the locally integrated laboratory and the internationally interdependent laboratory. Based on the theory of resource recombinations, we hypothesise that R&D employees in support laboratories are not likely to assume international assignments, whereas those in locally integrated and internationally interdependent laboratories are likely to assume international assignments. The empirical evidence, which draws from research conducted on 559 professionals in 66 MNC subsidiaries based in Greece, provides support to our hypotheses. The resource recombinations theory that extends the resource based view can effectively illuminate the international assignment field. Also, research may provide more emphasis on the close work context of R&D scientists rather than analyse their demographic characteristics, the latter being the focus of scholarly practice hitherto

The practices of apartheid as a war crime: a critical analysis

The human suffering caused by the political ideology of apartheid in South Africa during the Apartheid era (1948-1994) prompted worldwide condemnation and a variety of diplomatic and legal responses. Amongst these responses was the attempt to have apartheid recognised both as a crime against humanity in the 1973 Apartheid Convention as well as a war crime in Article 85(4)(c) of Additional Protocol I. This article examines the origins, nature and current status of the practices of apartheid as a war crime and its possible application to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

Re-imagining Navan Fort : new light on the evolution of a major ceremonial centre in Northern Europe

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A geological model for the structure of ridge segments in slow spreading ocean crust

Author Posting. © American Geophysical Union, 1994. This article is posted here by permission of American Geophysical Union for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Geophysical Research 99, no. B6 (1994): 11937–11958, doi:10.1029/94JB00338.First-order (transform) and second-order ridge-axis discontinuities create a fundamental segmentation of the lithosphere along mid-ocean ridges, and in slow spreading crust they commonly are associated with exposure of subvolcanic crust and upper mantle. We analyzed available morphological, gravity, and rock sample data from the Atlantic Ocean to determine whether consistent structural patterns occur at these discontinuities and to constrain the processes that control the patterns. The results show that along their older, inside-corner sides, both first-and second-order discontinuities are characterized by thinned crust and/or mantle exposures as well as by irregular fault patterns and a paucity of volcanic features. Crust on young, outside-corner sides of discontinuities has more normal thickness, regular fault patterns, and common volcanic forms. These patterns are consistent with tectonic thinning of crust at inside corners by low-angle detachment faults as previously suggested for transform discontinuities by Dick et al. [1981] and Karson [1990]. Volcanic upper crust accretes in the hanging wall of the detachment, is stripped from the inside-corner footwall, and is carried to the outside comer. Gravity and morphological data suggest that detachment faulting is a relatively continuous, long-lived process in crust spreading at <25–30 mm/yr, that it rnay be intermittent at intermediate rates of 25–40 mm/yr, and that it is unlikely to occur at faster rates. Detachment surfaces are dissected by later, high-angle faults formed during crustal uplift into the rift mountains; these faults can cut through the entire crust and may be the kinds of faults imaged by seismic reflection profiling over Cretaceous North Atlantic crust. Off-axis variations in gravity anomalies indicate that slow spreading crust experiences cyclic magmatic/amagmatic extension and that a typical cycle is about 2 m.y. long. During magmatic phases the footwall of the detachment fault probably exposes lower crustal gabbros, although these rocks locally may have an unconformable volcanic carapace. During amagmatic extension the detachment may dip steeply through the crust, providing a mechanism whereby upper mantle ultramafic rocks can be exhumed very rapidly, perhaps in as little as 0.5 m.y. Together, detachment faulting and cyclic magmatic/amagmatic extension create strongly heterogeneous lithosphere both along and across isochrons in slow spreading ocean crust.This research was supported by Office of Naval Research grants N00014-90-J-1621 and N00014-91-J-1433 and by National Science Foundation grants OCE 8716713 and OCE 9020408

Technology transfer offices as boundary spanners in the pre-spin-off process: the case of a hybrid model

Over the past decades, universities have increasingly become ambidextrous organizations reconciling scientific and commercial missions. In order to manage this ambidexterity, technology transfer offices (TTOs) were established in most universities. This paper studies a specific, often implemented, but rather understudied type of TTO, namely a hybrid TTO model uniting centralized and decentralized levels. Employing a qualitative research design, we examine how and why the two TTO levels engage in diverse boundary spanning activities to help nascent spin-off companies move through the pre-spin-off process. Our research identifies differences in the types of boundary spanning activities that centralized and decentralized TTOs perform and in the parties they engage with. We find geographical, technological and organizational proximity to be important antecedents of the TTOs’ engagement in external and internal boundary spanning activities. These results have important implications for both academics and practitioners interested in university technology transfer through spin-off creation

The influence of organizational culture and climate on entrepreneurial intentions among research scientists

Over the past decades, universities have increasingly become involved in entrepreneurial activities. Despite efforts to embrace their ‘third mission’, universities still demonstrate great heterogeneity in terms of their involvement in academic entrepreneurship. This papers adopts an institutional perspective to understand how organizational characteristics affect research scientists’ entrepreneurial intentions. Specifically, we study the impact of university culture and climate on entrepreneurial intentions, including intentions to spin off a company, to engage in patenting or licensing and to interact with industry through contract research or consulting. Using a sample of 437 research scientists from Swedish and German universities, our results reveal that the extent to which universities articulate entrepreneurship as a fundamental element of their mission fosters research scientists’ intentions to engage in spin-off creation and intellectual property rights, but not industry-science interaction. Furthermore, the presence of university role models positively affects research scientists’ propensity to engage in entrepreneurial activities, both directly and indirectly through entrepreneurial self-efficacy. Finally, research scientists working at universities which explicitly reward people for ‘third mission’ related output show higher levels of spin-off and patenting or licensing intentions. This study has implications for both academics and practitioners, including university managers and policy makers

Knowledge Transfer and Accomodation Effects in Multinational Corporations: Evidence from European Subsidiaries

Foreign subsidiaries in multinational corporations (MNCs) possess knowledge that has different sources (e.g., the firm itself or various sources in the environment). How such sources influence knowledge transfer is not well understood. Drawing on the “accommodation effect” from cognitive psychology, the authors argue that accumulation of externally sourced knowledge in a subsidiary may reduce the value of transferring that subsidiary’s knowledge to other parts of the MNC. The authors develop a parsimonious model of intrafirm knowledge transfer and test its predictions against a unique data set on subsidiary knowledge development that includes the sources of subsidiary knowledge and the extent of knowledge transfer to other MNC units. The authors show that a high level of externally sourced knowledge in a subsidiary is associated with a high level of knowledge transfer from that subsidiary only if a certain tipping point of internally sourced knowledge has been surpassed. This suggests that subsidiary knowledge stocks that are balanced in terms of their origins tend to be more valuable, congruous, and fungible, and therefore more likely to be transferred to other MNC units