Liabilities of Regional Foreignness and the Use of Firm Level and Country Level Data

We are pleased that Dunning et al. (2006) have provided macro (country) level data demonstrating the increased internationalization of many nations over the past decade. We also appreciate their findings lending support to our perspective on the regional nature of world business. Our work was based solely on micro (firm) level data, see Rugman and Verbeke (2004a). Both country level data and firm level data have methodological problems which we attempt to reconcile in this comment. We also address the broader conceptual issues of how to interpret country level versus firm level data.Regional strategy, home region bound firm-specific advantages, liability of regional foreignness, methodology

A Perspective on Regional and Global Strategies of Multinational Enterprises

It is widely accepted that multinational enterprises (MNEs) are the key drivers of globalization. The ultimate test to assess the level of globalization is the actual penetration of markets across the globe, especially in the broad ‘triad’ markets of NAFTA, the European Union and Asia. Yet, data on the activities of the 500 largest MNEs reveal that very few actually operate globally. For 320 of the 380 for which geographic sales data are available, an average of 80.3% of their total sales are in their home region of the triad. This means that the world’s largest firms are not global, but regionally based in terms of breadth and depth of market coverage. Globalization thus reflects a special, and rather unusual, outcome of doing international business, and regional strategies are more relevant than global ones. This has important implications for various strands of mainstream international business research, as well as for the broader managerial debate on the design of optimal strategies and governance structures for MNEs.Semi-globalization, regional strategy triad, value chain, firm specific advantages, localization, global strategy

Towards a Theory of Regional Multinationals: A Transaction Cost Economics Approach

This paper develops new theory to help explain the recent empirical work that demonstrates the profound lack of global sales, with 320 of the 380 largest firms in the world averaging 80% of their sales within their home region. Transaction cost economics (TCE) concepts are used to explain why large firms adopt regional, rather than global, strategies. A new theory of international management built to explain regional-level strategy and structure is developed. In this, a firm's geographic scope of sales is limited by the predominant regional reach of its firm level capabilities, due to TCE reasons.

Regional Transnationals and Triad Strategy

In this paper, we address the geographic distribution of sales of some of the world’s largest multinational enterprises (MNEs), with a focus on the share of each leg of the ‘Triad’ (the North-American Free Trade Agreement or NAFTA-zone, the European Union - E.U., and Asia) in these firms’ overall sales. Our view is that a firm has achieved global corporate success only if it is able to earn a balanced regional distribution of sales. Only high actual sales across the globe, especially in the wealthy and technologically advanced triad regions, demonstrate both strong firm-level capabilities at the supply side to market products and services worldwide, and a high willingness of sophisticated consumers at the demand side, to pay for the firm’s output. With respect to the supply side, we develop a new conceptual framework, which distinguishes among the global, regional and national loci of MNE decision-making, as well as the global, regional and national levels of product standardization. Our main point is that the regional dimension is important for many firms, because it is a geographic level where many important decisions are made, and where product standardization may be appropriate. We then identify the twenty MNEs with the highest foreign-to-total (F/T) sales ratios in the UNCTAD list of most internationalized companies in terms of foreign asset base that are also Fortune 500 firms. For this set of large, highly internationalized companies, we measure the distribution of their sales across triad regions. We find that only three of these firms actually have a substantial portion of their sales across all three legs of the triad. The other MNEs are either bi-regional, host-region oriented or home-triad region oriented. In other words, the empirical evidence reveals that even these highly internationalized MNEs do not have a balanced global distribution of sales. We further elaborate on this empirical finding by investigating whether a regional component can be identified in twelve specific cases of MNE strategy, building upon our new framework.globalization, regionalization, triad, transnational enterprises, triad home-base, regional, global, bi-regional, Wal-Mart

Cross-cultural differences in the practices of hotel managers: A study of Dutch and Belgian hotel managers

In the service sector there has been debate and research on whether it is the culture of the organization or that of the location that shapes hotel management practice - particularly given the internationalization of certain, mostly US-style practices. Here Myriam Jansen-Verbeke and Liesbet Steel of Rotterdam's Erasmus University report on a survey of hotel managers in Belgium and The Netherlands. Differences are slight, but whether this is because of a shared cultural background or a homogenizing organizational culture is not clear. Comparisons with a larger study of managers in 13 countries worldwide are made. Copyrigh

On the origin of bursts in blue compact dwarf galaxies: clues from kinematics and stellar populations

Blue compact dwarf galaxies (BCDs) form stars at, for their sizes, extraordinarily high rates. In this paper, we study what triggers this starburst and what is the fate of the galaxy once its gas fuel is exhausted. We select four BCDs with smooth outer regions, indicating them as possible progenitors of dwarf elliptical galaxies. We have obtained photometric and spectroscopic data with the FORS and ISAAC instruments on the VLT. We analyse their infrared spectra using a full spectrum fitting technique, which yields the kinematics of their stars and ionized gas together with their stellar population characteristics. We find that the stellar velocity to velocity dispersion ratio ((nu/sigma)(star)) of our BCDs is of the order of 1.5, similar to that of dwarf elliptical galaxies. Thus, those objects do not require significant (if any) loss of angular momentum to fade into early-type dwarfs. This finding is in discordance with previous studies, which however compared the stellar kinematics of dwarf elliptical galaxies with the gaseous kinematics of star-forming dwarfs. The stellar velocity fields of our objects are very disturbed and the star formation regions are often kinematically decoupled from the rest of the galaxy. These regions can be more or less metal rich with respect to the galactic body and sometimes they are long lived. These characteristics prevent us from pinpointing a unique trigger of the star formation, even within the same galaxy. Gas impacts, mergers, and in-spiraling gas clumps are all possible star formation igniters for our targets

Occasions, people and places for pork consumption in Europe. Empirical findings from the Q-Porkchains pan-European consumer survey

Objective: to describe the occasions when, the places where and people with whom respondents reported pork meat consumption. Design & Setting: Cross-sectional web based survey in Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Greece and Poland, January 2008, with quota samples on gender (male, female), age categories (20- 44y and 45-70y), and locality of residence (urban, rural with low pig production density and rural with high pig production density). Subjects: 2437 respondents (51% women, 49% men; mean age 41.4 y SD 13.1). Methods: Online computer based survey, including sociodemographic information, anthropometrics (weight, height), and further questions on frequency of pork consumption (30 common items, 17 country-specific items), the occasions (working day, any day, weekend, special occasions), the company (alone, with family, with friends, with others) and the place of actual consumption (at home, outside of home). Results are aggregated for the five European countries. Results: Tenderloin, mignonette, brochette together with pork shoulder ranked as the first choices for weekend and special occasions. The most out-of home consumed products are mixed gyros-pita meat, pork based brochette, pizza, small cuts, marinated meat, escalope, shoulder, tenderloin and mixed meat. The Greek country specific Sygglino, Tigania, and the Country-style sausage are amongst the main preferences for out of home consumption. At European level, most products are consumed at home and with the family. Meat products such as salami, ham, and similar products are amongst the first choices when eating alone. Semi-processed meat like brochettes, small cuts and marinated or ready to eat dishes as gyros-pitas and pizza are the main choice for eating in the company of friends. Conclusions: European respondents seem to make specific choices of food depending on to the occasions, the places and the company. This information highlights the potential orientation of consumers towards fresh meat for special occasions or weekends, and more processed and convenient products when alone or socializing. This information is also useful to address interventions aiming at the improvement of food related health in Europe.Occasions, Pork consumption, Europe, Q-Porkchains, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety,

Penicillin kills chlamydia following the fusion of bacteria with Lysosomes and prevents genital inflammatory lesions in C. muridarum-infected mice

The obligate intracellular bacterium Chlamydia exists as two distinct forms. Elementary bodies (EBs) are infectious and extra-cellular, whereas reticulate bodies (RBs) replicate within a specialized intracellular compartment termed an ‘inclusion’. Alternative persistent intra-cellular forms can be induced in culture by diverse stimuli such as IFNγ or adenosine/EHNA. They do not grow or divide but revive upon withdrawal of the stimulus and are implicated in several widespread human diseases through ill-defined in vivo mechanisms. β-lactam antibiotics have also been claimed to induce persistence in vitro. The present report shows that upon penicillin G (pG) treatment, inclusions grow as fast as those in infected control cells. After removal of pG, Chlamydia do not revert to RBs. These effects are independent of host cell type, serovar, biovar and species of Chlamydia. Time-course experiments demonstrated that only RBs were susceptible to pG. pG-treated bacteria lost their control over host cell apoptotic pathways and no longer expressed pre-16S rRNA, in contrast to persistent bacteria induced with adenosine/EHNA. Confocal and live-video microscopy showed that bacteria within the inclusion fused with lysosomal compartments in pG-treated cells. That leads to recruitment of cathepsin D as early as 3 h post pG treatment, an event preceding bacterial death by several hours. These data demonstrate that pG treatment of cultured cells infected with Chlamydia results in the degradation of the bacteria. In addition we show that pG is significantly more efficient than doxycycline at preventing genital inflammatory lesions in C. muridarum-C57Bl/6 infected mice. These in vivo results support the physiological relevance of our findings and their potential therapeutic applications