Macro Intentions, Micro Realities

The current understanding of Regional Integration is largely macro-economic and political in orientation and has tended to neglect, even ex post, the significance of the Single European Market (SEM) for the spatial restructuring of individual firms. The problem stems largely from a lopsided understanding of Regional Integration. This paper introduces a two-level approach in which integration and its outcomes are studied based on the strategic intent and strategic realities of two types of key actors: governments and core companies. In this contribution it is argued that in advocating the SEM, these actors did not necessarily share the same strategic intent. A new firm-level data set shows also that the expectations of European policymakers did not accurately match actual strategies developed by European core companies.Regional Integration;business-government relations;core companies;spatial organization of activities;strategic intent/reality

The Search for Synergy between Institutions and Multinationals: Institutional Uncertainty and Patterns of Internationalization

The debate on globalization has long been characterized by theses of institutional convergence and divergence. The emergence of Anglo-Saxon shareholder capitalism as the dominant paradigm since the start of the 1990s is associated with the pursuit of global strategies by Multinational Enterprises (MNEs) and the consolidation of a multilateral trade regime. Yet the link between actual MNE strategies and developments in the institutional arena remains an understudied phenomenon. Tensions between multiple levels of institution building – unilateralism, regionalism and multilateralism – create an environment of strategic uncertainty for MNEss. Consequently, MNEs’ actual international strategies reveal much about perceptions of the institutional environment in which they operate and allows for the documentation of more subtle paradigm shifts. The internationalization strategies pursued by MNEs from the Triad over the 1990s reveal that a multilateral strategic reality was anticipated by only an elite few, while the vast majority of firms operated in a unilaterally- or at best regionally-determined institutional environment. This contribution suggests that institutional restructuring is multifaceted and sometimes contradictory, casting a new and more subtle light on the globalization debate

Exploring Patterns of Upstream Internationalization: The Role of Home-region ‘Stickiness’

Recent work has emphasized the importance of regional strategies downstream, adding new depth to the debate on ‘globalization’. This paper adds to the debate by exploring the regional dimension upstream for a sample of Triad-based Fortune 500 firms. We find support for our hypothesis that MNEs with higher levels of value-added upstream are relatively constrained in their ability to shift that activity outside the home region due to its strategic significance to home-region stakeholders

Macro Intentions, Micro Realities

The current understanding of Regional Integration is largely macro-economic and political in orientation and has tended to neglect, even ex post, the significance of the Single European Market (SEM) for the spatial restructuring of individual firms. The problem stems largely from a lopsided understanding of Regional Integration. This paper introduces a two-level approach in which integration and its outcomes are studied based on the strategic intent and strategic realities of two types of key actors: governments and core companies. In this contribution it is argued that in advocating the SEM, these actors did not necessarily share the same strategic intent. A new firm-level data set shows also that the expectations of European policymakers did not accurately match actual strategies developed by European core companies

The Rise of Regionalism: Core Company Strategies Under The Second Wave of Integration

Regionalisering heeft het multilaterale stelsel ingehaald. Binnen dat kader zijn de gemeenschappelijke markt in Europa (SEM) en de Vrijhandelzone in Noord Amerika (NAFTA) de bi-regionale kern geworden van de mondiale economie. Omdat de onderbouwende beleidsmodellen vrij abstract waren en een vrij eenvoudige benadering van ‘de onderneming’ hebben gebruikt, is nog tien jaar na dato weinig eenduidige conclusies over de betekenis, aard een uitkomst van de ‘tweede regionaliseringsgolf’. Ondernemingen hebben een belangrijke rol gespeeld bij de totstandkoming van regionalisering. Deze veelal grote, machtige ‘kernondernemingen’ leiden internationaliseringsprocessen en hebben een sterke politieke visie. Voor hun is regionalisering hèt institutionele kader waarbinnen zij hun kernstatus en –posities proberen vast te houden. Deze studie, uitgaande van de geografische spreiding van de economische activiteiten van kernondernemingen anno 1990, werpt licht op hun strategische migraties naar aanleiding van regionale integratie. De data laten diverse migraties zien, vooral na 1995, die soms verdere internationalisering inhouden maar ook de-internationalisering, met als uitkomst toenemende polarisering tussen Noord Amerikaanse en Europese kernondernemingen en dus ook een sterk ‘diadiserende’ wereldeconomie met een bi-regionale kern. Alan Muller was born in the United States and attended high school at Garfield High School in Seattle, Washington. He received his undergraduate degree cum laude from the University of Washington’s Department of History in 1993, and participated in an exchange program with the University of Aberdeen, Scotland in 1991-92. Following graduation Alan went to Vienna, Austria as a Fulbright Teaching Assistant, where he assisted English teachers at several high schools while continuing his study in Modern European History. In 1995 he entered a Master’s degree program in International Relations at the University of Amsterdam, graduating cum laude in 1998 with a thesis on ‘Stolper- Samuelson and the Effects of Trade on Mexican Wages’. Alan Muller is currently a researcher at the Erasmus University Rotterdam and research director of the SCOPE Expert Center, through which he has been involved in research projects for inter alia the Dutch Directorate for Development Cooperation and ICCO. His research focuses on company strategies under regional integration, business-government interaction, development issues, bargaining dynamics and international political economy. He has published in the Multinational Business Review and presented numerous papers at academic conferences such as the AIB and AOM annual meetings. At the annual meeting of the European International Business Academy in 2001, he was awarded the 'Most Challenging Thesis Proposal Award' along with a cash prize in recognition of his groundbreaking approach to his PhD research topic.Regionalism has eclipsed the multilateral system as the 'fast track' for international economic restructuring. Within that framework, the Single European Market (SEM) and North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) have emerged as the bi-polar core of the global economic system. Both agreements employ complex economic models as the basis for projected growth and increased competitive advantage and took a relatively simplistic view of 'the firm'. Partly as a result, ten years into the 'Second Wave' of regionalism there are few uncontested conclusions as to its outcomes or significance.Regional integration has largely been facilitated through the lobby activity of Western 'core companies': large, powerful firms that lead economic restructuring and operate with one foot in the political process. For Western core companies, regionalism has become the institutional framework of choice within which the struggle for the preservation and consolidation of their core positions is played out. Taking their spatial organization of production in 1990 as a baseline, this study is the first to systematically unravel the traditional macro-aggregated understanding of integration outcomes. The evidence shows that, despite the persistence of 'globalization' ideology, regionalism has fueled a diverse pattern of strategic migrations among core companies, particularly since 1995. The outcome is one of growing polarization between North American and European core companies, and consequently within an increasingly dyadic world economy

Metabolic profiles of six African cultivars of cassava (Manihot esculenta Crantz) highlight bottlenecks of root yield

Open Access Article; Published online: 17 Jan 2020Cassava is an important staple crop in sub‐Saharan Africa, due to its high productivity even on nutrient poor soils. The metabolic characteristics underlying this high productivity are poorly understood including the mode of photosynthesis, reasons for the high rate of photosynthesis, the extent of source/sink limitation, the impact of environment, and the extent of variation between cultivars. Six commercial African cassava cultivars were grown in a greenhouse in Erlangen, Germany, and in the field in Ibadan, Nigeria. Source leaves, sink leaves, stems and storage roots were harvested during storage root bulking and analyzed for sugars, organic acids, amino acids, phosphorylated intermediates, minerals, starch, protein, activities of enzymes in central metabolism and yield traits. High ratios of RuBisCO:phosphoenolpyruvate carboxylase activity support a C3 mode of photosynthesis. The high rate of photosynthesis is likely to be attributed to high activities of enzymes in the Calvin–Benson cycle and pathways for sucrose and starch synthesis. Nevertheless, source limitation is indicated because root yield traits correlated with metabolic traits in leaves rather than in the stem or storage roots. This situation was especially so in greenhouse‐grown plants, where irradiance will have been low. In the field, plants produced more storage roots. This was associated with higher AGPase activity and lower sucrose in the roots, indicating that feedforward loops enhanced sink capacity in the high light and low nitrogen environment in the field. Overall, these results indicated that carbon assimilation rate, the K battery, root starch synthesis, trehalose, and chlorogenic acid accumulation are potential target traits for genetic improvement

The Tsunami’s CSR Effect: MNEs and Philanthropic Responses to the Disaster

This paper contributes to the literature on CSR and International Business by linking firm internationalization to corporate philanthropy. Considering the 2004 Tsunami disaster as a highly relevant case of an international societal issue, we analyze the characteristics of the corporate response to the disaster among Fortune Global 500 firms. We find that home region, degree of internationalization, firm size and profitability most strongly influenced the propensity of firms to donate as well as the value of their donations

Multicolour interphase cytogenetics: 24 chromosome probes, 6 colours, 4 layers

From the late 1980s onwards, the use of DNA probes to visualise sequences on individual chromosomes (fluorescent in-situ hybridisation - FISH) revolutionised the study of cytogenetics. Following single colour experiments, more fluorochromes were added, culminating in a 24 colour assay that could distinguish all human chromosomes. Interphase cytogenetics (the detection of chromosome copy number in interphase nuclei) soon followed, however 24 colour experiments are hampered for this application as mixing fluorochromes to produce secondary colours produces images that are not easily distinguishable from overlapping signals. This study reports the development and use of a novel protocol, new fast hybridising FISH probes, and a bespoke image capture system for the assessment of chromosome copy number in interphase nuclei. The multicolour probe sets can be used individually or in sequential hybridisation layers to assess ploidy of all 24 human chromosomes in the same nucleus. Applications of this technique are in the investigation of chromosome copy number and the assessment of nuclear organisation for a range of different cell types including human sperm, cancer cells and preimplantation embryos

Strange Stars with a Density-Dependent Bag Parameter

We have studied strange quark stars in the framework of the MIT bag model, allowing the bag parameter B to depend on the density of the medium. We have also studied the effect of Cooper pairing among quarks, on the stellar structure. Comparison of these two effects shows that the former is generally more significant. We studied the resulting equation of state of the quark matter, stellar mass-radius relation, mass-central-density relation, radius-central-density relation, and the variation of the density as a function of the distance from the centre of the star. We found that the density-dependent B allows stars with larger masses and radii, due to stiffening of the equation of state. Interestingly, certain stellar configurations are found to be possible only if B depends on the density. We have also studied the effect of variation of the superconducting gap parameter on our results.Comment: 23 pages, 8 figs; v2: 25 pages, 9 figs, version to be published in Phys. Rev. (D