Multinational Enterprises in the New Europe: Are They Really Global?

Despite a pervasive belief that the world’s largest firms compete globally, the vast majority have most of their sales in their home region. Of the top 500 firms for which regional sales data are available, 118 are from Europe, and they compete predominantly within the European region. On average, 62.8% of their sales are in their home region; only three are global, 8 are host-region oriented and 16 are bi-regional, while 86 are home-region based. To illustrate the four categories, we present case studies of 9 European multinationals — Carrefour, TotalFinaElf, Deutsche Bank, Nokia, Philips, GlaxoSmithKline, L’Oréal Paris, Diageo,and AstraZeneca. We analyze the geographical distribution of their operations and their current structure. We also show that management research is strongly focusedon the special cases of global and bi-regional firms, rather than on the large majority of home-region firms. This implies that managing in the new Europe needs tobe regional, not global.

The Regional Focus of Asian Multinational Enterprises

In recent issues of this journal a debate has raged concerning the appropriate nature of academic research in the Asia Pacific region. In keeping with the expressed desire for both rigor and regional relevance in this research, we wish to demonstrate a strong commonality between the performance of large Asian firms and others from Europe and North America. The large Asian firms mostly operate on an intra-regional basis. It has been assumed that the path to success for Asian firms is globalization, yet we show that the literature supporting this is confined to a handful of unrepresentative case studies.Asian multinationals, regional strategy, internationalization, bibliometric analysis, firm-specific advantages

The Regional Nature of the World’s Automotive Sector

There are 29 automotive firms in the world’s largest 500 firms. Yet none of these are “global” firms, defined as having at least 20 per cent of their sales in each of the three regions of the broad “triad” of the E.U., North America and Asia. Indeed 23 of the 29 auto and auto parts firms are home-region based, with an average of 60.6 per cent of their sales as intra-regional. These are representative firms across the 500, as the average intra-regional sales for all manufacturing firms is 61.8 per cent. These are a few special cases, especially Toyota and Nissan of firms being active in two regions of the triad. DaimlerChrysler and Honda are “host-region oriented”. Seven cases are discussed in some detail to explore the reasons for the lack of globalization in the world automotive business.regional, intra-regional, automotive, globalization

Midlands Engine Observatory Academic Insights:Regional R&D and Innovation

An academic insight paper for the Midlands Engine Economic Observatory looking at Regional R&D and Innovation

Prosperity, Inclusivity and Sustainability across UK Regions:Policy Briefing

This policy briefing reports on a study to assess economic growth, inclusivity and sustainability across UK regions in terms of both current performance (in 2018) and change in performance (between 2013 and 2018). It is part of a larger, on-going (ESRC-funded) project on ‘Local Institutions, Productivity, Sustainability and Inclusivity Trade-offs’ (LIPSIT).We developed a regional typology from proxy measures of economic prosperity, inclusivity and sustainability. These key indicators, plus a description of the method we adopted can be found in the Technical Annex.The key findings from the policy briefing are:-Economic prosperity is highest in London and the South East, however, London is amongst the least inclusive regions in the UK. The most inclusive region is the West of England.- Assessing performance change across regions shows low levels of economic prosperity growth in the North and East of England compared to average-to-good improvements in the South.- Also revealed are several high-growth hot-spots, including the West Midlands. On measures of sustainability, London and surrounding areas, the West of England, Manchester and Tees Valley perform well.- While typically the most prosperous areas are also the most inclusive, there are wide variations over the short-term in the performance of UK regions towards achieving inclusive growth outcomes.- Some regions achieving high growth on measures of economic prosperity are also managing to achieve greater equality across socio-economic groups and/or increase levels of sustainability.- For other regions achieving high growth on measures of economic prosperity there appear to be trade-offs involved with no or low improvement in inclusivity and/or sustainability.- The results indicate different economic growth trajectories across regions, revealing the most dynamic, emerging, marginalised and declining regions in the UK. These provide insight for targeting support as well as from where lessons can be learnt for regions looking to improve prosperity

Public R&D investment into the West Midlands (data sets)

This presentation provides a series of figures and data tables mapping R&amp;D funding across UK regions, taking the West Midlands as an illustrative case study. The key sections are: 1. UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) purpose and remit and regional patterns of research funding 2. UKRI Funding Distribution across West Midlands Regional Universities 3. Innovate UK and Research England Funding by Region, University and Sector 4. UKRI Funding: Regional Collaborations 5. Private Sector R&amp;D Funding in the West Midlands</p

Informing Development of the UK Place-based R&amp;D Strategy:Research England/UKRI and WMREDI expert evidence forum

The West Midlands Regional Economic Development Institute (WMREDI) at the University of Birmingham hosted a closed-forum for Research England (UKRI) to examine the evidence base for a place-based R&amp;D strategy.The following questions guided discussions: - What evidence is available (or is needed) to show that different kinds of regional impact result from different kinds of R&amp;D investments / interventions? - What should the research and innovation system – universities, businesses, research organisation and other intermediaries - do more of to support economic growth in their region? - How can we ensure different parts of the UK have the mix of interventions they need to enable R&amp;D-led growth? - What are the major critical dependencies for R&amp;D policy levers at the national and the local level? Is there evidence to show which different levers, incentives, mechanisms and critical dependencies make a difference to scale of impact and/or outcomes?- What does UKRI, government and local leadership need to do to ensure research and innovation can play a powerful role in levelling up the country?These reports provide a summary of this work. Contributors providing briefings incorporated into this paper: Professor Riccardo Crescenzi (LSE) Dr. Kieron Flanagan (Manchester) Professor Helen Lawton Smith (Birkbeck) Professor Maria Savona (Sussex) Dr. Elvira Uyarra (Manchester) Dr Anna Valero (LSE) Professor Slavo Radosevic (UCL)Other Discussants: Professor Paul Nightingale (Sussex) Professor Andres Rodriguez-Pose (LSE)Other academic participants: Professor Richard Harris (Durham) Professor Neil Lee (LSE) Professor Kevin Morgan (Cardiff) Raquel Ortega-Argilles (City-REDI, Birmingham) (Chantale Tippett (for Juan Mateos-Garcia -Nesta)) (Antonio Andreoni (IIPP))</div

Smart Cities:Policy Briefing

Given that by 2050 approximately two thirds of the world’s total population will be living in cities, we have to make cities creative, innovative and sustainable places to do business. This emphasises the importance of ‘smart cities’, and we recommend the following:-Developing the right kinds of skills and expertise is central to unlocking opportunities for growth in most city-regions, but particularly Birmingham’s.-This refers mainly to the skills and talent to drive up productivity and innovation in firms and regional organisations. But analytical skills and expertise that can help us improve how we monitor and shape the growth of the region are also critical. Resources and incentives to upskill the Birmingham city-region in both ways are needed. This includes steps to improve the retention of skills within the region.- Investment is required to make large volumes of data reliable, useful and accessible. Investment is also required for real-time data to be distributed and processed in smart ways, to optimise decision-making.- Being smart and connected inevitably means that organisations, as well as individuals, are more susceptible to cyber security attacks, so we must invest more into software and systems that make us more resilient to such attacks.- Policymakers and the governance infrastructures they rely on must view each of the components of a smart city as a single, interrelated system, as opposed to dividing it into component parts (housing, transport, skills etc.) and focusing on each separately

Prosperity, Inclusivity and Sustainability across UK Regions:Policy Briefing

This policy briefing reports on a study to assess economic growth, inclusivity and sustainability across UK regions in terms of both current performance (in 2018) and change in performance (between 2013 and 2018). It is part of a larger, on-going (ESRC-funded) project on ‘Local Institutions, Productivity, Sustainability and Inclusivity Trade-offs’ (LIPSIT).We developed a regional typology from proxy measures of economic prosperity, inclusivity and sustainability. These key indicators, plus a description of the method we adopted can be found in the Technical Annex.The key findings from the policy briefing are:-Economic prosperity is highest in London and the South East, however, London is amongst the least inclusive regions in the UK. The most inclusive region is the West of England.- Assessing performance change across regions shows low levels of economic prosperity growth in the North and East of England compared to average-to-good improvements in the South.- Also revealed are several high-growth hot-spots, including the West Midlands. On measures of sustainability, London and surrounding areas, the West of England, Manchester and Tees Valley perform well.- While typically the most prosperous areas are also the most inclusive, there are wide variations over the short-term in the performance of UK regions towards achieving inclusive growth outcomes.- Some regions achieving high growth on measures of economic prosperity are also managing to achieve greater equality across socio-economic groups and/or increase levels of sustainability.- For other regions achieving high growth on measures of economic prosperity there appear to be trade-offs involved with no or low improvement in inclusivity and/or sustainability.- The results indicate different economic growth trajectories across regions, revealing the most dynamic, emerging, marginalised and declining regions in the UK. These provide insight for targeting support as well as from where lessons can be learnt for regions looking to improve prosperity

STEM Assets in the West Midlands Innovation Landscape:Tysley Energy Park

In this policy briefing, Robert Lynam, Chloe Billing and Simon Collinson look at the Tyseley Energy Park, University of Birmingham and explore the extent to which it is being leveraged to improve economic performance and social inequality in our region