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It has long been recognized that R&D plays a key role in the global battle for technological leadership. However, due to intense competition and rivals' imitations, firms are not always able to reap rewards from their innovations. Mario Kafouros theoretically and empirically examines the impacts of innovation and scientific knowledge on the productivity performance of multinational corporations, and the conditions under which companies benefit from their technological discoveries. The book also investigates the extent to which the research efforts of other companies can contribute to a firm's productivity, and how multinationals build on external inventions, ideas and knowledge. The results confirm that not all firms can benefit from innovation, and indicate that whilst some companies can turn technological advances into a powerful competitive weapon, innovation for others is merely a defense mechanism. To provide a clearer understanding of the relationship between innovation and firm productivity performance, the book also investigates a number of additional issues including the costs of R&D, the association between the Internet and R&D efficiency, and the role of competition, internationalization, firm size and technological opportunities. This book will appeal to academics and researchers in the fields of international business, innovation and R&D, productivity and firm performance, the economics of technological change, and knowledge management. As the author examines the conditions under which firms benefit from innovation, managers, R&D directors, economists and government agents may also use the research findings in order to develop strategies and policies to maximize the impacts of innovation

This study examines the institutional mechanisms through which business groups impact innovation in emerging markets. Rather than merely viewing groups as the result of a weak institutional environment, this study proposes that there are complementary elements between groups and institutions, enabling groups to benefit from interactions with their institutional environment. Evidence from a large sample of Chinese firms indicates that the effects of groups on innovation are pronounced when the group is affiliated to a higher level government agency and when the level of region-specific marketization is higher. The findings point to the context-dependent nature of the innovation and the existence of both substitution and complementary effects between business groups and institutions.

The article examines how metaphors are developed and selected within organizational theorizing and research. The issue addressed is not whether metaphors exist and play a part in organizational theorizing – as this is now widely accepted – but to draw out how metaphors are actually used and are of conceptual value, particularly as such insights may aid organizational researchers in a better use of them.Working from this position, the article reviews the extant theoretical literature on metaphor, surveys the organizational literature to document past and contemporary metaphors-in-use (1993–2003), and identifies the heuristics (i.e. judgmental rules) that have been used by organizational researchers in developing and selecting these metaphors. The identified heuristics are the integration, relational, connection, availability, distance and concreteness heuristics. On the basis of these identified heuristics, and the biases and errors associated with them, the article also posits a number of governing rules that can guide organizational researchers in their continued development and selection of metaphors in the organizational field.

This paper investigates the impact of human and political capitals of entrepreneurs on enterprise performance in four emerging nations.The rent generation potential of these capitals is a well established fact, however, much less is known concerning the contingent nature of their value creation prowess. In this work, we draw on institutional theory and dynamic managerial capabilities perspective to examine the interactive effect of country of origin economic developement level and the international experience of entrepreurs, on the capitals, with respect to a set of financial indicators. Employing a quantitative methodology, our findings reveal that the relationship between the capitals and enterprise performance are indeeed contingent with the capitals of home-grown entrepreneurs, rather than those of returnee migrant entrepreneurs, exhibiting a greater propensity to influence enterprise performance. We conclude with implications for theory and practice.