Many years after services outdistanced manufacturing from an employment viewpoint, manufacturing continues to lead economic analyses, including innovation studies. As a response to this a new strand of service innovation research has surfaced within the past decade. These reports don’t make an effort to compare innovation in services directly with innovation in manufacturing, instead they …
Strong connection of innovative actors within a local network is often thought to increase the region-specific knowledge-stock, resulting in a comparative advantage. Nevertheless, it might also result in a lock-in scenario, if local trajectories are directed towards inferior solutions. Accordingly, it’s debated that successful clusters are characterized by the presence of gatekeepers, i.e. actors which …
It’s been revealed that users occasionally innovate. In spite of this, it can now be noticed that even end-consumers act as a source novel product designs. A case study of a company, and “its” consumers from the computer games business demonstrates how sourcing of consumer knowledge has enabled the firm to enhance product design. Two …
The Real Option Approach (ROA) has been put forth as the answer to the problem of valuing manager flexibility and project risk within the framework of capital budgeting. Within this dissertation the ROA is used on one of the riskiest of corporate ventures particularly foreign direct investment. The 1st two problems presented by the author …
The study on internationalisation dates back a long time. Regardless of this, there exist no theories regarding how various industries enter new markets, and by which mode of entry. This report tries to build a model with the intent to describe the differences in foreign market entry mode decision between industries. To be able to …
The subject of CSR has to a large degree divided most of the Swedish business community because of the strong opinions in regards to this topic. The objective of this dissertation is to check out how the notion of CSR is perceived by Swedish corporations and what significance it yields. This is completed by comparing …
Managerial activities can change as the organizations and their environment change. The organization at Volvo Trucks has gone through several transformations the past years, and that has affected the role of the managers within the organization. The managers responsibilities have increased as more tasks have been outsourced on them, at the same time they have been stripped of some of their support functions and assistants.
This paper examines the role of multinational corporations (MNCs) as the creator and diffuser of new and superior technologies. If these firms fulfil this attributed role, then they are expected to generate some spillovers to domestic industries in host economies. Theoretical and empirical studies propose that domestic technological capability is also important in this process.
This paper investigates the potential impact of increased business R&D efforts in Europe on the total factor productivity gap between European and U.S. industry. The paper addresses Europe’s ambition, expressed at the 2000 Lisbon Summit to become “the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world”, and the 3% R&D intensity target for Europe formulated at the 2002 Barcelona Summit
The automotive industry is distinguished by a highly competitive market. Thus, the actors on the market struggle with increasing cost of production, development and mature markets. With the aim to increase profit margins and reduce costs, Volkswagen, GM and Ford are some companies, which use the same components in different car models and car brands.