This article assesses the contributions of industry leaders, smaller corporations, and independen... more This article assesses the contributions of industry leaders, smaller corporations, and independent inventors to the international technological specialization of Great Britain in the interwar years. For the first time, we compare directly the contribution of these sources and combine the Chandlerian and “sources of invention” perspectives. The analysis is based on a novel dataset of more than 8,000 patents granted in the USA to British inventions. Our findings show the extent to which Britain integrated inventions generated by independent inventors with those of corporate inventors, i.e., industry leaders and smaller corporations, in both engineering- and science-based fields. This research highlights specificities of a former leader’s transition from the technological paradigm of the first phase of capitalism to that of the second phase.
This paper conducts an explorative study to examine the evolution of Multinational Corporation (M... more This paper conducts an explorative study to examine the evolution of Multinational Corporation (MNC) subunit roles based on the characteristics of its competence creating (CC) activities. The study focuses on the heterogeneity of firm-specific evolutionary paths in the patterns of knowledge accumulation that support competence creating (CC) activities. Using continuous variables instead of creating categorization of subunit roles, we create a model to examine the strategic roles of MNC subunits, based upon the evolutionary trajectory of a subunit’s CC activities and its technological distance from its parent company. We identify and measure subunit CC intensity and subunit technological distance as the two determining dimensions that characterize an MNC subunit’s pattern of innovation in terms of competence-creating. The innovative activity was observed from large firms of the general chemical industry, with data that covers an over thirty-year window, to explore the characteristics...
Competitiveness Review: An International Business Journal
Purpose While conventional views of foreign investment activity primarily relate to efficiency-se... more Purpose While conventional views of foreign investment activity primarily relate to efficiency-seeking investments, the authors argue that most other outward foreign direct investments (OFDIs) likely have positive effects on income development in the home region. Data on the US urban system not only illustrates this but also shows that this impact is not equal in all city-regions. The purpose of this paper is to develop an explanation as to why high- and low-income cities are associated with self-reinforcing cycles of OFDI activity that have different home-region impacts. Design/methodology/approach Conventional views assume that inward foreign direct investments (IFDIs) have a positive impact on target regions, while OFDIs are often treated as the flip side of this story, being seen as having negative effects by shifting jobs and income abroad. This paper counters this logic by developing a conceptual argument that systematically distinguishes different types of OFDIs and relates t...
Foreign direct investment by multinational enterprises continues to be a key mechanism integratin... more Foreign direct investment by multinational enterprises continues to be a key mechanism integrating the production systems of individual countries. Not surprisingly, this process -- which, in many ways, represents the productive core of the world economy and is more intrusive than trade -- gives rise to a range of issues. The purpose of the Columbia FDI Perspectives is to address these issues in a concise, easily understandable and policy-oriented manner. The Perspectives are distributed widely. In January 2011, the Perspectives issued until then were brought together in the first edition of FDI Perspectives: Issues in International Investment, edited by Karl P. Sauvant, Lisa Sachs, Ken Davies, and Ruben Zandvliet, published by the Vale Columbia Center on Sustainable International Investment. Since then, nearly 50 Perspectives have been issued, covering a wide range of topics; they are all brought together (in addition to those contained in the first edition) in the present volume.
Abstract This study identifies key mechanisms linking multinationality with the knowledge advanta... more Abstract This study identifies key mechanisms linking multinationality with the knowledge advantages of multinational corporations (MNCs). These mechanisms are the absorption of new knowledge by one individual MNC unit and the subsequent flows of such newly absorbed knowledge to other geographically distant units of the same firm. The intra-MNC and inter-unit flows of such newly absorbed knowledge include exchanges between a parent and its overseas subsidiaries and those between subsidiaries. Through analyzing the U.S. patent data of the world's largest firms in the electrical equipment industry, our study shows that those two mechanisms are complementary in affecting MNC innovative performance. More notably, given the geographically dispersed new knowledge absorption within an MNC, only the flows of the newly absorbed knowledge between the parent and subsidiaries, in contrast to those between subsidiaries, are positively associated with MNC innovative performance. This study contributes to the MNC literature. Managerial implications are also discussed.
A major aim of this book on the eclectic paradigm is to enable scholars coming to the Internation... more A major aim of this book on the eclectic paradigm is to enable scholars coming to the International Business (IB) field from a cognate discipline, perhaps for the first time, to be able to connect their own way of thinking about IB issues to a framework for IB analysis that is already well established in our field. It is also hoped that this collection of chapters originally published in the Journal of International Business Studies (JIBS), the leading journal in the IB field, will help to remind mainstream IB scholars of how the framework of the eclectic paradigm has emerged and developed, and of the contribution that JIBS has played in this development.
This is a collection of the major writings to have appeared on foreign direct investment (FDI) an... more This is a collection of the major writings to have appeared on foreign direct investment (FDI) and technological change since 1966. Its coverage includes: the early analysis of FDI and technology; and the theoretical foundations of the analysis of technological change in multinational firms.
Two of the central hypotheses associated with earlier versions of the product life‐cycle model ar... more Two of the central hypotheses associated with earlier versions of the product life‐cycle model are called into question. First, on the basis of 100 years of US Patent Office data on the patents granted to large European and American industrial firms, the author rejects the hypothesis that innovations almost always originate in the home country of the parent company; internationalization of industrial research is found to be neither insignificant nor a new phenomenon. The second hypothesis, that international investment is led by technology leaders, fares better, being consistent with the data. However, the author makes an extended interpretation in order to take account of more recent trends toward a much wider range of firms being engaged in internationalization, suggesting that technology leaders are now ahead in the globalization of technology, and that these firms would be most competent in exploiting the locationally differentiated potential of foreign centres of technological ...
This chapter discusses some aspects of the changing role of multinational enterprises (MNEs) as p... more This chapter discusses some aspects of the changing role of multinational enterprises (MNEs) as producers, transferers and disseminators of technology and technological capacity,1 and ways in which their activities may affect the international competitiveness of European countries. The argument adopts the theoretical framework of the eclectic paradigm of international production (Dunning, 1988), and relates it to the concept of technological cumulation.
The International Agglomeration of Technological Activity. John Cantwell University of Reading, D... more The International Agglomeration of Technological Activity. John Cantwell University of Reading, Department of Economics, 1990.
This article assesses the contributions of industry leaders, smaller corporations, and independen... more This article assesses the contributions of industry leaders, smaller corporations, and independent inventors to the international technological specialization of Great Britain in the interwar years. For the first time, we compare directly the contribution of these sources and combine the Chandlerian and “sources of invention” perspectives. The analysis is based on a novel dataset of more than 8,000 patents granted in the USA to British inventions. Our findings show the extent to which Britain integrated inventions generated by independent inventors with those of corporate inventors, i.e., industry leaders and smaller corporations, in both engineering- and science-based fields. This research highlights specificities of a former leader’s transition from the technological paradigm of the first phase of capitalism to that of the second phase.
This paper conducts an explorative study to examine the evolution of Multinational Corporation (M... more This paper conducts an explorative study to examine the evolution of Multinational Corporation (MNC) subunit roles based on the characteristics of its competence creating (CC) activities. The study focuses on the heterogeneity of firm-specific evolutionary paths in the patterns of knowledge accumulation that support competence creating (CC) activities. Using continuous variables instead of creating categorization of subunit roles, we create a model to examine the strategic roles of MNC subunits, based upon the evolutionary trajectory of a subunit’s CC activities and its technological distance from its parent company. We identify and measure subunit CC intensity and subunit technological distance as the two determining dimensions that characterize an MNC subunit’s pattern of innovation in terms of competence-creating. The innovative activity was observed from large firms of the general chemical industry, with data that covers an over thirty-year window, to explore the characteristics...
Competitiveness Review: An International Business Journal
Purpose While conventional views of foreign investment activity primarily relate to efficiency-se... more Purpose While conventional views of foreign investment activity primarily relate to efficiency-seeking investments, the authors argue that most other outward foreign direct investments (OFDIs) likely have positive effects on income development in the home region. Data on the US urban system not only illustrates this but also shows that this impact is not equal in all city-regions. The purpose of this paper is to develop an explanation as to why high- and low-income cities are associated with self-reinforcing cycles of OFDI activity that have different home-region impacts. Design/methodology/approach Conventional views assume that inward foreign direct investments (IFDIs) have a positive impact on target regions, while OFDIs are often treated as the flip side of this story, being seen as having negative effects by shifting jobs and income abroad. This paper counters this logic by developing a conceptual argument that systematically distinguishes different types of OFDIs and relates t...
Foreign direct investment by multinational enterprises continues to be a key mechanism integratin... more Foreign direct investment by multinational enterprises continues to be a key mechanism integrating the production systems of individual countries. Not surprisingly, this process -- which, in many ways, represents the productive core of the world economy and is more intrusive than trade -- gives rise to a range of issues. The purpose of the Columbia FDI Perspectives is to address these issues in a concise, easily understandable and policy-oriented manner. The Perspectives are distributed widely. In January 2011, the Perspectives issued until then were brought together in the first edition of FDI Perspectives: Issues in International Investment, edited by Karl P. Sauvant, Lisa Sachs, Ken Davies, and Ruben Zandvliet, published by the Vale Columbia Center on Sustainable International Investment. Since then, nearly 50 Perspectives have been issued, covering a wide range of topics; they are all brought together (in addition to those contained in the first edition) in the present volume.
Abstract This study identifies key mechanisms linking multinationality with the knowledge advanta... more Abstract This study identifies key mechanisms linking multinationality with the knowledge advantages of multinational corporations (MNCs). These mechanisms are the absorption of new knowledge by one individual MNC unit and the subsequent flows of such newly absorbed knowledge to other geographically distant units of the same firm. The intra-MNC and inter-unit flows of such newly absorbed knowledge include exchanges between a parent and its overseas subsidiaries and those between subsidiaries. Through analyzing the U.S. patent data of the world's largest firms in the electrical equipment industry, our study shows that those two mechanisms are complementary in affecting MNC innovative performance. More notably, given the geographically dispersed new knowledge absorption within an MNC, only the flows of the newly absorbed knowledge between the parent and subsidiaries, in contrast to those between subsidiaries, are positively associated with MNC innovative performance. This study contributes to the MNC literature. Managerial implications are also discussed.
A major aim of this book on the eclectic paradigm is to enable scholars coming to the Internation... more A major aim of this book on the eclectic paradigm is to enable scholars coming to the International Business (IB) field from a cognate discipline, perhaps for the first time, to be able to connect their own way of thinking about IB issues to a framework for IB analysis that is already well established in our field. It is also hoped that this collection of chapters originally published in the Journal of International Business Studies (JIBS), the leading journal in the IB field, will help to remind mainstream IB scholars of how the framework of the eclectic paradigm has emerged and developed, and of the contribution that JIBS has played in this development.
This is a collection of the major writings to have appeared on foreign direct investment (FDI) an... more This is a collection of the major writings to have appeared on foreign direct investment (FDI) and technological change since 1966. Its coverage includes: the early analysis of FDI and technology; and the theoretical foundations of the analysis of technological change in multinational firms.
Two of the central hypotheses associated with earlier versions of the product life‐cycle model ar... more Two of the central hypotheses associated with earlier versions of the product life‐cycle model are called into question. First, on the basis of 100 years of US Patent Office data on the patents granted to large European and American industrial firms, the author rejects the hypothesis that innovations almost always originate in the home country of the parent company; internationalization of industrial research is found to be neither insignificant nor a new phenomenon. The second hypothesis, that international investment is led by technology leaders, fares better, being consistent with the data. However, the author makes an extended interpretation in order to take account of more recent trends toward a much wider range of firms being engaged in internationalization, suggesting that technology leaders are now ahead in the globalization of technology, and that these firms would be most competent in exploiting the locationally differentiated potential of foreign centres of technological ...
This chapter discusses some aspects of the changing role of multinational enterprises (MNEs) as p... more This chapter discusses some aspects of the changing role of multinational enterprises (MNEs) as producers, transferers and disseminators of technology and technological capacity,1 and ways in which their activities may affect the international competitiveness of European countries. The argument adopts the theoretical framework of the eclectic paradigm of international production (Dunning, 1988), and relates it to the concept of technological cumulation.
The International Agglomeration of Technological Activity. John Cantwell University of Reading, D... more The International Agglomeration of Technological Activity. John Cantwell University of Reading, Department of Economics, 1990.
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Papers by John Cantwell