The goal of this path-breaking volume is to relativize the experience of Japanese industries in terms of both location and time, exploring its similarities and differences with other countries and its unique relationship with the global standard of company performance set by US firms. Yongdo Kim looks beyond organizational principles, overturns stereotypes, and covers a wide range of industries. In particular, this book focuses on the intertwining of the market principle and the organizational principle in interfirm relationships among the steel, machine tool, integrated circuit and liquid-crystal display materials industries, concluding that there is no such thing as ‘Japanese uniqueness’ in the history of interfirm relationships. This book compares several intermediate product industries within a global context to offer insights into the studies of businesses across the globe. Numerous interviews with key individuals in the Japanese steel, integrated circuit and machine tool industries offer unique and illuminating information. This analysis covers a broad range of firms by examining the relationships within large companies as well as smaller corporations. This fresh and varied analysis is a critical resource for both business practitioners and scholars of business history, business strategy, industrial marketing, product development management, and economic history.

Japanese semiconductor firms are well known for obtaining dynamics in a short period of time and achieving even global leadership. A significant portion of their success are attributable to cooperative interfirm relations and the development of intermediate organizational structure based on long-term relationship between firms. The purpose of this book is to explain how interfirm relations contributed to their dynamics during the golden age of the semiconductor industry. Meanwhile this book clarifies the real source of dynamics in interfirm relations and how the firms have interacted. The author concludes that the competitive-cum-cooperative (CCC) interfirm interaction are observed. Quantitative and qualitative findings show that firms enjoy not only flexible cooperation based synergy effects, but also dynamics market-like effects by creating competition among partners through CCC interaction.

This book investigates the process and mechanism of the capability development of East Asian local manufacturers, which has underpinned their phenomenal rise in the world's competitive landscape of industrial production during the last few decades.

Interest in the topic of governance and interfirm relationships in the Ethiopian leather and leather products industry was developed after observing a gap in the literature on value chain research at the international level and finding only a few empirical studies on value chains at the local level. Most of the value chain research conducted throughout the world are either too general or are simply functionalistic and, thus, fail to address the socio-cultural context. This study contributes to the literature in several ways: firstly, the present research suggests that a central focus of value chain analysis should be the examination of social networks within local, but also global, value chains, as social relations might play an important and so far neglected role in the struggle to participate in the rapidly changing world economy. Secondly, as a clear departure from mainstream value chain research, this study makes use of a mixture of value chain and network approaches for exploring processes and micro-level interactions used by individuals to construct and maintain networks.

Building on the seminal work of David Teece, Kathleen Eisenhardt, Jeffrey Martin, and others, this volume applies the concept of dynamic capabilities to help readers understand how organizations can be successful in highly dynamic environments. The contributions, written by researchers who participated in the research program "Dynamic Capabilities and Relationships" and international researchers who participated in the program’s international conference (both funded by the Dieter Schwarz Foundation), highlight state-of-the-art research on dynamic capabilities and relationships. They also put forward an integrated management approach for the purpose of understanding, analyzing, and managing the successful creation and adaptation of capabilities and relationships.

`Readers interest in an overview of important aspects of the strategy field will find this book a helpful volume to add to their shelves′ - Administrative Sciences Quarterly This is a new overview of the strategy field, with internationally renowned contributors summarizing the latest directions and developments in strategic management theory in the context of their theoretical roots in economics, organization theory, and systems theory. The contributors outline the most promising new directions on the basis of a systemic treatment of paradigms or schools of thought in strategy: redrawing firm boundaries, developing dynamic capabilities and discovering viable strategy configurations. The volume will be an invaluable companion to advanced courses in strategy and management, used as a reader alongside case material and field studies. As well as providing a summary and evaluation of the different schools of thought in strategy, the volume offers a synthesis of the American and European approaches.

The Dynamics of Industrial Collaboration revisits and reformulates issues previously raised by inter-firm collaboration. The latest research in collaboration, processes and evaluation of cooperation, and industrial and research networks, is presented by way of both empirical and theoretical studies. The authors use several theoretical perspectives to explain inter-firm and inter-institutional collaboration: the theory of transaction costs and contracts, evolutionary theory, and the resource-based view. The book illustrates that none of these approaches are dominant.

This book focuses especially on financial and/or managerial accounting aspects of inter-firm network in three phases: (1) strategy for forming the inter-firm network; (2) management control of inter-firm network; and (3) task control of production, sales and logistics of inter-firm network.

Practical insights on the role of the entrepreneur in the global business context Entrepreneurial ideas that look great on the drawing board can turn out to be deal breakers when introduced in real markets, even when they’ve been put through the toughest business modeling tests. The Global Enterprise examines how a healthy relationship between entrepreneurship and globalization can combine with new methods of knowledge creation to enhance economic development and build firm sustainability. This unique book takes a fresh and innovative approach to the practical aspects of international business, including economic cluster formation, network formation, market entry, public policy controls and incentives, economic competitiveness, and the creation of value. The Global Enterprise offers perspectives from practitioners and academics working in a variety of disciplines in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and the United States. Their contributions address many of the vital issues of global business, including value-added chains, cross-border networks, knowledge management, technology transfer, transnational lines of production, distribution, marketing, and financial flows, and the strategic partnerships between government and corporations. The book is illustrated with more than 65 tables and figures, and articles are organized into three sections—“Globalization: Building Firm Sustainability,” “Entrepreneurship and Public Policy: Economic Competitiveness,” and “Knowledge Creation: Knowledge Management, Knowledge Transfer, and Cluster Formation.” The Global Enterprise examines: the global transfer of capital strategic partnerships between governments and multinational firms the prospects for economic progress in developing countries the impact of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SME) the role of export regulations in national security and in safeguarding foreign policy the evolution of the Hard Rock Café cultural ontology global virtual teams (GVT) how to implement a knowledge management project a framework for discussing entrepreneurship from an environmental perspective and much more The Global Enterprise is an essential resource for academics, researchers, and professionals in the field of international business, and for economic development experts and government policymakers.