International Competitiveness

This paper considers the role of the seven innovation capability dimensions (learning, research and development (R&D), manufacturing, marketing, organizational, resource allocating and strategy planning) and the three firm characteristics (domestic market share, size and productivity growth rate) in determining the export performances for a sample of 213 Chinese industrial firms. The empirical analysis of this research reveals the findings listed below:

This paper studies how the effect of trade openness on economic growth depends on complementary reforms that help a country take advantage of international competition. This issue is illustrated with a simple Harris-Todaro model where output gains after trade liberalization depend on the degree of labor market flexibility. In that model, trade protection may ameliorate the problem of underemployment (and underproduction) in sectors affected by labor market distortions; hence trade liberalization unambiguously increases per capita income only when labor markets are sufficiently flexible. We then present some panel evidence on how the growth effect of openness depends on a variety of structural characteristics. For this purpose, we use a non-linear growth regression specification that interacts a proxy of trade openness with proxies of educational investment, financial depth, inflation stabilization, public infrastructure, governance, labor-market flexibility, ease of firm entry, and ease of firm exit. We find that the growth effects of openness are positive and economically significant if certain complementary reforms are undertaken.

We test the impact of workers' remittances on the real exchange rate using a panel of 13 Latin American and Caribbean countries. The analysis reveals that workers' remittances have the potential to inflict economic costs on the export sector of receiving countries by reducing its international competitiveness. Our findings raise concerns parallel to those raised by Dutch Disease or Resource Boom models, where resource discoveries result in real exchange rate appreciation and shifting of resources from the traded to the nontraded sectors of the economy.

Global university rankings have cemented the notion of a world university market arranged in a single "league table" for comparative purposes and have given a powerful impetus to intranational and international competitive pressures in the sector. Both the research rankings by Shanghai Jiao Tong University and the composite rankings by the Times Higher Education Supplement have been widely publicised and already appear to have generated incentives in favour of greater system stratification and the concentration of elite researchers. However, global comparisons are possible only in relation to one model of institution, that of the comprehensive research intensive university, and for the most part are tailored to science-strong and Englishspeaking universities. Neither the Shanghai nor the Times rankings provide guidance on the quality of teaching. It is important to secure "clean" rankings, transparent, free of self-interest, and methodologically coherent, that create incentives to broadbased improvement.

Single measures of competitiveness do not capture all the elements of the concept. Useful measures have to specify the level of analysis (national, industry^ firm or product) and encompass competitive performance, its sustainability through the generation of .competitive potential and the management of the competitive process. The interrelationship between these three key elements are also important in a dynamic context.

The potential asymmetries in the birthdate distributions of youth soccer players across ten European countries (2175 age citations) were considered. First, we examined the birthdates of players representing national youth teams in international competitions. Second, the birthdates of players representing professional club teams in international youth tournaments were analysed. Kolmogorov-Smirnov tests were used to assess differences between observed and expected birthdate distributions. Regression analyses were employed to examine the relationship between month of birth and number of players in the different samples. The results showed an over-representation of players born in the first quarter of the selection year (from January to March) for all the national youth selections at the under-15 (U-15), U-16, U-17 and U-18 age categories, as well as for the UEFA U-16 tournaments and Meridian Cup. Players with a greater relative age are more likely to be identified as ''talented'' because of the likely physical advantages they have over their ''younger'' peers. Some options for reducing the relative age effect are offered.

This article compares the work of fashion models and ''new media workers'' (those who work in the relatively new medium of the Internet as dot-com workers) in order to highlight the processes of entrepreneurial labor in culture industries. Based on interviews and participant-observation in New York City, we trace how entrepreneurial labor becomes intertwined with work identities in cultural industries both on and off the job. While workers are drawn to the autonomy, creativity and excitement that jobs in these media industries can provide, they have also come to accept as normal the high risks associated with this work. Diffused through media images, this normalization of risk serves as a model for how workers in other industries should behave under flexible employment conditions. Using interview data from within the fashion media and the dotcom world, we discuss eight forces that give rise to the phenomenon of entrepreneurial labor: the cultural quality of cool, creativity, autonomy, selfinvestment, compulsory networking, portfolio evaluations, international competition, and foreshortened careers. We also provide a model of what constitutes the hierarchy of ''good work'' in cultural industries, and we conclude with implications of what entrepreneurial labor means for theories of work.

Since exporting is the most popular mechanism by which firms engage with international markets, understanding the drivers of export market performance is key to explaining firms' international competitiveness. The literature posits that the effective implementation of planned export marketing strategy is a key determinant of the performance of firms operating in international markets. Yet little is known about the specific nature and drivers of export marketing strategy implementation effectiveness. In this study we build on the implementation literature in marketing and strategic management to develop a new conceptualization of export marketing strategy implementation effectiveness. Drawing on dynamic capabilities theory, we empirically examine the export marketing capability antecedents and performance consequences of export marketing strategy implementation effectiveness in the context of manufacturing firms that are exporting to international markets. Results indicate that effective implementation of planned export marketing strategy contributes to export market and financial performance, and that marketing capabilities play an important role in enabling effective marketing strategy implementation in export venture operations.

... identified eight critical factors of quality management: top management leader-ship, quality data and reporting, process ... Further screening reduced the effective sample size to a total of 290 companies ... On average, respondent firms had 7.02 years of formal quality planning history ...

We explore conditions determining which anti-leakage policies might be more effective complements to domestic greenhouse gas emissions regulation. We consider four policies that could be combined with unilateral emissions pricing to counter effects on international competitiveness: a border tax on imports, a border rebate for exports, full border adjustment, and a domestic production rebate (as might be implemented with output-based allocation of emissions allowances). Each option faces different potential legal hurdles in international trade law; each also has different economic impacts. While all have the potential to support domestic production, none is necessarily effective at reducing global emissions. Nor is it possible to rank order the options. In each case, the effectiveness depends on the relative emissions rates, elasticities of substitution, and consumption volumes. We illustrate these results with simulations for the energy-intensive sectors of two different economies, the United States and Canada.

The European emissions trading scheme (EU ETS) has an efficient and effective market design that risks being undermined by three interrelated problems: the approach to allocation; the absence of a credible commitment to post-2012 continuation; and concerns about its impact on the international competitiveness of key sectors. This special issue of Climate Policy explores these three factors in depth. This policy overview summarizes key insights from the individual studies in this issue, and draws overall policy conclusions about the next round of allocations and the design of the system for the longer term.-Allocations for 2008-2012. Allocations defined relative to projected 'business-as-usual' emissions should involve cutbacks for all sectors, in part to hedge against an unavoidable element of projection inflation. Additional cutbacks for the power sector could help to address distributional and legal (State aid) concerns. Benchmarking allocations, e.g. on best practice technologies, could offer important advantages: experience in different sectors and countries is needed, given their existing diversity. However, a common standard for new entrant reserves should be agreed across the EU, based on capacity or output, not on technology or fuel. Maximum use of allowed auctioning (10%) would improve efficiency, provide reassurance, and potentially help to stabilize the system through minimum-price auctions. These measures will not preclude most participating sectors from profiting from the EU ETS during phase II. Companies can choose to scale back these potential profits to protect market share against imports and/or use the revenues to support longer term decarbonization investments, whilst auction revenues can be used creatively to support broader investments towards a low-carbon industrial sector in Europe.-Post-2012 design. Effective operation during phase II requires a concrete commitment to continue the EU ETS beyond 2012 with future design addressing concerns about distribution, potential perverse incentives, and industrial competitiveness. Declining free allocation combined with greater auctioning offers the simplest solution to distributional and incentive problems. For its unilateral implementation to be sustainable under higher carbon prices over longer periods, EU ETS post-2012 design must accommodate one of three main approaches for the most energy-intensive internationally traded sectors: international (sectoral) agreements, border tax adjustments, or output-based (intensity) allocation. If significant free allocations continue, governments may also need to follow the example of monetary policy in establishing independent allocation authorities with some degree of EU coordination. Such reform for the post-2012 period would require the Directive to be fundamentally renegotiated in relation to allocation procedures. Such renegotiation is neither feasible nor necessary for phase II operation. Rather, phase II should be a period in which diverse national approaches build experience, whilst the profits potentially accruing to participating sectors can be used to protect market share and jump-start their investments for a globally carbon-constrained future.

Globalization is very important for small economies such as Korea and Singapore. The single diamond model , The competitive advantage of nations) suggests some important determinants for a nation's global competitiveness. However, this model is incomplete, mainly because it does not incorporate multinational activities. A new approach, the generalized double diamond model Research in global strategic management: Volume 5: Beyond the diamond) offers some important extensions to Porter's original model. To test the validity of these two models this paper evaluates relevant data for both domestic and international variables in the case of Korea and Singapore. The results generally support the generalized double diamond model

T his paper proposes and tests a new formal model of the competition for capital, using the analogy of a "tournament" as a substitute for the "race-to-the-bottom" model. Our key insight is that political costs that accompany legislating have both direct and indirect effects on the likelihood and scale of reforms. While countries with higher political costs are less likely themselves to enact reforms, the presence of these costs also reduces competing countries' incentives to reform regardless of their own political costs. Domestic politics therefore mitigates the pressures for downward convergence of tax policy despite increased capital mobility. We examine the capital tax policies in OECD countries during the period from 1980 to 1997 and find that states are sensitive to tax reforms in competitor countries, although their responses to reforms are mediated by their own domestic costs to reform. We define two potential sources of political costs of reform: transaction costs, due to the presence of multiple veto players in the legislative process, and constituency costs, due to ideological opposition to policy changes that benefit capital. Our evidence reveals that a reduction in these costs either domestically or abroad increases the likelihood that a country enacts tax reforms.

In analyzing firm entry and exit in the small open economy of Belgium, this paper empirically shows that import competition and foreign direct investment crowd out domestic entrepreneurs on product and labor markets. These results are in line with theoretical models of entrepreneurial choice in open economies that have explicitly included the effects of international competition on the formation of domestic entrepreneurs. The empirical analysis demonstrates that the inflow of foreign direct investment in Belgium reduces entrepreneurship measured through the entry of new domestic firms, while increasing domestic exit in the short term. Moreover, the results suggest that the decision of foreign firms to enter andlor exit a small economy is mainly determined by international conditions and less by domestic market conditions. JE~codes:F23,L10,M13.

The paper is probably the first written paper using the concept of 'the national innovation system'and it analyses how technological infrastructure differs between countries and how such differences are reflected in international competitiveness. It makes a critical ...

This paper investigates how countries become specialised in exporting specific producer services, particularly financial, communication and business services. We find that a country's ability to develop a competitive service economy depends on the structure of its manufacturing sector as some manufacturing industries are more intensive users of these services. Moreover, we find a virtuous cycle as the same service producers

The antiquated state of the telecommunications network in the transitional economies of Central and Eastern Europe has been identified by the OECD (1993) and the ITU (1994) as a significant impediment to regional productivity, international competitiveness and trade performance. This situation suggests that the upgrading and extension of the telecommunications network should be a priority objective for policy-makers in order to facilitate growth. This paper empirically examines the relationship between gross fixed investment, telecommunications infrastructure investment and economic growth for a sample of transitional economies in Central and Eastern Europe. In particular, the paper focuses on empirically determining the direction of influence, and timing, between investment and growth.

The benefits of an international division of labour is never illustrated more clearly than in small developed nations like Denmark. Without many natural resources such countries can never be self sufficient and they need access to foreign markets in order for their firms to specialise and utilize economics of scale. The specialisation chosen is mainly in low-tech goods, where the risk of sudden domestically damaging changes in technology or demand are relatively small. Besides such general features of small developed nations, the Danish case has some special characteristics, which distinguishes it from many other nations and regions. One important feature is the century-old, deep-rooted egalitarian beliefs of the society which during the last century has intermixed with the growth of the public sector in shaping not only the welfare state, but also a strongly consensus-seeking political system-the negotiated economy-incorporating all major groups in the economy. Recently, the development towards a knowledge based world economy has increased the importance of another feature with an small egalitarian country: the kind of trust-relations, that come into existence, when everyone in an industry has known everybody else through many years. The international industrial competitiveness of the country's vast majority of small, export oriented firms are not only favoured by a reasonable adequate macroeconomic policy but further enhanced by the ease in the exchange of information resulting from established trust-relations.

In recent years, stimulated by globalization, technological innovation and intensifying international competition, there has been a growing trend towards the increasing institutional and geographical concentration of financial systems and markets. At the same time, there has been mounting academic and policy interest in the financing problems faced by new and small firms, which are widely considered to suffer from a 'funding gap'. These twin developments provide the motivation for this paper, which seeks to throw some theoretical and empirical light on the question of whether the spatial organization of the financial system impacts on the flows of capital to small firms across regions. Is it the case that a heavily spatially-centralized financial system, like that in the UK, militates against the ready access to capital by new and small firms in peripheral regions, while a more decentralized financial system, like that in Germany, results in a more even regional distribution? The paper first discusses this question theoretically in the context of the regional finance literature. It then compares capital market structures and the regional distribution of equity for SMEs in the UK and Germany. This comparison lends some support to the view that capital markets do not function in a space-neutral way, and that a highly centralized system like that in the UK may well introduce spatial bias in the flows of capital to SMEs. It also shows, though, as the case of Germany illustrates, that the actual impact of the geographical organization of capital markets depends on, and is mitigated by, other institutional and regulatory conditions. Our analysis suggests while a geographically decentralized financial system with sizable and well-embedded regional/ local clusters of institutions, networks, agents, and markets could be advantageous in various ways, regional/local capital markets also face a number of major challenges and problems. The paper indicates the need for more research in this somewhat neglected area.

The adoption of domestic emissions trading schemes (ETS) can impose a heavy burden on energy-intensive industries. In particular, energy-intensive industries competing with foreign competitors could lose their international edge. Although the abatement of carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) emissions in industrialized countries entails the reduction of their energy-intensive production, a corresponding increase in the production of energy-intensive goods in countries without CO 2 regulations may lead to carbon -leakage.‖ This paper examines the effects of various allocation methods for granting emissions permits in the Japanese ETS on the economy and CO 2 emissions using a multiregional and multisector computable general equilibrium model. Specifically, we apply the Fischer and Fox (2007) model to the Japanese economy to address carbon leakage and competitiveness issues. We compare auction schemes, grandfathering schemes, and output-based allocation (OBA) schemes. We further extend the model by examining a combination of auctions and OBA. Though the auction scheme is found to be the best in terms of macroeconomic impacts (welfare and GDP effects), the leakage rate is high and the harm to energy-intensive sectors can be significant. OBA causes less leakage and damage to energy-intensive sectors, but the macroeconomic impact is undesirable. Considering all three effects-leakage, competitiveness, and macroeconomics-we find that combinations of auctions and OBA (with gratis allocations solely to energy-intensive, trade-exposed sectors) are desirable.

We derive a comparative-static result for interior Cournot equilibria when rms have constant marginal costs. Our result provides a simple criterion to determine, for any redistribution across the rms of an unchanged marginal-cost sum, whether industry industry pro t and social surplus increase. We then use this result to analyze two-stage games where actions in the rst stage a ect marginal costs in the second. Our analysis is applicable to the literatures on learning-by-doing, extraction with depletion e ects, research joint ventures, investment in R&D, technology choice, and pollution control.

Increasing competition among Latin American firms fosters more proactive processes aimed at reviewing business strategy. The research objective is to measure the impact of key variables on successful implementation of business strategy. Relying on the knowledge and experience of Latin American entrepreneurs and managers, the questions addressed include: How important is the role of the CEO and management actors? Do firms prioritize actions prior to implementing strategy? Are control and follow-up tools valued? How is a successful strategy implementation ensured? Research findings are expected to provide useful knowledge for management decision processes relating to successful implementation of business strategy.

Since the early 1990s the theoretical and practical issues associated with organizational capabilities have been a major research focus in marketing. However, there has been little focus simultaneously on industry environment and internal competitive capability development. A manager's perception of his/her industry environment has the potential to impact the firm's marketing-related capability development through their strategic responses to their perception of the environment. This paper advocates that managers (i.e., firms) perceiving their industry environment as turbulent will develop superior market learning and marketing capabilities. Market learning will assist in the process of building superior marketing capabilities. Both capabilities lead to higher brand performance. To explore these issues a study was designed to measure perceived industry competitive intensity, market learning and marketing capabilities. Data were gathered from senior managers of commercial firms and the results largely support the hypothesized theoretical relationship that industry competitive intensity influences market learning activity and marketing capability development. Interestingly, the study findings suggest that market learning impacts brand performance through marketing capability. The findings significantly contribute to the debate on the influence of the competitive environment on a firm's internal capability development which suggests the need for further research to examine the industry competitive intensity-internal capabilities-firm performance relationship.

In this study we present an efficient image categorization and retrieval system applied to medical image databases, in particular large radiograph archives. The methodology is based on local patch representation of the image content, using a "bag of visual words" approach. We explore the effects of various parameters on system performance, and show best results using dense sampling of simple features with spatial content, and a nonlinear kernel-based support vector machine (SVM) classifier. In a recent international competition the system was ranked first in discriminating orientation and body regions in X-ray images. In addition to organ-level discrimination, we show an application to pathology-level categorization of chest X-ray data, the most popular examination in radiology. The system discriminates between healthy and pathological cases, and is also shown to successfully identify specific pathologies in a set of chest radiographs taken from a routine hospital examination. This is a first step towards similarity-based categorization, which has a major clinical implications for computer-assisted diagnostics.

This paper models international competition for foreign direct investment as a common agency problem using the theory of menu auctions developed by Bernheim and Whinston. In the model, national governments act as principals and a multinational corporation as the single agent. Governments are assumed to maximize the act wage income generated by the corporation's investment. It is shown that in the equilibrium of this game a high wage country may he able to attract investment even though all countries use subsidies. Furthermore, it is shown that a country may choose to pay the highest subsidies even if it attracts less investment than in the unsubsidized regime. Our framework can also he used to study interregional subsidy competition within a country.

Inter-firm collaboration is not new. What is new is that such collaboration has exploded during the past couple of decades, in parallel to the intensification of international competition. Moreover, the nature of collaboration has changed, shifting from peripheral interests to the very core functions of the corporation, and from equity to non-equity forms of collaboration. Importantly, cooperation focusing on the generation, exchange, and/or adaptation of new technologies has risen at very fast rates. Research joint ventures, the focus of this paper, belong in the latter category. The proliferation of RJVs has created extensive interest among economists, business analysts, and policy decision-makers and led to the profusion of literature on the topic. This paper critically reviews the literature in industrial economics and strategic management that deals with RJV partner motives and RJV outcomes. The paper categorizes the different streams of this literature and indicates the state-of-the-art, synthesizes important understandings, and suggests key nodes of a future research agenda. Number total high-tech medium-tech low -tech Source: CATI Database

Kenyan athletes have dominated international distance running in recent years. Explanations for their success include favourable physiological characteristics, which could include favourable genetic endowment, and advantageous environmental conditions. The aim of this study was to compare the demographic characteristics of elite Kenyan runners with those of the general Kenyan population. Questionnaires, administered to 404 elite Kenyan runners specializing in distances ranging from the 800 m to the marathon and 87 Kenyan controls, obtained information on place of birth, language, and distance and method of travel to school. Athletes were separated into two groups according to athletic success: those who competed in international competition and those who competed in national competition. The athletes differed from controls in regional distribution, language, and distance and method of travel to school; athletes also differed from each other with the exception of method of travel to school. Most national and international athletes came from the Rift Valley province (controls 20%, national athletes 65%, international athletes 81%), belonged to the Kalenjin ethnic group (controls 8%, national athletes 49%, international athletes 76%) and Nandi sub-tribe (controls 5%, national athletes 25%, international athletes 44%), and spoke languages of Nilotic origin (controls 21%, national athletes 60%, international athletes 79%). A higher proportion of all athletes ran to school each day (controls 22%, national athletes 73%, international athletes 81%) and covered greater distances. In conclusion, Kenyan runners are from a distinctive environmental background in terms of geographical distribution, ethnicity and travelled further to school, mostly by running. These findings highlight the importance of environmental and social factors in the success of Kenyan runners.

It is by now an established fact, that the so-called high technology industries have experienced growth rates way above average through most years. High technology industries share of the world manufacturers export has risen from 12 per cent in 1970 to 25 per cent in 1995. More than one-third of Japan's manufacturing export and more than 40 per cent of America's manufacturing export are products from high technology industries, and this development has increasingly led to an international obsession with high technology industries. In a number of countries R&D indicators have by now become the object of intense discussions. Great efforts are devoted to improve a bad relative standing. The aim of this paper is to questioned whether a national specialisation towards high technology industries is the only way by which the mature, developed countries can hope to sustain and augment their economic position. I claim that in contrast to much of the assumptions in contemporary politics and in the majority of the contemporary academic literature on the subject the countries without a specialisation in high technology industries are not left in the backwaters of economic development. Quite the contrary seems to be the case as many advanced, high-cost countries experience an above average economic performance even when specialising in the bottom end of the low-tech industries. The argument is illustrated with empirical material from the wooden furniture industry in general -and the rather successful Danish wooden furniture industry in particular. The possible reasons behind this apparent paradox are discussed.

Drawing upon findings of several studies, this paper examines the interrelationships between brain circulation or ''triangular human talent flow'', ethnic diasporas (specifically, the Chinese and Indian diasporas), and a country's international competitiveness. Globalization, the lowering of immigration and emigration barriers to the movement of people, and the emerging concept of boundaryless careers have all contributed to the phenomenon of brain circulation. Brain circulation replaces the traditional concepts of brain drain versus brain gain because of the growing mobility of human talent across international boundaries. Implications, both theoretical and practical, are then discussed.

European Union (EU) trade liberalisation policies will continue to push EU milk price downwards and necessitate increased efficiency and scale at farm and processing level to maintain profitability. In Ireland pasture-based dairying, based on the efficient conversion of grazed grass into milk can be competitive within the EU. Continued technical innovation increasing animal performance from grazed grass, increasing herd genetic potential and developing labour efficient lower fixed cost systems will be essential. At processing level, increased efficiency in commodity processing, higher margin product development and the evolution of milk payment systems to reflect the true product value of supplies received will be required.

Recent years have witnessed an enormous amount of reorganization of the corporate sector in the US and in Europe. This paper examines the role of market competition for this trend in corporate reorganization. We find that at intermediate levels of competition the CEO of the corporation decides to have less power inside the firm and to delegate control to lower levels of the firms' hierarchy. Thus, workers empowerment and the move to flatter firm organizations emerge as an equilibrium when competition is not too tough and not too weak. The model predicts merger waves or waves of outsourcing when countries become more integrated into the world economy as the corporate sector reorganizes in response to an increase in international competition.

The international competitiveness of the New Zealand (NZ) dairy industry is built on low cost clover-based systems and a favourable temperate climate that enables cows to graze pastures mostly all year round. Whilst this grazed pasture farming system is very efficient at producing milk, it has also been identified as a significant source of nutrients (N and P) and faecal bacteria which have contributed to water quality degradation in some rivers and lakes. In response to these concerns, a tool-box of mitigation measures that farmers can apply on farm to reduce environmental emissions has been developed. Here we report the potential reduction in nutrient losses and costs to farm businesses arising from the implementation of individual best management practices (BMPs) within this tool-box. Modelling analysis was carried out for a range of BMPs targeting pollutant source reduction on case-study dairy farms, located in four contrasting catchments. Due to the contrasting physical resources and management systems present in the four dairy catchments evaluated, the effectiveness and costs of BMPs varied. Farm managements that optimised soil Olsen P levels or used nitrification inhibitors were observed to result in win-win outcomes whereby nutrient losses were consistently reduced and farm profitability was increased in three of the four case study farming systems. Other BMPs generally reduced nutrient and faecal bacteria losses but at a small cost to the farm business. Our analysis indicates that there are a range of technological measures that can deliver substantial reductions in nutrient losses to waterways from dairy farms, whilst not increasing or even reducing other environmental impacts (e.g. greenhouse gas emissions and energy use). Their implementation will first require clearly defined environmental goals for the catchment/water body that is to be protected. Secondly, given that the major sources of water pollutants often differed between catchments, it is important that BMPs are matched to the physical resources and management systems of the existing farm businesses. r

This article analyses the maritime sector in Norway from a cluster perspective. The maritime sector in Norway is probably best known globally due to the country's large merchant marine fleet, but Norway also has a substantial maritime industry consisting of numerous shipyards, ship equipment manufacturers, and ship consultants, and a plethora of other companies and institutions with maritime oriented activities. These actors have together made up the essential components of the Norwegian maritime cluster. Strong interdependencies between actors in various parts of the sector and an emphasis on innovation and entrepreneurship have historically contributed to define a strong and dynamic industrial cluster. In recent years, innovation appears to have slowed down and there are signs of a growing cleavage between the manufacturing and services parts of the Norwegian maritime sector: the international competitiveness of the maritime industry has gradually eroded, as has the strength of relations across the various parts of the maritime sector.

Firms with low levels of internationalization may feel the need to speed up their international development in order to be able to compete with multinational enterprises (MNEs) of bigger size and wider scope. Global alliances are a means to achieve such an accelerated process, not only because they allow ®rms to gain access to several markets at the same time, but also because they make it possible to enhance their own international competitiveness through the use of their partners' resources. This paper provides a detailed illustration of the competitive uses of global alliances as a means to accelerate the international expansion of the ®rm. Using evidence from 11 case studies on Spanish ®rms, we build a typology of four cooperative strategies. One of these strategies is based on local alliances, whereas the remaining three are based on global alliances. The paper presents a detailed case study of the ®rm which best ®ts each strategy found in global alliances. The implications of each strategy for alliance management, together with the possible evolution of each of them, are also discussed.

Occupational health and safety is established as a factor in international competitiveness, but we question the relevance of this economic argument at the organisational level. On this basis we assess the place of health and safety in the senior management agenda, based on ®ndings from recent market research. Out of this we take a brief perspective on the literature on performance assessment and corporate reputation, and their relationship with health and safety in the workplace. We then report original in-depth research on directors' attitudes to and practice in workplace health and safety. We conclude with a summary of the key issues and a discussion of directions for further work. # Safety Science 38 www.elsevier.com/locate/ssci 0925-7535/01/$ -see front matter # 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. P I I : S 0 9 2 5 -7 5 3 5 ( 0 1 ) 0 0 0 0 3 -0

This paper seeks to assess the importance of country-level determinants in affecting the international competitiveness of a country, defined both by export shares and shares in FDI, within a common framework based on a neo-Schumpeterian approach which regards technology as playing a central role in competitiveness. The relationships are tested with data for 40 developing and industrialised countries, and country determinants are found to play a similar role in explaining both inward and outward investment and exports. However, the explanatory power of the model varies over countries, explaining almost all the variation in competitiveness of the developing countries and a much lower proportion of the variation for industrialised countries. Technological capabilities, and the level of development of the country, are found to be two of the key determinants of competitiveness. We conclude that country determinants are equally effective in explaining both trade and FDI, but that in the case of industrialised countries there are additional factors, such as firm specific competitive advantages, which are not related to country-specific characteristics, and are important determinants of competitiveness.

Ž . The growth of decentralised R & D units in multinational enterprises MNEs is seen as a central element in the ways in which such companies are reformulating their global strategies, as they reposition their worldwide operations in the face of an increasingly intense international competitive environment. Two increasingly important strategic roles for overseas R & D Ž . units in MNEs are discerned and documented using evidence from labs in the UK . Firstly, they enter into new globalised approaches to innovation in MNEs by developing new products, or very distinctive product variants, for key segments of the Ž . global marketplace here Europe . These labs have a very close operative association with other localised functions Ž . marketing, engineering, management . Secondly, decentralised labs may take positions in global programmes of precompet-Ž . itive investigation coordinated by their parent MNE group , in which they carry out specialised pieces of basic research that Ž . reflect particular areas of expertise within the host-country here UK science base. Overall these decentralised R & D units are seen as ways in which MNE groups can turn to their advantage the need to respond to two key elements of the global environment, i.e., market heterogeneity and technological heterogeneity. q