This paper explores the challenges arising from the increasing level of international and knowledgebased activity for services sector enterprises. The paper begins with an overview of evidence concerning the internationalisation of services before proceeding to a detailed analysis of the internationalisation of firms in a number of knowledge intensive business service sectors. The paper conclud...

This paper presents a comparative analysis of the productive efficiency of two types of firms in China --foreign-invested enterprises (FIEs) and state-owned enterprises (SOEs), using a stochastic frontier production function model and the latest statistical data (1993-97). It has found that the FIEs in general outperformed SOEs in productive efficiency, as demonstrated by the differentials in t...

This dissertation investigates how institutional environments and firm resources influence firm scope. Building on strategy and international business literatures, I propose that institutional environments influence firm scope through the impacts on both the development of internal resources and the availability of external resources. In Chapter 2, I disaggregate the concept of institutional di...

Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) is a mathematical technique to evaluate the performance of firms with multiple inputs and outputs. In conventional DEA models, the efficiency scores of Decision Making Units (DMUs) with non-negative inputs and outputs are evaluated in a special period of time. However, in the real world there are situations wherein performance of firms must be evaluated in multip...

The "big-bang" liberalization of the inefficient Russian economy in 1992 provides a fruitful setting for analyzing the impact of several dimensions of market competition and other factors on enterprise efficiency. We analyze 1992-1998 panel data on 14,961 enterprises covering 75 percent of industrial employment, emphasizing the varied sources, geographic scope, intensity, time path, and surviva...

Industrial companies are the core of the national innovation system. However, large, medium and small enterprises differ significantly in their role in the innovation system, resource potential, strategic priorities and objectives. The paper focuses on a comparative analysis of the strategic priorities of innovative activities of Russian companies of different size. We have identified three typ...

In China, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) tend to be slow in adopting and exploiting information technology (IT) as a means of enhancing their sustainability. It is vital for such firms to adopt IT in order to keep up with an IT-based global business environment. Otherwise, they may find themselves at a severe competitive disadvantage. This paper provides an insight into the low adoption of...

There are two divergent perspectives on the impact of subcontracting on firms in the informal sector. According to the benign view, formal sector firms prefer linkages with relatively modern firms in the informal sector, and subcontracting enables capital accumulation and technological improvement in the latter. According to the exploitation view, formal sector firms extract surplus from stagna...

There are two divergent perspectives on the impact of subcontracting on firms in the informal sector. According to the benign view, formal sector firms prefer linkages with relatively modern firms in the informal sector, and subcontracting enables capital accumulation and technological improvement in the latter. According to the exploitation view, formal sector firms extract surplus from stagna...

In this paper we address the question of whether tacit knowledge can be a promoter of success in technology enterprises. Tacit knowledge is illustrated focusing on its foundations, on how it is expressed and how tacit knowledge can be utilised in technology firms. A model is presented by which the utilisation of tacit knowledge can be understood more profoundly. The question of how significant ...