This volume explores the extent to which multinational enterprises (MNEs) are decentralizing the creation of new technological capabilities to various countries. The book contends that technological strategies and innovation activities undertaken by firms are a critical part of the increasing internationalization of economic activity and that MNEs are the main actors for these changes. It goes on to explain that MNEs must now effectively manage new technological assets in order to cope with the extensive changes in the nature of international competition.

This book contributes to ongoing policy discussions on the internationalisation of innovation. Foreign-owned enterprises account for a rising share of national innovation expenditures and have become key actors in the national innovation systems of almost all OECD countries. Their new roles give rise to both hopes and concerns. The author examines the innovative activities of foreign-owned enterprises in Austria, a country with a huge share of overseas R&D investment. Empirical analysis reveals that foreign-owned enterprises exhibit a superior innovation performance compared to domestically owned enterprises. The performance differences, however, can be explained by factors such as firm size, sectoral affiliation, and export intensity, rather than by the ownership status. With respect to policy, the results neither confirm fears that foreign ownership could lead to an erosion of innovative activity in the host country, nor do they provide arguments for specific incentives to attract foreign-owned enterprises. Innovation policy should instead try to foster innovative capabilities of both foreign-owned and domestically owned enterprises.

'This wonderful volume brings together contributions mainly from the innovation literature, whose findings are in a sense quite familiar, but which in this collection are juxtaposed in such a way as to highlight their common institutional underpinnings. This is very much due to the efforts of the editor, whose insightful introduction and editorial vision brings out several interesting and emerging themes from this collection of papers. I think this volume breaks new ground in highlighting the embeddedness of MNE subsidiaries in multiple contexts, and it will be of considerable interest to scholars engaged with institutional analysis. However, I also believe that researchers interested in regional embeddedness, the geography of innovation, and knowledge management will find new angles to their work in this collected volume.' – Sarianna M. Lundan, University of Bremen, Germany Multinational companies are crucial actors in a global knowledge-based economy, combining the advantages of global and locally coordinated production and innovation strategies with specific regional and national factors. This book questions how MNCs can best exploit institutionally embedded knowledge, explores the utilization of external institutionally embedded knowledge in corporate innovation processes, and addresses the challenges of embeddedness. The expert contributors draw on managerial, economic, geographic and sociological perspectives to explore the essential roles of regional and national knowledge infrastructures and the cultural and political environment of MNCs. They build upon, update, and extend the discussion on the regional and national embeddedness of MNCs with new country case studies and comparative analyses, focussing on the relationship between innovation in companies and regional studies. Significantly, the book also establishes a link between two important debates that have hitherto been largely disconnected: Regional studies and international business studies separately address issues that fall within the scope of the book, but do not provide an integrated analysis of the embeddedness of MNCs. This pathbreaking book goes some way to fill this gap in the literature and as such, will prove invaluable to academics, R&D managers, regional policy makers and students with an interest in international business, business economics, regional studies and organization studies.

In contemporary economies, businesses must consistently make strides to remain competitive and profitable at both national and international levels. Unlike in the developed world, corporations in developing nations face a different set of challenges for achieving growth. Multinational Enterprise Management Strategies in Developing Countries is an authoritative reference source for the latest scholarly research on diverse opportunities and obstacles facing multinational corporations in emerging economies. Highlighting innovative perspectives and real-world examples, this book is ideally designed for researchers, practitioners, upper-level students, and industry professionals interested in management approaches for achieving success in international corporations.

This study deals with the organisation of innovation projects of multinational companies. The focus is on learning processes which occur within the company group as well as those taking place between the company and its regional environment. This work establishes a bridge between organisational and regional learning.

The concept of National Systems of Innovation was introduced as a method to describe the various elements which contribute to innovation performance and their interaction. In this book, the innovation structures of a broad set of countries are compared. It provides more than a pure compilation of quantitative indicators for international benchmarking, supporting an appropriate interpretation of the referring results and suggesting relevant conclusions for innovation policy.