Multiracial Britishness: Global Networks in Hong Kong, 1910–45 , by Vivian Kong

PurposeStudies on inter-firm relationships have recently shifted their attention from dyadic networks to more globally driven network structures. This condition occurs because embeddedness in global network structures may improve firm innovation and performance. In addition, the improvement of firm innovativeness and performance seems higher when globally networked firms both compete and cooperate between and among them. In this paper, we categorize the simultaneous interplay of cooperation and competition in the global arena as global network coopetition (GNC). Under GNC, multinational enterprises act jointly with their global partners-rivals to improve performance, at the same time by sharing complementary resources (cooperation side) and by undertaking independent actions to enhance their own performance (competition side). This paper aims to expand existing research on network and global coopetition by shedding light on the effects of coopetition between and among firms belonging to global network structures on value capture and innovation performance.Design/methodology/approachUsing a sample of 100 firms belonging to 14 industries organized in 47 global networks of different sizes, the authors conducted a longitudinal empirical study over the period 2000-2014 covering 1,098 observations, 1,717 interfirm relationships and 78 inter-networks linkages. A multiple regression model on panel data with random effects was conducted on the sample of 1,098 observations related to the global automotive industry to test the research hypotheses.FindingsFindings show that GNC enhances firm performance and innovation outcomes. In addition to GNC, structural characteristics such as network size, network position and network diversity have significant positive or negative effects on innovation and performance outcomes of firms belonging to these global network structures.Research limitations/implicationsOur research offers a contribution to the literature dealing with global networked structures’ effects on firm innovation performance. In fact, it effectively complements prior work on outcomes of coopetition between firms embedded in complex network structures. It also advances research in the area by introducing the notion of GNC as a network by which firms can enhance their innovation performance and, therefore, their global innovation performance. This study has some limitations. First, we acknowledge that it is focused only on 14 global coopetitive networks. It could be promising to extend the scope to integrate other networks. Second, our measures of firm actions as based on a content analysis of news reports related to firms. It would be important to complement this data collection by conducting a qualitative analysis (interviews). Atlast, it could be promising to include the study of customer needs in the new product development process.Practical implicationsOur study also offers some insights into the management of coopetition. In fact, by taking into account the existence of a context in which global coopetition networks play a role, managers may be better positioned to effectively deal with the paradox of being a partner of their direct rivals to improve their firms’ innovativeness and, consequently, achieve good performance, on the one hand, and to maintain relationships within several networks by taking into account their structural properties such as centrality and diversity, on the other hand.Originality/valueWe contribute to extant network coopetition literature in two ways. First, we introduce the notion of GNC to detect coopetition occurrence in global network structures. GNC refers to a context where actors in various networks belonging to different industries and geographies cooperate in a one (or more) innovative project/s, while simultaneously keeping on competing within and between their networks. Second, we contribute to network coopetition by analyzing specific GNC effects on firm innovation performance. In so doing, we can provide a deeper analytical understanding of GNC performance effects on firms operating in global network contexts.

Editorial: Creative industries at the intersection between local agglomeration, national regulation, and global networks

OBJECTIVES/SPECIFIC AIMS: The objective of this partnership was to create a global network of clinical and public health researchers and communities conducting technology-assisted research in noncommunicable disease. METHODS/STUDY POPULATION: The University of Rochester’s Clinical and Translational Science Institute (CTSI) has successfully leveraged the informatics core’s capacity into an emerging network of organizations that focus on technology and health in settings outside of the mainland United States. The CTSI coordinated with another NIH-funded infrastructure program [the RCMI Translational Research Network (RTRN)] to identify partner institutions interested in technology and health. RTRN identified the University of Puerto Rico and the University of Hawaii, both of which serve as hubs for common research interests in technology and health throughout the Caribbean and the Pacific. This network was formalized as the CDC’s Coordinating Center for its Global and Territorial Health Research Network (the “Global Network”), with additional US partners (Yale, University of Illinois at Chicago, University of North Caroline Chapel Hill, and the University of South Florida) within a wider scope of the CDC’s Prevention Research Centers (PRC) program. RESULTS/ANTICIPATED RESULTS: Through combining 2 main NIH-funded research infrastructure networks (CTSA and RTRN), with a large CDC-funded PRC, the University of Rochester’s Informatics Core was successful in establishing a new productive global health network throughout Latin America and the Caribbean, and in the Pacific, garnering additional research support from NIH Fogarty and other programs. The resulting network not only supports locally-important research in technology and health on compelling health issues (eg, diabetes, ZIka, participation in research), but also facilitates community engagement through local partnerships and the cores of the involved networks. In addition, much of the information and communications technology (ICT)-related research and learnings from the Global Network activity is immediately applicable to populations in the United States, served by the various collaborative networks. In total, while new, the Global Network supports a wide range of projects and engagements throughout the world that expand local informatics capacity and use of technology in the research process and to address global health problems, further enhancing the CTSI’s informatics core to serve the needs of its own constituency and promote research engagement with technology within this population. Local research collaborative projects reinforce the utility of the network and its resources, evidenced by tools, publications, partnerships, and conference presentations that have arisen. Lessons to date from this Global Network collaboration include: specific global research projects provide opportunities for partnership building and meaningful collaboration, team science is of central importance in distributing the work of the network, synergy is multidirectional with expertise and need flowing in all directions, and project team members in all locales learned and contributed substantially in ways that carried into their other responsibilities. DISCUSSION/SIGNIFICANCE OF IMPACT: The overall partnership has created opportunity for South-South collaboration, for adaptation of projects among locales, and has helped boost reputational value for all partners involved. Implications for other CTSA awardees include: global collaboration can serve core research and technical needs for the CTSA itself and its local partners, CTSA status can be leveraged to access resources to support local research, and collaboration in other federally-funded research networks helps expand the insight, scope, and potential for new research.

Through a case study of the Irish software industry, this article explores how an industry and region that was ‘locked in’ to a dependent relationship of routine production within the global software production network managed to partially move up the production and technology chain to develop more sophisticated operations among foreign firms and in the Irish‐owned sector. Relations within production networks tend to become institutionalized and self‐reproducing. Firms and territories tend to remain locked in to a particular niche, in the absence of a ‘development project’ or coalition that mobilizes resources and cooperation to generate a push into a niche further up the network hierarchy. The push for moving up the network comes when a marginalized or vulnerable group within or on the edges of the network makes an alliance with supportive public agencies. Global production networks institutionalize hierarchical relations, but it remains possible for developmental coalitions to mobilize around the connections and resources within those networks to enter new niches further up these hierarchies. In practice, this requires a concerted and ongoing state policy of industrial development and innovation promotion.A partir du cas de l'industrie irlandaise des logiciels, l'article examine comment un secteur et une région ‘emprisonnés’ dans une relation de dépendance, via une production routinière inscrite dans un réseau mondial de fabrication de logiciels, ont réussi à monter dans la chaîne technologique et productive pour mettre au point des opérations plus sophistiquées au sein d'entreprises étrangères et irlandaises. Les rapports dans les réseaux de production tendent à s'institutionnaliser et à s'auto‐reproduire. Entreprises et territoires restent plutôt prisonniers d'une niche donnée, en l'absence de ‘projet de développement’ ou de coalition mobilisateur de ressources et de coopération, capable de les pousser dans une niche supérieure du réseau hiérarchisé. Cette poussée se crée seulement si un groupe marginalisé ou vulnérable situé dans le réseau ou à sa périphérie s'allie à des organismes publics d'aide. Même si les réseaux de production mondiaux institutionnalisent des liens hiérarchiques, des coalitions de développement peuvent encore se mobiliser autour de contacts et de ressources appartenant à ces réseaux pour pénétrer de nouvelles niches, plus élevées dans les hiérarchies. En pratique, cela exige une politique gouvernementale concertée et durable de développement industriel et de promotion de l'innovation.

Servitization of manufacturing and China's power status upgrading of global value network

Over the last two decades, the Seychelles quietly rose into the top echelon of the global offshore industry and then it experienced a sharp decline. Two different global networks contributed to this outcome. A global advisory network welcomed the Seychelles into its fold before a global banking network that controls access to US dollar transactions constricted its ties with the country. The larger significance is threefold. First, attention must be paid to global networks as both facilitating neoliberal globalization and as partially recoiling from it. Second, networks oriented around US dollar clearing banks and offshore advisers should be studied closely given the power that comes from their gatekeeper roles. Third, a development strategy founded on offshore business can run aground when faced with tightening global networks and a wavering domestic commitment. The result of these developments is a two‐track offshore economy with a downward path in some jurisdictions but greater continuity in other parts of the offshore system.

Risk for memory decline is a common concern for individuals with temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) undergoing surgery. Global and local network abnormalities are well documented in TLE. However, it is less known whether network abnormalities predict postsurgical memory decline. The authors examined the role of preoperative global and local white matter network organization and risk of postoperative memory decline in TLE. One hundred one individuals with TLE (n = 51 with left TLE and 50 with right TLE) underwent preoperative T1-weighted MRI, diffusion MRI, and neuropsychological memory testing in a prospective longitudinal study. Fifty-six age- and sex-matched controls completed the same protocol. Forty-four patients (22 with left TLE and 22 with right TLE) subsequently underwent temporal lobe surgery and postoperative memory testing. Preoperative structural connectomes were generated via diffusion tractography and analyzed using measures of global and local (i.e., medial temporal lobe [MTL]) network organization. Global metrics measured network integration and specialization. The local metric was calculated as an asymmetry of the mean local efficiency between the ipsilateral and contralateral MTLs (i.e., MTL network asymmetry). Higher preoperative global network integration and specialization were associated with higher preoperative verbal memory function in patients with left TLE. Higher preoperative global network integration and specialization, as well as greater leftward MTL network asymmetry, predicted greater postoperative verbal memory decline for patients with left TLE. No significant effects were observed in right TLE. Accounting for preoperative memory score and hippocampal volume asymmetry, MTL network asymmetry uniquely explained 25%-33% of the variance in verbal memory decline for left TLE and outperformed hippocampal volume asymmetry and global network metrics. MTL network asymmetry alone produced good diagnostic classification of memory decline in left TLE (i.e., an area under the receiver operating characteristic curve of 0.80-0.84 and correct classification of 65%-76% of cases with cross-validation). These preliminary data suggest that global white matter network disruption contributes to verbal memory impairment preoperatively and predicts postsurgical verbal memory outcomes in left TLE. However, a leftward asymmetry of MTL white matter network organization may confer the highest risk for verbal memory decline. Although this requires replication in a larger sample, the authors demonstrate the importance of characterizing preoperative local white matter network properties within the to-be-operated hemisphere and the reserve capacity of the contralateral MTL network, which may eventually be useful in presurgical planning.

Brand name audit firms are global networks of local audit firms. These networks claim to enforce consistent audit methodologies across their member firms, which if true, should systematically affect client financial reporting. We find that clients from different countries have more (less) comparable accruals when they are audited by local audit firms from the same global network (different global networks). Furthermore, inferences are similar when we examine client accrual comparability around audit firm switches induced by the failure of Andersen, which serves as a shock that helps improve identification. In falsification tests, having auditors from the same global network is not associated with differences in operating cash flows. Results also suggest that the role of global network methodologies in global financial reporting comparability is more pronounced across stronger investor protection jurisdictions and across jurisdictions that have adopted International Standards on Auditing.

Reviewed by: Human Rights Discourses in a Global Network: Books beyond Borders by Lena Khor Amy Lynn Klemm Lena Khor. Human Rights Discourses in a Global Network: Books beyond Borders. Surrey, England: Ashgate, 2013. 294p. In her original study of human rights discourse, Lena Khor addresses the concern by other scholars and critics of the globalization of human rights discourse. While [End Page 233] other scholars maintain that the discourse of human rights is being forced upon us from an imperialistic stance from what is referred to as the “Global North,” Khor argues for an exemplary move away from using human rights as a term to mean an absolute and imprecise thing, and instead she focuses on how human rights is a communally constructed language. She first broaches and explains her term “global discourse network of human rights” in the “Introduction” (Khor, 4). She devotes the first chapter to show the reader how the human rights discourse is now a global network, and delves into the language that is constructed to elucidate the human rights movement. Khor uses Paul Rusesabagina as an example of someone who has witnessed genocide and explores his autobiography An Ordinary Man as well as Terry George’s film Hotel Rwanda in her second chapter. The non-profit humanitarian outfit of Médecins Sans Frontiéres (MSF) or Doctors without Borders is presented as a proposed human rights hero/savior in the third chapter, while in the fourth chapter Khor uses Michael Ondaatje’s novel Anil’s Ghost to illustrate the restrictions of the movement. In her Conclusion, she returns and revisits the subjects of Doctors without Borders to further highlight some of the controversies of the global human rights movement as well as the innate tensions. Throughout the entire book, it appears as though Lena Khor’s sole mission is to offer a new way of thinking about human rights through a network of global discourse and language. While there are numerous things that Khor executes very well throughout this book, this review will focus on the two which are the most successful. The first is her exploration of the ways in which scholarly criticism can oftentimes hold the cause back, and the second is that even the heroes and saviors of the cause are not above the same censure. It should also be noted that the book is formatted in such a way that it is impossible to miss Khor’s mission for her book. Each chapter is filled with italicized words and phrases that are key terms she wishes the reader to know, and the subheadings in each chapter keep the argument organized, something that is essential when tackling such a large subject matter as global human rights. Khor is breathing new life into the topic of global human rights by exploring the ways in which the language of human rights is crucial to either furthering or holding back the movement. She offers a complete overview of the difficulties in writing about and discussing global human rights, paying particular attention to the ways in which those who have witnessed genocide, such as Paul Rusesbagina, are sometimes criticized as making themselves out to be more of a hero than they really are. In the same vein, she uses Michael Ondaatje’s novel Anil’s Ghost to draw attention to how scholarly criticism, that so often accompanies these textual works on human rights, undermines the author, the subject of the work, and any [End Page 234] personal or professional interest of the reader. Every aspect of a film, organization, or textual work is under a critical microscope to ensure that it meets the criteria that scholars feel allows it to be a reputable voice in the field. This is one of the most important things that Khor discusses, since we can only get so far in the fight for global human rights when literature, film, and organizations are being criticized by scholars and theorists who find fault in each. Critics claim that authors such as Ondaatje have a bias about the topic on which they are writing since they are from a particular area; while others claim that he is not “Sri-Lankan enough” to...

Brand name audit firms are global networks of local audit firms. These networks claim to enforce consistent audit methodologies across their member firms, which, if true, should systematically affect client financial reporting. We find that clients from different countries have more (less) comparable accruals when they are audited by local audit firms from the same global network (different global networks). Furthermore, inferences are similar when we examine client accrual comparability around audit firm switches induced by the failure of Andersen, which serves as a shock that helps improve identification. In falsification tests, having auditors from the same global network is not associated with differences in operating cash flows. Results also suggest that the role of global network methodologies in global financial reporting comparability is more pronounced across stronger investor protection jurisdictions and across jurisdictions that have adopted International Standards on Auditing. JEL Classifications: M41; M42.

China’s opportunities to build innovative capabilities in the IT industry differ from those faced earlier by Japan and East Asian newly industrializing economies (NIEs). China has a unique combination of advantages in a booming market for electronics products and services, the world’s largest pool of low-cost and easily trainable knowledge workers, the emergence of sophisticated lead users and test-bed markets, and policy efforts to strengthen China’s innovation system. As a later latecomer, China can learn from the achievements and mistakes of earlier latecomers.The international environment is also dramatically different. Most important is the expansion of global knowledge networks, which have extended beyond markets for goods and finance into markets for technology and knowledge workers. Taking into account these important differences, this chapter addresses two questions: Does integration into global knowledge networks facilitate the efforts of Chinese IT firms to develop innovative capabilities? If yes, precisely what type of capabilities are they developing?The findings of this chapter can be summarized as follows:• Integration into global knowledge networks exposes Chinese IT firms to leading-edge technology, “best-practice” management, and sources of knowledge. • Knowledge about its own markets and production sites helps Chinese IT firms to exploit these opportunities.• Successful Chinese firms have not attempted to compete head-on with global leaders through radical innovations. Instead, they have focused on incremental and architectural innovations that support technology diversification strategies.• Integration into global networks needs to be supported by a strong domestic innovation system.These findings contradict a pessimistic literature that appraises China’s innovative capabilities as weak. They also contradict fears, sometimes played up for political purposes, that Chinese firms could make radical innovations that would challenge U.S. technology leadership. A central proposition here is that Chinese IT firms make the most progress in areas that escape the attention of both pessimists and proponents of an emerging technology threat.

Geodetic monitoring of subduction of the Nazca and Cocos plates is a goal of the CASA (Central and South America) Global Positioning System (GPS) experiments, and requires measurement of intersite distances (baselines) in excess of 500 km. The major error source in these measurements is the uncertainty in the position of the GPS satellites at the time of observation. A key aspect of the first CASA experiment, CASA Uno, was the initiation of a global network of tracking stations to minimize these errors. We studied the effect of using various subsets of this global tracking network on long (>100 km) baseline estimates in the CASA region. Best results were obtained with a global tracking network consisting of three U.S. fiducial stations, two sites in the southwest Pacific and two sites in Europe. Relative to smaller subsets, this global network improved baseline repeatability, resolution of carrier phase cycle ambiguities, and formal errors of the orbit estimates. Describing baseline repeatability for horizontal components as σ= (a2 + b2L2)1/2 where L is baseline length, we obtained a= 4 and 9 mm and b= 2.8×10−8 and 2.3×10−8 for north and east components, respectively, on CASA baselines up to 1000 km in length with this global network.

Catalysing global and local social change in the land sector through technical innovation by the United Nations and the Global Land Tool Network

Corporations across the world are highly interconnected in a large global network of corporate control. This paper investigates the global board interlock network, covering 400,000 firms linked through 1,700,000 edges representing shared directors between these firms. The main focus is on the concept of centrality, which is used to investigate the embeddedness of firms from a particular country within the global network. The study results in three contributions. First, to the best of our knowledge for the first time we can investigate the topology as well as the concept of centrality in corporate networks at a global scale, allowing for the largest cross-country comparison ever done in interlocking directorates literature. We demonstrate, amongst other things, extremely similar network topologies, yet large differences between countries when it comes to the relation between economic prominence indicators and firm centrality. Second, we introduce two new metrics that are specifically suitable for comparing the centrality ranking of a partition to that of the full network. Using the notion of centrality persistence we propose to measure the persistence of a partition's centrality ranking in the full network. In the board interlock network, it allows us to assess the extent to which the footprint of a national network is still present within the global network. Next, the measure of centrality ranking dominance tells us whether a partition (country) is more dominant at the top or the bottom of the centrality ranking of the full (global) network. Finally, comparing these two new measures of persistence and dominance between different countries allows us to classify these countries based the their embeddedness, measured using the relation between the centrality of a country's firms on the national and the global scale of the board interlock network.

Alterations in the global brain network in older adults with poor sleep quality: A resting-state fMRI study