Re-strategizing for ecosystem and operational efficiencies for higher global competitiveness and growth

The study of supply side of the hotel sector is rare although hotels play an important role in generating revenues in tourism industry, which has a large contribution on global economic growth. This study fills the supply-side literature gap through discussing the operating and profitability efficiencies of US listed hotel companies in the recent five years through a data envelopment analysis (DEA) approach. Hotels are categorised into four groups according to the stability and trend of their operating and profitability efficiencies in this five-year period. Findings suggest that hotels' operating efficiency and profitability efficiency are highly correlated. Implications for improving hotels' operating and profitability efficiencies are provided.

Internationalization process theory views internationalization as an incremental process that develops after a period of domestic maturation and growth. However, recent studies on born global firms prove the limitation of this theory. A born global is defined as “the firm that is heavily involved in exporting at inception or shortly after establishment” (Knight, G. A. and Cavusgil, S. T., 1996. The born global firms: A challenge to traditional internationalization theory, Adv. Int. Mark., 8, 11–26; Rennie, M. W., 1993. Global competitiveness: Born global, McKinsey Q., 4, 45–52). In developing countries, most apparel firms have the nature of born global, using labor-intensive operations. However, they often fail to maintain growth, and determinants of the growth remain largely unanswered. Among many potential factors, this study regards entrepreneur characteristics as more critical than others in explaining the growth. This study chose South Korea as its focus since this country underwent the initial born global stage in the 1970s. Using extensive literature reviews and interviews with field experts, this study suggests propositions that explain the influence of entrepreneur characteristics on born global firm international growth after inception.

Warmadewa University, as one of the private universities in Bali, has a vision of becoming a quality university with an ecotourism perspective and global competitiveness by 2034. To be able to compete in meeting the demands of the global job market, the crucial role of lecturers as educators is needed. Therefore, this research is urgently conducted so that educators/lecturers improve their performance towards a quality and globally competitive university, based on the Sapta Bayu values as an organizational culture. The results of the study : 1) Global mindset and growth mindset have a positive and significant effect on lecturer performance, 2) Global mindset has a positive and significant effect on lecturer performance, 3) Growth mindset has a positive and significant effect on lecturers, 4) Sapta Bayu organizational culture does not moderate the effect of global mindset on lecturer performance, 5) Sapta Bayu organizational culture does not moderate the effect of growth mindset on lecturer performance at Warmadewa University.

Global growth in aquaculture is underway – a “blue revolution” featuring rapid increases in demand for fish and a corresponding surge in aquaculture production. This paper describes the fast-growing tilapia value chain in Ghana to demonstrate the features of a nascent blue revolution in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) and to illustrate its potential for job creation and reducing poverty and food insecurity there. Tilapia production has been growing at 15 percent annually in SSA, but imports are also surging to satisfy the growing appetite for tilapia. This paper illustrates how aquaculture can grow sustainably in SSA within the context of growing demand and global competition. A value chain analysis is conducted using secondary data analysis, desk reviews of experiences and lessons from other countries, interviews with 95 actors in the tilapia value chain in Ghana, and detailed production and profitability data from Ghanaian tilapia farmers. A profitable farmed tilapia industry has been established in Ghana with the potential to expand supply to satisfy local demand and to export to neighboring countries. Productivity in the industry has grown mainly through reducing the mortality rates of fingerlings and improvements in the supply of locally-produced high-quality fish feed. Feed costs remain high. However, there is potential to reduce those costs by improving the productivity of crops that are used in fish feed, particularly maize and soybean. Reducing local feed costs will have positive spillover effects on both other pond-based aquaculture systems and on the livestock feed sector. Moreover, Ghana can expand it fish feed production to be an important source of feed within SSA. The industry can further increase aquaculture productivity through the adoption of faster-growing fish strains and better management practices. Ghana’s aquaculture sector could grow even faster by adopting lessons from other countries, including on infrastructure provision, fiscal incentives for the production of fish feed ingredients, and sustainable fish farming practices, particularly through paying close attention to water and feed quality and addressing food safety concerns within the sector.

The Global Competitiveness Index is treated as a standard to measure the competitiveness of countries. Leaders look at it to make policy and resource allocation decisions because global competitiveness is expected to be related to economic growth. However, studies which analyze the empirical relationship between these two economic categories are very rare. It is still an open question in the literature whether economic growth can be used to predict future global competitiveness or the other way round. This paper empirically tests the relationship between the GCI and the economic growth rate by using a panel Granger causality analysis based on annual data for 114 countries divided into five groups by income criteria and covering the period 2006-2014. We confirm a strong unidirectional causality among the countries analyzed, i.e. GDP growth causes global competitiveness. Additionally, we find that the GCI is not successful in predicting economic growth for the majority of the 114 counties, with the exception of few large economies such as China, India, the United States and Russia.

The Global Competitiveness Index is treated as a standard to measure the competitiveness of countries. Leaders look at it to make policy and resource allocation decisions, because global competitiveness is expected to be related to economic growth. However, studies which analyze the empirical relationship between these two economic categories are very rare. It is still an open question in the literature whether economic growth can be used to predict future global competitiveness or the other way round. This paper empirically tests the relationship between the GCI and the economic growth rate by using a panel Granger causality analysis based on annual data for 114 countries divided into five groups by income criteria and covering the period 2006-2014. We confirm a strong unidirectional causality among the countries analyzed, i.e. GDP growth causes global competitiveness. Additionally, we find that the GCI is successful in predicting economic growth for the majority low income and OCED high income counties, but among the middle income countries this relationship exists only for large economies such as China and India.

ASME Standards and Certification: Now and Beyond

Introduction to the special issue on mobility, climate change, and economic inequality

IN ITS Global Competitiveness Report 2001-2002, Geneva-based World Economic Forum (WEF) ranked 75 nations on their global competitiveness. The U.S. finished second, behind only Finland. Well, maybe Nokia had an off year, but in 2002-03 report, 80 countries are ranked, and U.S. ranks number one in global competitiveness, growth competitiveness (the next five years), and microeconomic competitiveness (how well companies are run). The WEF observes that competitiveness remains a concept that is not well understood, despite widespread acceptance of its importance. The most intuitive definition of competitiveness is a country's share of world markets for its products. This makes competitiveness a zero-sum game because one country's gain comes at expense of others. But, WEF argues, world economy is not a zero-sum game. And acting as if it were actually works against a country's economic progress. Low wages, often cited as a reason for shipping American jobs abroad, hold down prosperity. Devaluation of a currency, another common means of increasing exports, means that country is actually taking a collective pay cut. True competitiveness comes from productivity. Productivity allows a nation to support high wages, a strong currency, and attractive returns to capital -- and with them a high standard of living. Of course, WEF reflects a particular world view. And that world view can be seen by looking at regional reports. For instance, in its first-ever separate report on Arab nations, WEF lists three deficits that must be removed to make Arab countries competitive. Removing them requires rebuilding Arab societies so that they are based on following: * full respect for human rights and human freedoms, * complete empowerment of Arab women, and * consolidation of knowledge acquisition and its effective utilization. Given multitude of variables WEF uses, including test scores from international studies, it is easy to see why those test scores don't have much bearing on a nation's competitiveness (See Research, June 2002). The report can be found at www.weforum.org. Ignorantia Affectata THERE were problems with New York Regents Mathematics A examination, and almost 70% of students flunked. New York Education Commissioner Richard Mills threw out results. This story would hold little interest outside New York if it were a rare event, but it is not. The title of a new monograph by Kathleen Rhoades and George Madaus of Boston College puts it clearly: Errors in Standardized Tests: A Systemic Problem. Rhoades and Madaus begin with examples of kinds of decisions -- promotion, graduation, etc. -- that turn on test scores. All of these decisions are based on quantification of performance -- on numbers -- and this bestows on them appearance of fairness, impartiality, authority, and precision. The heavy reliance of reformers on these numbers is a facet of what Thomas Aquinas called a cultivated ignorance, ignorantia affectata. A couple of years ago, Thomas Kane and Douglas Staiger observed that many reformers and state officials do not understand strengths and weaknesses of instruments they use in their accountability programs. Rhoades and Madaus go further and call it a willed ignorance, an ignorance that one protects in order to keep using it. This ignorance is doubly dangerous because the testing industry is shrouded in secrecy. Rhoades and Madaus cite an earlier report: Today those who take and use many tests have less consumer protection than those who buy a toy, a toaster, or a plane ticket. Rarely is an important test or its use subject to formal, systematic, independent professional scrutiny or audit. Civil servants who contract to have a test built, or who purchase commercial tests in education, have only testing companies' assurances that their product is technically sound and appropriate for its stated purpose. …

The article analyses global experience dealing with attaining competitiveness of companies of small and medium business, studies forms, methods, specific features, goals of the new stage of shaping demand and supply on the basis of achievements of the 4th industrial revolution. The author highlights the role and place of certain countries in the development of global competition through figures of economic growth, export of goods and services and proportion of the population. The forecast of global economy growth rate in the post-pandemic period is important for researching changes in the global economy structure and trends of the global competition development. Characteristic features and indications of the new stage of the industrial revolution were analyzed as they have serious impact on small business by providing opportunities for fast growth in competitiveness. The author distinguishes different groups of risks typical of the 4th industrial revolution, which could influence seriously small entrepreneurship in the world. The impact of external global factors on shaping entrepreneurial psychology and behavior was revealed, as well as on forms and methods of managing small and medium business by integrated criteria approach. The role of state regulation in global competition and its influence on small business segment were investigated. Special attention was paid to state regulation and measures of supporting small and medium business in China. Information about finance and credit tools for supporting small and medium business in different countries was analyzed. Concrete recommendations were given dealing with best world practices of using achievements of the 4th industrial revolution in operation of companies of small and medium business and with infrastructure development, which could solve problems of capital raising. The problem was researched in view of goals set within the frames of national projects, including labour productivity and business profitability increase. The situation in the field of finance support of small entrepreneurship was studied in connection with pandemic conditions within the frames of effective infrastructure, new programs and accumulated experience. For comparison information about Russia and the US was used.

Enterprise and the State in Korea and Taiwan. By Karl J. Fields. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995. 269p. $35.00. - Global Competitiveness and Industrial Growth in Taiwan and the Philippines. By Cheng-Tian Kuo. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1995. 267p. $49.95.

Introduction This essay begins with the premise that resilience, broadly defined as positive adaptation despite adversity (Garmezy and Rutter), and resilience building are important concepts and practices for social policy because they are concerned with the quality of people’s lives forged within conditions of marginalisation and disadvantage. Although it will focus on trends in contemporary neoliberal policies and practices, it builds on the tradition of scholarship that has provided critical alternative accounts to the encyclopaedic knowledge of the “pathologies” of the oppressed. Resilience research constitutes one such field of disruption in its turn to understanding how people endure, cope or indeed thrive despite adversity. Over forty years of research has explored a wide range of adversities, protective, buffering, restorative or promotive processes enabling people’s coping, recovery, wellbeing and capacity to lead dignified, meaningful, successful lives (O’Doherty Wright and Masten). Essentially, resilience research has sought to understand what makes a difference in the lives of children, young people and adults with a view to applying this knowledge through policy, professional intervention and practices within families, schools, other public systems and communities. Early research on resilience focused on individual traits to explain people’s wellbeing despite the effects of significant stressors or challenging circumstances. However, it is now widely accepted that resilience involves diverse processes embedded in ecological systems. How resilience manifests is shown to vary according to the kind of barriers, traumas and ongoing adversities people experience in their cultural, social and political contexts. At the individual level, personal agency and the capacity to act in and on the world are posited as important mechanisms of resilience (Edwards; Rutter). But these are always enabled in relationship with others and take on meaning in specific activity domains and cultural contexts. For example, for Indigenous peoples, language, culture, land and “caring for country” have been important resources for surviving and coping with the lasting effects of colonisation (Dockery; Weir, Stacey and Youngetob). Access to cultural and material resources, political activism for land rights and scope for self-determination are significant to individual and collective Indigenous resilience (Kirmayer et al.). Across diverse cultures and contexts, resilience is shown to be contingent on community capacities and resources (Ungar). For young people and families in poverty, these include “resilience-generating institutions” (Fine, Stoudt, Fox and Santos 32) such as schools and community centres and access to housing, transport, local infrastructure and opportunities that are, in turn, shaped by social and economic structures and systems of distribution (of adversity, opportunity and social goods) including the policies that facilitate them (Bottrell and Armstrong; France, Bottrell and Armstrong). Discrepancies between these understandings of resilience processes and policy orientations have been noted. Seccombe’s analysis of influences on the resilience of families in poverty concludes that “careful attention must be paid to the structural deficiencies in our society and to the social policies that families need in order to become stronger, more competent, and better functioning in adverse situations” (385). Similarly, O’Dougherty Wright and Masten argue that it is well established that there is the need for supportive “multifaceted, community-based intervention” to promote the resilience of children and families living with chronic adversity, yet progress in this direction has been slow and uneven (32). However, in resilience research there is little analysis of these discrepancies in terms of how resilience is framed in social policy and how its meaning has emerged as very different from the contextualised ecological systems approach. Resilience researchers have questioned the limits and costs of resilience in conditions of extreme adversity such as poverty and racial oppression, yet in the main, these critiques have received little attention. For example, Luthar (1993) and Liddle (1994) emphasised the importance of not losing sight of the human suffering that is often experienced in the process of developing resilience. More recently, Bottrell has emphasised the utility of resilience to neoliberal policy in asking the following questions: “[T]o what extent will adversity be tolerated, on the assumption that resilient individuals can and do cope? How much adversity should resilient individuals endure before social arrangements rather than individuals are targeted for intervention?” (Qualitative Social Work 335). This paper takes up these questions in arguing that the meaning of resilience in social policy is distorted by its neoliberal reworking for governance purposes. As economic, ideological and political systems, neoliberalism’s key tenets are that, human well-being can best be advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurial freedoms and skills within an institutional framework characterized by strong private property rights, free markets and free trade. The role of the state is to create and preserve an institutional framework appropriate to such practices. (Harvey 2) As economic policies and practices, neoliberalism distributes benefits and opportunities highly inequitably; as “ontoformative, it creates new social realities on a very wide front” (Connell 43). These dimensions of neoliberalisation are particularly evident in social policy and practice because this field has been and continues to be a focus for privatisation and activating new social relations to accomplish market rule. These shifts are infused with the tensions, contradictions, crises and ideological inconsistencies that are characteristic of neoliberalisation globally and in sovereign contexts (Brenner, Peck and Theodore). The ascendance of resilience as a social policy text articulates these shifts. In the following sections it is argued that key trends in neoliberal social policy point to the political, ideological and structural processes that produce the need for resilience. However, its production lies not only in policy that explicitly claims to focus on building resilient communities but through other neoliberal policy agenda. It is proposed, then, that resilience as a policy concept and related practice is better understood in its intertextuality, that is, as embedded in the interrelationship of policies and strategies directed toward the realisation of neoliberal ideals. The paper focuses on the articulation of resilience and responsibility as twinned texts of neoliberal governance. The Neoliberal Text of Resilience In Australia, the United States and other advanced capitalist democracies, the policy framing of resilience encapsulates the principle of individualisation that has been characteristic in the neoliberal realignment of social policy to economic aims. Resilience is typically represented in social policy as a matter of individual attributes that are integral to autonomy, self-invention and choice biographies (Bottrell and Armstrong). For example, in Australian youth policy, resilience is described as important for all young people, to “navigate life’s challenges” and particularly important for youth “at risk” (http://www.youth.gov.au/ayf/media/Pages/NationalStrategyforYoungAustralians.asp). In national educational goals, resilience as a “personal attribute” is linked to young people’s confidence and self-management essential for “fulfilling, productive and responsible lives” (http://www.acara.edu.au/curriculum/curriculum.html#). Similarly, US Health and Human Services policy links resilience to strategies promoting healthy behaviours and reducing risky behaviours (http://www.hhs.gov/secretary/about/priorities/priorities.html). The emphasis on individualised resilience is evident too in policy strategies for “community resilience”. Common approaches, for example in Australia, the US, and other liberal welfare states (Esping-Anderson), include parenting, pre-school and school programs focused on improving individual skills to diminish the impact of “risks”; while communitarian elements tend to focus on self-help initiatives as the means of individuals accessing skills and support to manage their lives. Although supported through interagency co-ordination and community work, there are often minimal program funds attached for long-term, participatory community development (Fawcett, Goodwin, Meagher and Phillips). The emphasis on individuals, their skills and attitudes and is an outmoded notion of resilience that decontextualises it from cultural contexts, social structures and political processes. As recognised in resilience research, whether a young person, parent or community endures, copes or thrives is dependent on the resources of the community that are accessible and culturally meaningful (Bottrell; Massey, Cameron, Ouelette and Fine; Ungar). According to Dorothy Smith, “texts” as the “foundational media” co-ordinating people, activities and institutional relations, reposition people as institutional subjects. The abstraction of people’s lived situations and their repositioning through generalised and ideological messages is an essential function of “texts”, as governing documents and the co-ordinated social relations and practices flowing from aims and strategies. We see these processes in the policy text of resilience as it articulates the neoliberal ideology of entrepreneurial individualism and repositions young people, families and communities in terms of the capacities relevant to this ideal. In this way, it takes them out of their everyday lives, actual concerns and the social organisation of ruling relations that give rise to them (Smith, Everyday World). Resilience then becomes a basis for

The article is devoted to the study of changes in the trends of global economic development and growth associated with the increasing role of developing countries in research and development (R&D). Currently, developing countries and whole industries, especially in China, India and other developing nations, are moving from catching-up phase to the advanced development, as they have already developed own extensive R&D landscape, created patent reserves, successfully implemented state policies stimulating national high-tech sectors, attracted international capital. There is an ongoing competition between various technologies and countries, industries and companies, universities and startups. All this represents an expanding basis for further global innovation growth. It is shown that the development of knowledge-intensive sectors in the world economy is largely determined by the activities of private companies, consistently increasing its R&D expenditures. The current phase of global innovative development is characterized as of intensified global competition for technology, highly qualified personnel and growing investment in knowledge-intensive sectors. As a result, the path of catching-up development, which was followed by developing countries at the beginning of the XXI century, is replaced by a stage of direct competition and attempts to enter the path of advanced development. The leading role in this struggle is played by private companies. The article emphasizes the importance of R&D in the private sector and the role of the stock market in ensuring sustainable scientific, technological and innovative development on the global scale.

Using a two-country model of endogenous growth with international knowledge spillovers, this study analyzes the welfare consequences of global corporate income tax competition. Although the Nash equilibrium tax rate can be excessively high or low according to the degree of spillover, this does not lead to significant welfare losses. The key to this outcome is that corporate income tax competition for growth maximization, which we consider hypothetically, attains the maximum growth rate despite complex externalities and strategic interactions.

As one of the most important technological sectors in the new wave of industrial revolution, the digital economy is fundamentally reshaping strategic competition between nations. Specifically, the digital economy plays a dual role in shaping national security, economic development, and social stability. On one hand, the digital economy has become the most dynamic and influential engine of global economic growth. On the other hand, the dual-use nature of digital technologies poses serious national security risks in the absence of effective regulatory oversight. As a new economic paradigm, competition in the digital economy not only relies on technological innovation but also involves competition for market dominance and rule-making authority. To gain an advantageous position in global digital economic competition, countries must master core digital technologies, expand global market reach, and build robust digital infrastructures. Moreover, actively participating in the formulation of international digital rules — particularly in data governance and privacy protection — is essential. Only countries that achieve a balance between technology, market, and regulatory power can secure leadership in the global digital economy. The competition in the digital economy, as a key battleground of the new industrial revolution, has driven the rise of technonationalism, which profoundly influences the strategic orientation of national digital economic policies. Digital technology issues are increasingly securitized. With the ongoing development of digital technologies and the rising importance of the digital economy in global economic processes, interactions and competition among nations in the digital domain are becoming a new feature of great power rivalry.