Multinational Manufacturing Firms Research Articles

Knowledge capital and innovation management: Impact of transboundary investment and assimilative capacity

Background: In today’s volatile and highly competitive business environment, the importance of knowledge capital and innovation management for multinational manufacturing firms has been widely recognised by both academia and industry.Aim: This article aims to explore the impact of transboundary investment and assimilative capacity on the association between knowledge capital and innovation management in this specific context.Setting: A total of 217 managers and employees were selected from 19 multinational manufacturing firms listed on the Ghana stock exchange to participate in the survey.Method: Using a theoretical-based association existing research model, data were collected through an online electronic questionnaire survey. The collected data were then analysed using path analysis, utilising SPSS 22.0 and AMOS 24.0 software to test the formulated hypotheses.Results: The study found that an organisation-wide unified system, technological, organisational resource and knowledge capital-enabling structures strongly influence multinational manufacturing firms. Besides, knowledge capital and innovation management have a positive mediating role and a significant impact on multinational manufacturing firms. However, there was no significant impact between knowledge of empirical capital and innovation management.Conclusion: The findings of this study highlight the importance of knowledge capital in enhancing innovation management and emphasise the role of transboundary investment and assimilative capacity in mediating this relationship.Contribution: This research contributes to the theoretical understanding of how knowledge capital and innovation management are interconnected, as well as the relationship between transboundary investment and assimilative capacity, and their respective roles in mediating this relationship.

Occupational health and safety management policies and employee quality of life in developing countries: Insights from Ghana

AbstractThis study explores the formulation and implementation of occupational health and safety management (OHSM) policies by multinational manufacturing firms operating in sub‐Saharan Africa and how they influence employees' quality of life (QOL). We used Afrifoods (pseudonym), a food manufacturing multinational company in Ghana as a case. Gathering qualitative data through interviews, focus group discussions, and archival sources, we found that despite the prevailing institutional deficiencies in sub‐Saharan African countries especially in ensuring the implementation of health and safety policies, food manufacturing multinational companies formulate and implement health and safety policies. And, the high rates of unemployment notwithstanding, employees of manufacturing companies prioritize safe and healthy working environment and consider it the first and most important attribute of their QOL. Employees also consider being able to provide their family needs as well as being recognized for the efforts expended at work as other determinants of their QOL. Multinational firms operating or intending to go into sub‐Saharan Africa should consider health and safety policies as indispensable in their business strategy formulation, if they wish to get the maximum benefit from their employees. Governments must also intensify monitoring to ensure firms' compliance with national health and safety laws at their work sites.

Thematic Analysis of Knowledge Management Practices and Performance of Multinational Manufacturing Firms in Nigeria

Knowledge generation includes all activities which bring to light knowledge which is new, whether to the individual, to the group, or to the world. Multinational manufacturing corporations in South-western, Nigeria have not created responsiveness, acquisition, innovation, protection, integration, and dissemination of information needed to add value to their public image and job creation. This study adopted qualitative research design; eight respondents were interviewed to complement the findings of the questionnaire. Thematic analysis was used to analyze the interview data with the aid of Nvivo, the interview process involved recorded data which were then transcribed based on the responses of each of the participants. Majority of the respondents agree that top management of their company invests much human and financial resource for knowledge management. Top management of multinational manufacturing firms emphasizes the importance of knowledge management to organizational members. Top management of their company participates in and leads knowledge management activities (e.g., knowledge sharing and utilization). The study concluded that Knowledge generation and sharing improves public image and increases job creation through techniques, in form of acquisition of smaller companies. The multinational manufacturing firms’ experiences public image through international standard, corporate social responsibility, and reputation. Multinational manufacturing firms’ policy are designed to boost public image and prestige thereby ensuring sustained product value growth and development. The study recommends that Multinational manufacturing firms need to have an accurate, accessible and knowledge generation and storage to improve public image and increase job creation. Multinational Manufacturing corporations in Nigeria should encourage the creation of knowledge by supporting research activities and encouraging collaborations and teamwork.

Effect of economic indices on the performance of listed multinational manufacturing companies in Nigeria

This paper examines the effect of economic indices on the financial performance of multinational manufacturing firms in Nigeria from 2004-2021. The Expo facto research design was adopted along with ordinary least squares, and other econometric tests to estimate the effect of the predictor variables on the response variable. The population comprises 22 listed multination manufacturing companies and 19 companies were used as the sample size which represents 86 percent of the population. We found that the exchange rate, inflation rate, and government capital expenditure all have a correlation with return on equity (ROE) based on the regression results, but other econometric parameters showed no significant relationships between the explanatory variables and ROE because a 1 percent rise in predictor variables results in a decrease in ROE. This is a clear indication that Nigeria’s economy is bleeding profusely due to the high exchange rate and the economy is still battling inflation coupled with infrastructural challenges. We recommended that to reduce the effect of the exchange rate, the Nigerian government should make the economic environment business-friendly by encouraging mass production and patronage of made-in-Nigeria in order to curtail the increase in the importation and adopt the public-private partnership (PPP) model to harness other mineral resources for export thereby putting cost-push inflation in check and the exchange rate. Also, the electricity supply should be improved to mitigate the costs of production which will also help address the inflation rate.

Overseas Subsidiaries and the Productivity of Two-way Trading Manufacturers in Global Value Chains

Purpose – This research examines the effect of a foreign subsidiary on the productivity growth of a Two-way trading manufacturing firm in Korea. We explore firms engaged in both trade and FDI simultaneously to verify whether participation in GVC as a broad concept is an efficient internationalization strategy to increase the productivity of a Korean manufacturing firm. Design/methodology – Based on the firm-level data by utilizing the Survey of Business Activities from Statistics Korea, we examine the impact of vertically integrated foreign subsidiaries on the productivity of a manufacturing firm that exports and imports simultaneously. Findings – The results show that if a Two-way trading firm establishes one or more overseas subsidiaries, the total factor productivity growth increases. Moreover, the FDI effect is statistically significant when the destination country has an economically close relationship with Korea. However, these effects are disparate depending on the industrial competitiveness or market situation where the subsidiary is located. Nonetheless, the synergy effect resulting from industrial combination is represented in China and the USA only. Originality/value – As the importance of GVC has become more emphasized around the world. In spite of the scarcity of related domestic studies, we explored the effect of multinational manufacturing firms participating in GVC using firm-level data.

A strategic and global manufacturing capacity management optimisation model: A Scenario-based multi-stage stochastic programming approach

Large-scale multinational manufacturing firms often require a significant investment in production capacity and extensive management efforts in strategic planning in an uncertain business environment. In this research we first discuss what decision terms and boundary conditions a holistic capacity management model for the manufacturing industry must contain. To better understand how these decision terms and constraints have been employed by the recent model developers in the area of capacity and resource management modelling for manufacturing, 69 optimisation-based (deterministic and stochastic) models have been carefully selected from 2000 to 2018 for a brief comparative analysis. The results of this comparison shows although applying uncertainty into capacity modelling (in stochastic form) has received a greater deal of attention most recently (since 2010), the existing stochastic models are yet very simplistic, and not all the strategic terms have been employed in the current model developments in the field. This lack of a holistic approach although is evident in deterministic models too, the existing stochastic counterparts proved to include much less decision terms and inclusive constraints, which limits them to a limited applications and may cause sub-optimal solutions. Employing this set of holistic decision terms and boundary conditions, this work develops a scenario-based multi-stage stochastic capacity management model, which is capable of modelling different strategic terms such as capacity level management (slight, medium and large capacity volume adjustment to increase/decrease capacity), location/relocation decisions, merge/decomposition options, and product management (R&D, new product launch, product-to-plant and product-to-market allocation, and product phase-out management). Possibility matrix, production rates, different financial terms and international taxes, inflation rates, machinery depreciation, investment lead-time and product cycle-time are also embedded in the model in order to make it more practical, realistic and sensitive to strategic decisions and scenarios. A step-by-step open-box validation has been followed while designing the model and a holistic black-box validation plan has been designed and employed to widely validate the model. The model then has been verified by deploying a real-scaled case of Toyota Motors UK (TMUK) decision of mothballing one of their production lines in the UK after the global recession in 2010.

Economic Performance of U.S. Multinational Manufacturing Firms: The Linkages between Foreign Direct Investment and Firm Strategy

This research uses an unbalanced date set for a sample of U.S. multinational manufacturing firms to evaluate the effect of the relationships between firm strategic factors (i.e. firm size, marketing intensity and capital intensity) and foreign direct investment (FDI) on firm’s financial performance. Specifically, this study evaluates the direct effect of FDI activity on firm performance, the indirect effect of FDI activity on firm performance, and the moderating effect of FDI activity on the relationships between strategic factors and firm performance. The results suggest that FDI activity plays an important role on the financial strength of U.S. multinational manufacturing firms, and reveal interesting interactions between FDI and some firm strategic factors and their positive effect on financial performance.

Business health characterization: A hybrid regression and support vector machine analysis

Business health prediction is critical and challenging in today's volatile environment, thus demand going beyond classical business failure studies underpinned by rigidities, like paired sampling, a-priori predictors, rigid binary categorization, amongst others.In response, our paper proposes an investor-facing dynamic model for characterizing business health by using a mixed set of techniques, combining both classical and “expert system” methods. Data for constructing the model was obtained from 198 multinational manufacturing and service firms spread over 26 industrial sectors, through Wharton database.The novel 4-stage methodology developed combines a powerful stagewise regression for dynamic predictor selection, a linear regression for modelling expert ratings of firms’ stock value, an SVM model developed from unmatched sample of firms, and finally an SVM-probability model for continuous classification of business health. This hybrid methodology reports comparably higher classification and prediction accuracies (over 0.96 and ∼90%, respectively) and predictor extraction rate (∼96%). It can also objectively identify and constitute new unsought variables to explain and predict behaviour of business subjects.Among other results, such a volatile model build upon a stable methodology can influence business practitioners in a number of ways to monitor and improve financial health. Future research can concentrate on adding a time-variable to the financial model along with more sector-specificity.

Empirical testing of Kotler's high-performance factors to increase sales growth

Purpose and/or objectives: The primary objective of this study is to empirically test Kotler's (2003) high-performance model which ensures an increase in sales growth. More specifically, the study explores the influence of process variables (as measured by marketing strategies), resources management (as measured by the management of labour, materials, machines, information technology and energy) and organisational variables (as measured by TQM and organisational culture) on sales growth in the food, motorcar and high-technology manufacturing industries. Problem investigated Various research studies suggest that the managers of firms are continuously challenged in their attempts to increase their sales (Morre, 2007; Pauwels, Silva Risso, Srinivasan & Hanssens, 2004: 142-143; Gray & Hayes, 2007: 1). Kotler (2003) suggests a model that leads to a high performing business. The question is posed as to whether this model can be used to increase sales growth in all businesses. This study seeks to develop a generic model to increase sales growth across industries by using an adapted version of Kotler's (2003) high-performance model. The study investigates the application of this adapted model on the food, motorcar and high-technology manufacturing industries. Design and/or methodology and/or approach: An empirical causal research design that includes 770 marketing and product development practitioners from multinational food, motorcar and high-technology manufacturing firms, was used in this study. A response rate of 76.1% was achieved as only 571 useable questionnaires were returned. The internal reliability and discriminant validity of the measuring instrument were assessed by the calculation of Cronbach alpha coefficients and the conducting an exploratory factor analysis respectively. Structural Equation Modelling SEM) was used to statistically test the relationships between the independent variables (marketing strategies, resource management, TQM and organisational culture) and the dependent variable (sales growth). Findings and/or implications: As the achievement of increased sales, profits and market share is important to all industries, companies spend large amounts of money on research and development to increase sales and market share. The study's empirical results lead to a proposed model that shows the factors influencing sales growth. These factors include distribution channel development, third-party agreements, e-business, e-savings and a market-oriented organisational culture.

Corporate governance and national culture: a multi‐country study

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to show that corporate governance structures differ significantly across countries. Using agency theory and institutional theory, it examines how ownership structure and national culture influence the size and leadership structure of the corporate boards of multinational firms based in industrial countries.Design/methodology/approachThe hypotheses are tested with data on 399 multinational manufacturing firms based in 15 industrial countries. The authors use ownership concentration, bank control, and state ownership to represent ownership structure. They view institutional structural norms as components of national culture and infer the nature of these norms for governance structure from Hofstede's national culture dimensions.FindingsThe findings show that national culture has a dominant influence on corporate governance structure, and its emphasis is recommended in future cross‐national organizational research.Research limitations/implicationsAlthough the models were successful in explaining MNC board structure, the authors addressed only the effects of ownership structure and national culture. It is expected that these models could be improved by including national political and legal differences and additional national economic variables.Practical implicationsThe findings demonstrate that national cultures of the home countries of MNCs have powerful influences on their governance structures.Originality/valueThis paper links national culture with governance structure.

National Culture and the Composition and Leadership Structure of Boards of Directors

ABSTRACTManuscript Type:EmpiricalResearch Question/Issue:How and to what extent does national culture influence the composition and leadership structure of the boards of directors of multinational firms?Research Findings/Insights:Societal norms about corporate structure are treated as components of national culture. Hofstede's measures of national culture were shown to predict the board composition and leadership structure of firms based in that culture. The hypotheses were tested with data on 399 multinational manufacturing firms based in 15 industrial countries. The results suggest that national culture can have strong effects on corporate governance and should be considered in any transnational study.Theoretical/Academic Implications:The predictive accuracy of the culture variables provides strong support for the argument that norms embedded in a society's culture affect organizational structure, at least at the board level. The results of the study contribute to our understanding of institutional theory in explaining observed variations in corporate board composition and leadership structure across countries. By linking board composition to the cultural environment, institutional theory provides an explicit framework for analyzing variations in board structure across national boundaries.Practitioner/Policy Implications:When considering board composition and leadership structure, it is important to consider national culture norms. The findings of the study also have important implications for multinational firms setting up boards for their subsidiaries in different countries.

The Determinants of Regional Sourcing by Multinational Manufacturing Firms: Evidence from Yorkshire and Humberside, UK

An examination of the factors influencing the extent of regional sourcing by multinational manufacturing firms using data collected by interview from 50 foreign- and UK-owned plants in Yorkshire and Humberside. The evidence shows that higher levels of regional sourcing are observed where certain demand characteristics coincide with strengths in the supply potential of the region. A 'corporate filter' reduces regional sourcing. There were no differences in regional sourcing between foreign- and UK-owned multinationals. The findings identify barriers to policy aspirations of increased regional sourcing and emphasize that any policy initiatives should target the plants of domestic, as well as foreign, multinational enterprises (MNE).

The Impact of Freer Markets and Trade on Agri‐Food Marketing Policy and Government Institutions: Discussion

nated sixty years of government programs that attempted to stabilize farm income and farm prices. Internationally, NAFTA and GATT are opening U.S. markets to increased competition. As a result, the potential for an impact on U.S. agricultural marketing policy and government institutions related to agriculture is a real possibility. Policy to facilitate marketing of farm commodities is more developed in the United States than in most economies. Agricultural development placed commodity marketing beyond the business infrastructure. Commercial and private market institutions were less developed, requiring a more formal and more developed set of public arrangements. The continental scope of markets included and involved major patterns of interregional competition. Instruments for the public management of a broad range of marketing issues were developed in U.S. policy facilitating farm commodity marketing. The Freedom to Farm bill of 1996, the establishment of NAFTA and GATT/WTO, the development of large multinational food manufacturing firms, and technological change all are acting to restructure the food and agricultural markets and marketing patterns. These developments raise important questions about needed changes in marketing policies to enhance competitiveness and societal well-being as these changes unfold. Hamm, Caswell, and Thompson and Sonka develop different aspects of the possible changes that might take place in marketing policies. I will address each paper individually. Hamm indicates at least four factors that are

Assessing the Shift in Global Market Share of US Multinationals

Based on the US Department of Commerce′s survey data of US direct investment abroad for 1977 and 1985, this study examines the shift in global market share of US multinational manufacturing firms for the 1977‐1985 period. Consolidated global market shares of US multinationals for 26 industries are estimated for 1977 and 1985. The shift in their global market share is analysed from a perspective of three alternative, if not independent, strategic thrusts: namely, home market orientation, export orientation, and foreign production orientation. Contrary to the commonly stated claim that the competitiveness of US manufacturing firms has been declining, findings of this study indicate that, on average, US manufacturing multinationals have maintained global market share on a consolidated basis fairly well.

Use of Minority and 50–50 Joint Ventures by United States Multinationals During the 1970s: The Interaction of Host Country Policies Corporate Strategies

This article examines geographical, sectoral, and corporate trends in the use of minority and 50-50 joint ventures by U.S. multinational manufacturing and mining firms in less developed countries (LDCs) during the 1970s. It is based primarily on data found in the Harvard Multinational Enterprise Data Base, as updated through the mid-1970s, and supplemented with corporate performance data for the 1975-1980 period from a new international Competitive Analysis (ICA) database developed with support from the General Electric Foundation.

Sourcing Strategies of European and Japanese Multinationals: A Comparison

Based on a typology of sourcing strategies, this study identifies various sourcing patterns adopted by European and Japanese multinational manufacturing firms in serving the U.S. market. The study has found that the product's market performance is not at all related to its life–cycle stage in world trade or to production location, but is positively related to the internal components sourcing and negatively related to the product adaptation. The findings strongly support Levitt's call for a global product.

Does Concessionary Aid Lead to Higher Investment Rates in Low-Income Countries?

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Market servicing by multinational manufacturing firms: Exporting versus foreign production

AbstractThe foreign market servicing behaviour of multinational manufacturing firms evolves over time as a result of the firms' reaction to internal and external pressures. The interplay of immobile ‘location factors’ with internal ‘ownership factors’ under the control of individual enterprises exercises a powerful influence on the choice between exporting and foreign investment. Plant economies of scale encourage exporting, whilst firm level economies of scale, such as the internalization of the fruits of research, may predispose the firm towards foreign investment. Socio‐political and cultural elements arising particularly from the nationality of ownership of the firm also influence market servicing strategy.