Overview
March 22-23, 2002
Main Campus, Temple University
This research forum is primarily for academics, but students and
business professionals are also invited to participate.
Sponsored by The Institute of Global Management Studies (IGMS)
at The Fox School of Business and Management, Temple University
Chairs: Masaaki (Mike) Kotabe and Ram Mudambi
Globalization has led to a spectacular rise in the international
exchange of goods and services. In many countries international
trade and foreign direct investment have led to unprecedented wealth
creation, through such means as high value employment opportunities
and the transfer of technology to local producers and buyers.
Growing international competition has multiplied the number of
viable locations for business facilities. Multinational firms compare
and evaluate different locations in different countries on the basis
of their expected profitability. If a location loses its competitiveness,
firms move their operations, together with their capital and technical
and organizational knowledge to locations where the conditions for
business are more favorable.
Such international mobility of firms is increasing. Legal, political
and administrative systems tend to be the internationally immobile
framework that determines the international attractiveness of a
location. The international mobility of labor varies across industries
and skill levels, though in general, it may be considered to be
relatively immobile.
Institutions affect the capacity of firms to interact and therefore
affect the relative transaction and coordination costs of production
and innovation. To a considerable extent, such an internationally
competitive environment also embodies competition between institutional
systems: some of them have proved successful in achieving growth
by promoting competition and openness; others have lost out and
are beginning to emulate the institutions of the successful countries.
However, these attempts often meet with considerable domestic resistance.
Openness can be perceived as weakening the power of national groups
that influence governments to interfere with international trade,
capital flows, migration and technological exchange. This reduces
competition and can also be a source of international conflict and
economic crisis. Confronted with this threat, business scholars
have questioned the possibility of large-scale institutional change
in the present world economic environment.
Skeptics claim that many proposed plans are politically unrealistic,
technically infeasible or unlikely to yield significant improvements.
However, large institutional changes only seem impossible until
they happen. Not so long ago, European Monetary Union appeared to
be no more likely than the breakup of the Soviet empire or the reunification
of Germany. The recent past indicates that the seemingly impossible
can become real with surprising speed.
The thematic coverage of the conference can be viewed along two
dimensions - approach and institutional domain. Beginning with a
wide-ranging overview, the conference encompasses sessions adopting
the approaches of theory, policy as well as a case study focus on
specific issues. Within these approaches, political, legal and trade-related
institutions are analyzed.
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