The effects of strategic order of entry on firms' performance have long been an issue in many areas of study. Past research efforts, however, have been concentrated mostly on first mover or early entrant advantages. To contribute to developing a theory of latecomer strategies, the authors investigate how latecomers compete successfully or even leapfrog early movers. They review previous studies on early mover advantages and disadvantages, and group the sources of such advantages or disadvantages into three areas: the firm, its market, and its competitors. The theoretical focus is how a firm converts the opportunities stemming from entry order into performance. The authors seek to confirm and extend relevant theories by examining how late entrants have caught up with incumbent industry leaders in the global semiconductor industry. On the basis of in-depth case analysis of three Japanese and three Korean semiconductor companies, they identify and categorize successful latecomer strategies into two types: strategies for overcoming latecomer disadvantages and strategies for utilizing latecomer advantages. Focusing, thin margin or loss bearing, and volume building form the essence of strategies for overcoming disadvantages, whereas odd timing, time compression, human-embodied technology transfer, benchmarking, technological leapfrogging, and resource leveraging form the essence of strategies for utilizing advantages. Because many companies in Asia have had to face the reality of being latecomers, the Asian perspectives are particularly useful for studying and explicating latecomer strategies.

No abstract

This paper examines the trends and determinants of South Korean outward foreign direct investment (FDI) and the extent to which location decisions in a single country need to be nested within the general theory of the multinational firm. In a conceptual framework analysis, the patterns of South Korean outward FDI exhibit several different types of motivations for going abroad. We empirically examine the important factors for the location decisions of South Korean outward FDI, considering host countries at very different stages of economic development. In line with this objective, we test the determinants of South Korean outward FDI using macroeconomic factors of host countries. Thus, we both identify several factors that affect such trends and develop hypotheses that could explain the phenomenon generically. We test our hypotheses using official South Korean outward FDI data collected from 1994 to 2005. Several distinctive features correspond to the behaviour of South Korean multinational firms. As a result, we find that the dynamic effects of economic development have influenced the changing character of outward FDI.

Staffing policies for foreign affiliates, Global integration, Centralization of decision-making, Host country experience, Japanese MNCs,

The primary purpose of this study is to explore the antecedents of interorganizational trust within an international joint venture (IJV) context. In exploring how interorganizational trust is developed during the course of managing IJVs, we will look at fair action as a key factor in building interorganizational trust. Based on the existing literature, we propose the fair joint decision‐making process, cultural adaptation and the fair distribution of bargaining power as being antecedents of interorganizational trust within the IJV context. After developing hypotheses about the relationships between these three antecedents and interorganizational trust as well as causal relations between the antecedents, an empirical study is conducted using a sample comprised of 109 IJVs located in Korea. The findings show that perceived fairness in the joint decision‐making process and the distribution of bargaining power directly affects trust‐building between IJV participants; and also reveal the indirect effects of cultural adaptation on the development of interorganizational trust.