Assessing International Allocation Strategies

Abstract

Allocating the operations of multinational enterprises to geographic locations where performance can be optimized has become an important strategic issue. In view of the continuing growth of international trade and foreign direct investment, managers need systematic procedures to determine global allocation strategies. Available frameworks on global business strategy are typically abstract and generalized, making them less suited for the development of tailor‐made allocation strategies. Quantitative allocation models in operations research tend to be biased towards optimizing mathematical algorithms, making them less suited to support managerial decision making. This paper bridges the gap between generic strategy frameworks and highly quantitative operations research models by presenting a scanning tool to support decision making on strategic allocation issues. An important feature of this tool is to systematically filter available data, intended to quality and quantify critical product, process and market characteristics for specific product classes. The scanning tool has been applied in two cases, involving allocation decisions of a European multinational in the fast moving consumer goods industry.

A Supply Chain Manager Selection Methodology: Empirical Test and Suggested Application

“…Administering a G hurdle to supply chain candidates allows the firm to immediately and cost effectively eliminate a large portion of less effective applicants. Processing information efficiently and effectively is essential for the development of supply chain management service competencies (Vos and van der Berg 1996).…”

International trade and investment: A review and research agenda

“…Crystal (1999) also mentioned that productivity differs in manufacturing and service sectors in foreign competition contexts. There is a scope in highly competitive industries where export competition can open up the horizons for the allocation of global strategies (Vos & Van Den Berg, 1996). In the given respect, Belderbos and Sleuwaegen (2005) defined three configurations and analyzed that firms with weaker competitive products with superior manufacturing technology choose regional configuration, technology‐driven firms facing global competitive threats tend to go towards plant configuration, and firms holding a stronger competitive position choose to go for global configurations, as mentioned in Table 5.…”

“…Several researchers have investigated various facets of international trade and investment. Contemporary literature on various aspects of international trade and investment is available, like globalization and investment (Burgoon & Raess, 2011; Rock et al., 2009), the role of foreign direct investment (FDI) in developing economies (Branstetter & Feenstra, 2002; Contractor et al., 2021), the strategic significance of international trade (Brandwayn, 1993; Shi et al., 2022), export competition and productivity (Razin et al., 2003; Vos & Van Den Berg, 1996), international cooperation among developing nations (Che et al., 2015; Kleinberg & Fordham, 2010), and risk assessment (Bae & Elkamhi, 2021; Liu et al, 2017, ). With the onset of the COVID 19 pandemic in 2020, the impact on international trade and investment was observed to be similar to that of the 2008−2009 financial crisis and significantly worse than that of the recession of 2015 (UNCTAD, 2022b), which has prompted more research endeavors focused on investigating this particular domain.…”

Proposal of a global product development strategy assessment tool and its application in the Italian industrial context

“…• external factors: context characteristics (Yang and Coe, 2009), types of governance (Boehe, 2008), operational allocation (Vos and van den Berg, 1996), standards, laws and local rules (Gunzenhauser and Bongulielmi, 2008) • internal factors: native country, product management group, prevailing culture and practices of management and organisation (Gerybadze and Reger, 1999), commitment of management, modularity of products/processes, competencies, intellectual property, data quality, infrastructures and governance (Eppinger and Chitkara, 2006;Lasserre, 2007).…”