The impact of foreign R&D activities on the MNC’s performance at home: evidence from the case of Swiss manufacturing firms

Abstract

The paper aims to contribute to the renaissance of a manufacturing oriented view of economic system. It begins by providing a critical review of the main turning points in the manufacturing versus services debate evaluating the analytical and empirical arguments deployed in favour of each view. It goes on to describe the profound transformations in industrial systems and the redistribution of manufacturing production across countries over the last two decades which challenge some of the assumptions on which the service oriented view is built. This section concludes by reviewing old and new rationales supporting a manufacturing oriented view. The second part of the paper addresses the importance of certain industries, including machine tools to generate industrial capabilitiy and why technological linkages stemming from manufacturing industries more generally are key enablers of a country's systemic capacity to generate technological change. Finally the negative consequences of de-linking manufacturing production from services (off-shoring) are explored highlighting the systematic disruption of the bundle of technological linkages constituting the industrial commons.

Who wins the race for knowledge-based competitiveness? Comparing European and North American FDI patterns

“…Consistently, North American MNCs might benefit the most from "reverse knowledge transfer" (RKT) from foreign affiliates to parent companies, thanks to their greater involvement in R&D FDIs in emerging countries that are endowed with high quality human capital and technical competencies. In fact, MNCs investing in these regions are likely to be better placed at increasing their expertise and innovation capacity, hence enriching the available technologies of the home country and enhancing firms' long-term competitiveness (Ambos et al, 2006;Belderbos et al, 2015;Griffith et al, 2006;Hamida & Piscitello, 2013;Rabbiosi & Santangelo, 2013).…”

Intra-firm Global R&D Networks of US IT MNCs as a Source of Competitiveness: Focusing on the Polar Comparison of Google, IBM and Canon

“…It is believed that the revitalization of US IT companies has been achieved by building a global open network in the age of open innovation, in which cooperative relationships with other unaffiliated companies are valued, as shown in the increase in open source software (Baldwin & von Hippel, 2011). However, the global network for knowledge creation and transfer, which has contributed to strengthening international competitiveness of certain companies, has also been established not only externally with unaffiliated companies but also internally in the form of intra-firm transaction of company resources (Lamia & Piscitello, 2013;Hayashi & Nakayama, 2020).…”