In recent years, a number of firms from Asia and Latin America have been internationalizing their businesses to access new markets and to acquire new technology. This follows similar attempts only a few years earlier by leading firms from countries such as Korea and Taiwan. Much research has gone during the last two decades into understanding the success of Korean and Taiwanese firms. In this paper we carry out a case study of the Haier group—one of the most promising global enterprises emerging out of mainland China. We explain the need for recognizing some important differences in the early stages of growth between emerging MNCs today and MNCs from Korea and Taiwan. Unlike firms from the latter countries, globalizing firms of recent times during their early years of existence had little incentives to improve their technological competence. Furthermore, they generally had a one-off relationship with international technology suppliers that further prevented the regular upgrading of their technological base. Nevertheless these firms have shown themselves to be adept in facing up to the challenges of globalization by adopting innovative technological and business strategies. What are the distinctive features of these strategies? How useful are these strategies for long-run growth? What lessons can other firms and governments learn from these experiences? We hope to offer some preliminary answers to these important questions. Case studies like ours can also contribute towards developing newer frameworks for a better understanding of the internationalization of businesses in modern times.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by United Nations University, Maastricht Economic and social Research and training centre on Innovation and Technology in its series UNU-MERIT Working Paper Series with number
052.
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.: