Marcus Matthias Keupp

The Past and the Future of International Entrepreneurship: A Review and Suggestions for Developing the Field

In this article, the authors analyze the field of international entrepreneurship (IE), which is in desperate need of further theory development. They study the field of IE since its inception by offering a comprehensive review of 179 articles on IE published in 16 journals over 14 years, covering the academic disciplines of strategic management, international business, entrepreneurship, and technology and innovation management. From a systematic content analysis of this literature, the authors develop an organizing framework to analyze the fields current status. On the basis of this analysis, the authors can identify theoretical inconsistencies, conflicting predictions, and knowledge gaps that all forestall the further development of IE research. They then develop directions for future research that can help to overcome these obstacles and promote future theory development.

Determinants and Archetype Users of Open Innovation

Extant research on open innovation (OI) offers no systematic insight of how and why firms differ regarding the extent to which they conduct OI activities. Whereas past theoretical contributions have focused on explaining the externalisation of R&D activities as a result of firm-external factors, we focus on explaining this externalisation as a result of firm-internal weaknesses, specifically, impediments to innovation. Using the exploration–exploitation dichotomy as our theoretical framework, we develop hypotheses on how impediments to innovation influence the breadth and depth of OI. We then test these hypotheses by using an exceptionally large and detailed data set to estimate population-averaged panel models. Our results provide support for most of the hypothesised relationships. Further, they allow to identify four ‘archetypes’ of firms that differ significantly regarding the breadth and depth of OI and the importance of impediments. Finally, we discuss the significance of these findings for both academics and managers.

The Strategic Management of Innovation: A Systematic Review and Paths for Future Research

Strategic management scholars have long emphasized the importance of innovation for a firms competitive advantage and performance. However, the current state of knowledge about the strategic management of innovation is characterized by conflicting theoretical predictions, persisting knowledge gaps and theoretical inconsistencies. Adopting a ‘systematic’ approach to reviewing the literature, this paper combines different quantitative methods – co‐word analysis, cluster analysis and frequency analysis – to review 342 articles on the strategic management of innovation published in seven journals from 1992 to 2010. On the basis of these analyses, suggestions are developed for future research which could help to promote future theory development and provide relevant material for policy decisions that managers and executives have to make when they manage innovation.

How Managers Protect Intellectual Property Rights in China Using De Facto Strategies

Foreign firms trying to protect their intellectual property rights (IPRs) in emerging economies are suffering real pressures because these economies usually offer little or no enforcement of IPR. Foreign firms therefore have to resort to approaches unlike those they use in developed countries. This paper explores what managers of foreign firms in China have already tried in their efforts to achieve effective IPR protection - specifically, they have crafted de facto strategies that can protect IPR without using Chinas legal system or engaging in lawsuits against imitators. These strategies work, and this paper explains how and why, thus offering a potential template for IPR protection in other economies with weak appropriability systems.

The Longitudinal Impact of Enterprise System Users’ Pre-Adoption Expectations and Organizational Support on Post-Adoption Proficient Usage

Although enterprise systems (ES) are ubiquitous, many firms report less than stellar payoffs from these costly investments, with underutilization often attributed to failures in the implementation process. Unfortunately, research has not provided sufficient insights into these failures, in part because it has focused on actual usage, as opposed to proficient usage, as the benchmark for successful implementation. Moreover, research has not generally examined how the adoption process unfolds over time, thus overlooking potential underlying mechanisms that may help explain how adopters achieve proficiency. To begin addressing these shortcomings, we study how adopters’ pre-adoption expectations, enacted over time, can influence their post-adoption proficiency, by shaping how and why they spend time using the system during the adoption period. We analyzed time-lagged survey data from 153 financial analysts, required to adopt new ES-based software, at a multinational bank. We found that adopters who hold pre-adoption expectations reflecting greater internal and external motives to adopt the system as well as systematically integrate it into their work routines are more apt to use the system in ways that enhance their cumulative knowledge of it, and subsequently develop higher levels of proficiency post-adoption. Moreover, greater organizational support enhanced the impact of adopters’ expectations on proficiency, except when their actual use is low in which case organizational support had an adverse effect.

The internationalisation of research and development in Swiss and German Born Globals: survey and case study evidence

While IE literature neglects international innovative activities of Born Globals (BGs), literature on international innovation management focuses on large firms only. We investigate into this gap, proposing a framework to understand where and why BGs engage in such activities. We operationalise and test this framework with both quantitative and qualitative data. Focusing on the Chinese business environment and resorting to an organisational learning and competitive advantage perspective, we show that the basic motivation for the conduct of international innovatory activities is independent of firm size yet particularly attractive for BGs to generate and sustain competitive advantage on an international basis.

The internationalisation of Western firms' R&D in China

During the last ten years, 400 out of the Fortune Top 500 have established at least one R&D unit in China. We investigate into this highly relevant phenomenon that seems to contradict existing theory on international R&D. We propose that there is a missing link in theory, developing this link by introducing the concept of multiplicative capacity in analogy to Cohen and Levinthals absorptive capacity. We test our propositions by using data from a survey we did on Western firms R&D activities in China. Results show a good applicability of our concept and its relations to the competitive advantage theory.

Globales Management von Innovation

Forschungs- und Entwicklungsprozesse technologieintensiver Unternehmen sind in zunehmendem Masse global ausgerichtet. Wahrend die Internationalisierung anderer Funktionsbereiche, wie Vertrieb, Produktion und Beschaffung bereits eine langere Historie aufweist, ist die Globalisierung von Innovation ein jungeres Phanomen, welches erst mit neueren Informations- und Kommunikationstechnologien effektiv wurde. Die Pioniere der F&E-Internationalisierung sind technologieintensive Unternehmen, die in kleinen Heimatmarkten und mit begrenzten F&E-Ressourcen im Stammland konfrontiert waren. Heute sind bei den weltweiten Patentanmeldungen die USA, Japan und die Mitgliedsstaaten der EU fuhrend (vgl. OECD 2004).

The potential of container vessel operation on the Northern Sea Route: Nautical, regulatory, and operative issues

Extant literature dealing with operative and economic aspects of container shipping in the Northern Sea Route (NSR) has concentrated on the analysis of a particular vessel type. Table 1 demonstrates that this type corresponds to a small, ice-classed container ship such as the COSCO Yong Sheng, whose voyage from Dalian to Rotterdam in August, 2013, constituted one of the first known container shipping operations by way of the NSR.

How do foreign R&D units in China manage their Chinese R&D staff? An empirical exploration

Whereas extant literature has explored the question of why foreign R&D is present in China, we still know almost nothing about how these R&D operations are managed. This applies specifically to the management of Chinese R&D staff who conventionally are not known for their respect of foreign firms’ intellectual property rights (IPR). However, foreign R&D units in China are likely to have developed management techniques to deal with such problems. n nIn this paper, we engage in qualitative and quantitative exploration of how foreign R&D units in China manage their Chinese R&D staff. For exploration we develop a conceptual framework on the basis of agency theory and the theory of trusted relationships. Our findings show that those R&D units that have developed adequate measures to manage their Chinese R&D staff have succeeded in making Chinese employees loyal to the R&D unit. These results have important implications for both practitioners and future empirical research.