Ron Edwards

How smaller born-global firms use networks and alliances to overcome constraints to rapid internationalization

The authors identify the following key constraints that smaller born-global firms face: lack of economies of scale, lack of resources (financial and knowledge), and aversion to risk taking. The authors explore how such firms overcome these constraints by using technology to achieve competitive advantage and by networking competencies to develop a range of alliances and collaborative partnerships. Thus, the article focuses on a particular aspect of business-to-business marketing, namely, how small firms achieve rapid growth internationally through alliances with suppliers, distributors, and joint-venture partners and how these relationships change over time to meet the changing needs of the partners.

Internationalisation of Business Education: Meaning and implementation

The internationalisation of business has been one of the most prominent features of the second half of the twentieth century, with its pace and breadth touching all elements of the value-adding network. In this environment, the higher education sector has been revising its aims and objectives to incorporate an international dimension to the skills and knowledge development of students. However, interpretation of the educational challenges posed by internationalisation in the form of guidelines that specify how the curriculum might be internationalised, is in its infancy. Despite early efforts, little work has been done to translate this trend into a developmental overview of curriculum delivery. This paper begins by synthesising the literature regarding globalisation, curriculum internationalisation and student learning in higher education. It seeks to bridge the gap between the aims of curriculum internationalisation and the subject curriculum. It applies well-accepted educational principles to the task by presenting a three-stage typology of business curriculum internationalisation. These stages are international awareness, international competence and international expertise. Directions for further research are also provided.

Internationalizing the curriculum: the implementation experience in a Faculty of Business and Economics

Curriculum internationalization is a strategy adopted by many universities as they prepare their graduates for employment in the global economy. This paper is a case study of the organizational change involved in one institutions (Monash University, Melbourne, Australia) attempts to implement curriculum internationalization in the foundation subjects in the six core business disciplines. The Faculty of Business and Economics at Monash, in encompassing five Australian and two offshore campuses and three families of degrees, presents both an opportunity and a challenge in implementing curricula change. The multicampus structure provides the opportunity, while the challenge is the number and geographic dispersion of the teaching staff, along with differing academic cultures. In this paper, we discuss organizational change as it accompanies the curriculum internationalization process, and the responses of the discipline‐based teams to the curriculum internationalization objective. We identify significant staff and faculty issues requiring consideration in the change that accompanies curriculum development, such as the powerful effect of the traditional notion of academic autonomy, and the need for continued resources to support the changes.

The human side of introducing total quality management

The aim of this paper is to explore the reasons why businesses, having adopted total quality management (TQM), fail to sustain their reforms over time. In order to gain insights into the pressures that, despite good intentions, can make full implementation of TQM problematic, a case study approach is used. The research indicates that a lack of attention to the human element of change, especially inconsistent senior management support, a lack of involvement of supervisors and middle managers in planning for change, and lack of attention to groups of staff affected negatively by the changes, explain why businesses may face difficulty sustaining reform programs.

Outsourcing University Degrees: Implications for Quality Control.

Education institutions worldwide have and continue to seek opportunities to spread their offerings abroad. While the provision of courses to students located overseas through partner institutions has many advantages, it raises questions about quality control that are not as applicable to other forms of international education. This paper uses a transaction cost approach to analyse quality control issues. Australian University Quality Agency reports supply the data. The paper concludes that there is a risk of opportunism and bounded rationality in license arrangements, thus universities need to monitor the contracts and their implementation very carefully. Specifically, systems are required to ensure equivalence of entry, teaching and assessment standards, the financial viability of the partners and the accuracy of their marketing material.

Internationalisation of Education: A Business Perspective

Australian schools and universities are increasingly becoming involved in earning revenue from foreign students. This process is strongly associated with the broader concept of ‘internationalisation of education’. To explore the implications of educational institutions, mainly universities, entering the commercial sphere, various models of internationalisation in the international business literature are examined. This approach shows that universities face a range of risks and opportunities. Paramount is the potential for universities, under competitive pressure, to aim to produce global graduates with little accommodation of local and national educational priorities.

Computational Intelligence to Model the Export Behavior of Multinational Corporation Subsidiaries in Malaysia

The academic literature suggests that the extent of exporting by multinational corporation subsidiaries (MCSs) depends on their strategic role in the multinational corporation (MNC), their age and size, and whether their products are targeted at niche or commodity markets. In particular, it is claimed that MNCs seek to invest in a particular country if its resources adopt a vertically integrated structure, if the country grants regional or global sales mandates to their subsidiaries, or if it has been established in a host market for a longer time and is thus more likely to promote subsidiary exports. Our aim in this article is to model the complex export pattern behavior of multinational corporation subsidiaries in Malaysia using a Takagi–Sugeno fuzzy inference system. The proposed fuzzy inference system (FIS) is optimized by using neural network learning and evolutionary computation. Empirical results clearly show that the proposed approach could model the export behavior reasonably well compared to a direct neural network approach.

Service embeddedness and its role in a firm’s internationalisation process: An Australian perspective

Purpose – Perceived differences in the composition of goods and services forms the basis of a significant degree of analysis of the firm internationalisation process. In particular, product inseparability is highlighted as a distinguishing feature of service offerings and purports to explain the different approaches to internationalisation strategy adopted by service firms. The research, however, proposes that the division of goods and services into distinct products is outmoded. Rather, it is important to understand the extent of service components that embody, or are embedded in, a product offering. The authors argue that this “service embeddedness” influences the process by which a firm internationalises. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach – Based on ten case studies of Australian international firms, this paper examines the impact of service embeddedness on a firm’s internationalisation process. Findings – The research underlines that firms approach internationalisatio...

Training-Based Pay Scales: Lessons From The Shop Floor

Abstract Training-based career paths represented an important element of award restructuring, a major innovation in the Australian wage fixation system in the late 1980s. Under this approach skill development, achieved through the introduction of training-based pay points in awards, was designed to provide incentives for productivity growth. However, relatively few detailed evaluations of this reform have been caried out at the workplace level. In the two case studies reported in this paper, training regimes proved to be costly to develop and deliver. Opposition from supervisors and trades people, who were disadvantaged by the reforms, made implementation difficult. The lesson for the two case study companies, clearly relevant to enterprise bargaining in the early twenty-first century, is that cost-benefit analysis of each investment in training must be carried out and that, if productivity growth is to result, the needs of the firm as well as those of employees must be considered.

Production Teams: A New Management Philosophy or Another Experiment?

Abstract This paper examines the introduction of team-based production systems in two Australian manufacturing facilities, each being small parts of much larger global concerns. Using a longitudinal case study approach, it examines a range of problems experienced in this process and assesses the degree to which the reform ‘took root’ in the firms management systems. It concludes that despite genuine intensions to implement fundamental change in management style, the teams concept proved to be more like a temporary experiment than a new management paradigm.