Innovative Activities Of Multinational Enterprises In Austria

This book contributes to ongoing policy discussions on the internationalisation of innovation. Foreign-owned enterprises account for a rising share of national innovation expenditures and have become key actors in the national innovation systems of almost all OECD countries. Their new roles give rise to both hopes and concerns. The author examines the innovative activities of foreign-owned enterprises in Austria, a country with a huge share of overseas R&D investment. Empirical analysis reveals that foreign-owned enterprises exhibit a superior innovation performance compared to domestically owned enterprises. The performance differences, however, can be explained by factors such as firm size, sectoral affiliation, and export intensity, rather than by the ownership status. With respect to policy, the results neither confirm fears that foreign ownership could lead to an erosion of innovative activity in the host country, nor do they provide arguments for specific incentives to attract foreign-owned enterprises. Innovation policy should instead try to foster innovative capabilities of both foreign-owned and domestically owned enterprises.

Due to increasing complexity in new product development multi-organization, multi-team (MOMT) projects are becoming more common. They are formed in different industries like computer, automotive, aircraft, and space research. Since many of these projects still fail, more knowledge on the influences on performance in and of such projects is required in order to be able to manage them successfully. The author examines the influences of communication within and between teams on team and project performance, which in turn depends on applied design principles that structure and facilitate that information flow. Quantitative and qualitative analyses reveal that there are differential relations on the team and project level as well as for effectiveness and efficiency. Managerial implications are given of how to structure MOMT projects and the design problem-solving process and thereby facilitate the information flow within and between teams in order to make the teams and projects successful.

The crucial actors of a global knowledge-based economy are multinational enterprises (MNEs). MNEs depend on the embeddedness in an institutional framework; their competitive advantage depends on the cross-border utilisation of regional and national capabilities. The innovativeness of a company is therefore based also on regional innovation systems. Multinational Enterprises and Innovation contributes to a better understanding of the interconnectedness between organisational and regional learning. On the basis of case studies in Germany and France, this volume investigates how MNEs cope with technical, economic and institutional uncertainties by drawing upon the complementary strengths of organisational and regional networks in national and European contexts. The book links two theoretical debates which are currently still largely disconnected -- the debate on learning processes in MNEs and the debate on the regional bases of innovativeness and competitiveness -- answering the question of how the internationalisation of R&D is reconciled with regional competences.

Countries adopt policies that attract foreign multinationals, stimulate industrial clustering and foster innovation. This book links these topical issues, examining activities of multinational enterprises alongside the efficiency, appropriateness and sufficiency of such policies. With new empirical evidence, it makes practical proposals throughout.

Over the past two decades, Austria has become one of the most R&D intensive economies among OECD countries and in the world, dedicating 3.1% of its GDP on R&D in 2016, the second highest figure in the European Union. To fully harness this R&D capacity, Austrian innovation policy needs to put a ...

In the corporate underground, creative intrapreneurs produce ideas autonomously and without the consent of management. Such informal activity frequently 'corrects' and compensates for the weaknesses of formal organizational systems. The corporate underground is an adjusting element for a number of organizational paradoxes. This imposes a certain legitimacy on covert activities such as bootlegging and constructive deviance. It reflects a basic axiom of the evolutionary perspective: change and creativity are reliant upon elements of redundancy, waste and inefficiency.With contributions from 16 leading experts in this field, the book offers a comprehensive picture of the nature of covert creativity for theory, research and practice. The chapters cover a wide range of facets of underground activity, including basic information, the sensitive transition from underground to formal disclosure at an organization, and psychological factors. This book is a valuable compendium for academics and practitioners interested in R&D and innovation. Management seeking to better manage their innovative capabilities in their companies will also benefit from this book.

Applied Industrial Organization offers a perspective on the richness of empirical industrial organization studies. Some papers derive empirical implications from theoretical models, but other papers start from empirical evidence and construct a theory. Three major topics are explored: the role of innovation, the evolution of market structure and firms, and the determinations of performance. As the central force of market economies, innovation is the essence of competition and results in changes to market structures. Other forces driving the evolution of markets and firms are also analyzed. Finally, the determinants of profitability are investigated. In particular, characteristics such as price flexibility, successful lenders and monopoly regulation are examined. Contributors include F.M. Scherer, Paul Geroski, John Hey, David Audretsch, Manfred Neumann, among others.

The Austrian higher education system has consistently recognised the need to become more entrepreneurial and innovative with a view to supporting the economic, social and cultural development of the country and its regions. Over the past decades, the government has been implementing a broad reform agenda to provide strategic funding, diversify higher education institutions (HEIs) and promote an allocation of students that improves the quality of services and empowers them vis à vis the future of work and society. This review illustrates policy actions promoting the development of entrepreneurial and innovative activities in the Higher Education System and individual HEIs.