No abstract

We use panel data on ISO 9000 quality certification in 85 countries between 1993 and 1998 to better understand the cross-national diffusion of an organizational practice. Following neoinstitutional theory, we focus on the coercive, normative, and mimetic effects that result from the exposure of firms in a given country to a powerful source of critical resources, a common pool of relevant technical knowledge, and the experiences of firms located in other countries. We use social network theory to develop a systematic conceptual understanding of how firms located in different countries influence each other's rates of adoption as a result of cohesive and equivalent network relationships. Regression results provide support for our predictions that states and foreign multinationals are the key actors responsible for coercive isomorphism, cohesive trade relationships between countries generate coercive and normative effects, and role-equivalent trade relationships result in learning-based and competitive imitation.

The traditional American model of multinational enterprise (MNE), characterized by foreign direct investment (FDI) aimed at exploiting firm-specific capabilities developed at home and a gradual countryby-country approach of internationalization, dominated the global economy during much of the postWorld War II period. In the last two decades, however, new MNEs from emerging, upper-middle-income, or oil-rich countries have followed completely different patterns of international expansion. In this paper we analyze the processes through which these firms became MNEs and to what extent we need a new theory to explain their international growth.

No abstract

The sociological, economic, political and anthropological literatures are devoting increasing attention to globalization. This chapter discusses the various connotations of the term and puts it in historical perspective. Existing theoretical and empirical research on globalization is organized around five key issues or questions: is it really happening, does it produce convergence, does it undermine the authority of nation-states, is globality different from modernity, and is a global culture in the making? A plea is made for a comparative sociology of globalization that is sensitive to local variations and to how agency, interest and resistance mediate in the relationship between globalization causes and outcomes.Keywords: Globalization; Convergence; Nation-State; Modernity; Global Culture. 2 The bulk of the earth must not only be spherical, but not large in comparison with the size of other stars.-Aristotle (384-322 BC), as quoted by Dreyer (1953:118).Globalization is one of the most contested topics in the social sciences. Observers and theorists of globalization have variously argued that the rapid increase in cross-border economic, social, technological and cultural exchange is civilizing, destructive or feeble, to Question (1996), and Robert Wade's " Globalization and Its Limits" (1996).In this chapter I first define globalization and its timing. Then, I review the main contributions of the various social sciences to research on globalization, with an emphasis on sociological perspectives. I organize the discussion and critique around five key debates or questions: is globalization really happening, does it produce convergence, does it undermine 3 the authority of nation-states, is globality different from modernity, and is a global culture in the making? WHAT IS GLOBALIZATION?Intuitively, globalization is a process fueled by, and resulting in, increasing cross-border flows of goods, services, money, people, information, and culture (Held et al. 1999:16).Sociologist Anthony Giddens (1990:64; 1991:21) proposes to regard globalization as a decoupling or "distanciation" between space and time, while geographer David Harvey (1989) and political scientist James Mittelman (1996) observe that globalization entails a 1999:429-431; Petrella 1996:63-66; Waters 1995:63).Globalization, however, is also an ideology with multiple meanings and lineages. As Cox (1996) has observed, sometimes it appears loosely associated with neo-liberalism and with technocratic solutions to economic development and reform (Evans 1997; McMichael 1996:177). But the term is also linked to cross-border advocacy networks and organizations defending human rights, the environment, women's rights or world peace (Guidry, Kennedy, and Zald 1999; Keck and Sikkink 1998). The environmental movement, in particular, has raised the banner of globalism in its struggle for a clean planet, as in its "Think Global, ActLocal" slogan. Thus, globalization is often constructed as an impersonal and inevitable force in order to justify certain polic...

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.. Academy of Management is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Academy of Management Journal.Business groups in emerging economies result when entrepreneurs and firms accumulate the capability for repeated industry entry. Such a capability, however, can be maintained as a valuable, rare, and inimitable skill only as long as asymmetric foreign trade and investment conditions prevail. Cross-sectional and longitudinal data on a variety of emerging economies were used to test this hypothesis and three other competing explanations. The importance of business groups grew with foreign trade and investment asymmetries. The managerial problems and opportunities surrounding the rise and decline of business groups are discussed, especially in the context of the current turmoil in emerging economies.

Why do countries differ so much in the extent to which they adopt neo-liberal, marketoriented reform in their infrastructure industries? Building on world-society and neo-institutional theories in sociology, we argue that international pressures of coercion, normative emulation, and competitive mimicry strongly influence the domestic adoption of market-oriented reform.We consider the effect of such pressures on the adoption of four reform elements: the privatization of state-owned firms, the formal separation of the regulatory authority from the executive branch, the de facto elimination of executive political influence on the regulatory authority, and the opening of the retail market to multiple service providers. We find generally robust support for our arguments using a multivariate probit analysis of reform adoption in the telecommunications and electricity industries of as many as 71 countries and territories between 1977 and 1999. Our results also suggest that the coercive effect of lending by the IMF and World Bank differs for each reform element. We discuss the possibility that, by leading countries to adopt some reform elements but not others, international coercion may not produce ideal outcomes.

No abstract