Internationalization, Corporate Governance, and Global Competitiveness: A Study of Entrepreneurial Firms in the Pearl River Delta
The Pearl River Delta (PRD) in southern China is a major world-manufacturing hub populated by small- to medium-sized firms; many are family-owned and run by entrepreneurs based in Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan. With a population of 56 million and a land area about one tenth the size of the State of California, the region produces over 10 percent of China’s GDP.
In April 2009, the local party chief announced that Beijing had set the goal for “the PRD’s economy to surpass that of South Korea in the next decade.” He also wanted the region “to reduce its dependence on resource-intensive industries, and increase the number of high-tech manufacturing and service industries.” More recently, in light of the worldwide declining asset values resulting from the 2008 global financial crisis, Beijing has been urging mainland firms, including those in the PRD region, to “go abroad” to invest and compete in overseas markets.
This call for firms’ international expansion, together with the mandate to move the PRD up the value-chain, makes the region an excellent research site to study China’s industrial policy and its impact on local economic and social development. Additionally, because of the changes mentioned above, the PRD also provides a natural quasi-experimental setting for investigating organizational learning and adaption to shifting environmental conditions, particularly those requiring the development of new capabilities for firm survival.
Professor Joseph L. C. Cheng will present preliminary findings from his research on the PRD region, with a focus on the entrepreneurial firms and how they acquire new internationalization knowledge and corporate governance practices to help enhance their competitiveness in the global marketplace. He will also discuss the findings’ implications for designing public policies and corporate programs to facilitate economic reform and enterprise development.
Philippines Conference Room
Joseph L. C. Cheng
Walter H. Shorenstein
Asia-Pacific Research Center
616 Serra St., Encina Hall C302-23
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305-6055
Research Interests
Asia-Pacific and global competitiveness; national innovation and technology policies; foreign R&D investment; strategy and organization design for transnational firms.
Professional Biography
Joseph L. C. Cheng joins the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC) in 2012 from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where he is currently professor of international business and director of the CIC Center for Advanced Study in International Competitiveness. CIC (Committee on Institutional Cooperation) is the nation’s primer consortium of top-tier research universities in the Midwest, including the Big Ten Conference members and the University of Chicago.
During his time at Shorenstein APARC, Cheng will conduct research on the international competitiveness of multinational firms from the Asia-Pacific, with a focus on the JACKS countries (Japan, Australia, China, Korea, and Singapore). The project has two main objectives: (1) to identify the key competitive advantages of the JACKS countries both individually and collectively as a cluster of economies; and (2) to investigate how indigenous firms from the JACKS countries internationalize and leverage home-based advantages to enhance their competitiveness overseas. The research findings will be reported in a forthcoming book that Cheng is currently writing: Asia-Pacific and the JACKS Multinationals: Economics, Culture, and International Competitiveness.
Cheng is a consulting editor for the Journal of International Business Studies and senior editorial consultant to the European Journal of International Management. He is also a guest editor for an upcoming special issue of Long Range Planning on “China Business and International Competitiveness: Economics, Politics, and Technology.” Additionally, he currently serves or has served on the editorial boards of several other journals, including Management International Review, Journal of World Business, Organizational Dynamics, and Journal of Engineering and Technology Management.
Cheng holds a PhD in business administration from the University of Michigan and a BS (with honors) in industrial engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
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