Development of a technological innovation capability assessment model:a case study of manufacturing SMEs in Sialkot, Pakistan

Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) play an important part in the economy of any country. Initially, a flat management hierarchy, quick response to market changes and cost competitiveness were seen as the competitive characteristics of an SME. Recently, in developed economies, technological capabilities (TCs) management- managing existing and developing or assimilating new technological capabilities for continuous process and product innovations, has become important for both large organisations and SMEs to achieve sustained competitiveness. Therefore, various technological innovation capability (TIC) models have been developed at firm level to assess firms‘ innovation capability level. These models output help policy makers and firm managers to devise policies for deepening a firm‘s technical knowledge generation, acquisition and exploitation capabilities for sustained technological competitive edge. However, in developing countries TCs management is more of TCs upgrading: acquisitions of TCs from abroad, and then assimilating, innovating and exploiting them. Most of the TIC models for developing countries delineate the level of TIC required as firms move from the acquisition to innovative level. However, these models do not provide tools for assessing the existing level of TIC of a firm and various factors affecting TIC, to help practical interventions for TCs upgrading of firms for improved or new processes and products. Recently, the Government of Pakistan (GOP) has realised the importance of TCs upgrading in SMEs-especially export-oriented, for their sustained competitiveness. The GOP has launched various initiatives with local and foreign assistance to identify ways and means of upgrading local SMEs capabilities. This research targets this gap and developed a TICs assessment model for identifying the existing level of TIC of manufacturing SMEs existing in clusters in Sialkot, Pakistan. SME executives in three different export-oriented clusters at Sialkot were interviewed to analyse technological capabilities development initiatives (CDIs) taken by them to develop and upgrade their firms‘ TCs. Data analysed at CDI, firm, cluster and cross-cluster level first helped classify interviewed firms as leader, follower and reactor, with leader firms claiming to introduce mostly new CDIs to their cluster. Second, the data analysis displayed that mostly interviewed leader firms exhibited ‗learning by interacting‘ and ‗learning by training‘ capabilities for expertise acquisition from customers and international consultants. However, these leader firms did not show much evidence of learning by using, reverse engineering and R&D capabilities, which according to the extant literature are necessary for upgrading existing TIC level and thus TCs of firm for better value-added processes and products. The research results are supported by extant literature on Sialkot clusters. Thus, in sum, a TIC assessment model was developed in this research which qualitatively identified interviewed firms‘ TIC levels, the factors affecting them, and is validated by existing literature on interviewed Sialkot clusters. Further, the research gives policy level recommendations for TIC and thus TCs upgrading at firm and cluster level for targeting better value-added markets.

A multi-organisational approach for disaster preparedness and response:the use of optimisation and GIS for facility location, stock pre-positioning, resource allocation and relief distribution

From 1992 to 2012 4.4 billion people were affected by disasters with almost 2 trillion USD in damages and 1.3 million people killed worldwide. The increasing threat of disasters stresses the need to provide solutions for the challenges faced by disaster managers, such as the logistical deployment of resources required to provide relief to victims. The location of emergency facilities, stock prepositioning, evacuation, inventory management, resource allocation, and relief distribution have been identified to directly impact the relief provided to victims during the disaster. Managing appropriately these factors is critical to reduce suffering. Disaster management commonly attracts several organisations working alongside each other and sharing resources to cope with the emergency. Coordinating these agencies is a complex task but there is little research considering multiple organisations, and none actually optimising the number of actors required to avoid shortages and convergence. The aim of the this research is to develop a system for disaster management based on a combination of optimisation techniques and geographical information systems (GIS) to aid multi-organisational decision-making. An integrated decision system was created comprising a cartographic model implemented in GIS to discard floodable facilities, combined with two models focused on optimising the decisions regarding location of emergency facilities, stock prepositioning, the allocation of resources and relief distribution, along with the number of actors required to perform these activities. Three in-depth case studies in Mexico were studied gathering information from different organisations. The cartographic model proved to reduce the risk to select unsuitable facilities. The preparedness and response models showed the capacity to optimise the decisions and the number of organisations required for logistical activities, pointing towards an excess of actors involved in all cases. The system as a whole demonstrated its capacity to provide integrated support for disaster preparedness and response, along with the existence of room for improvement for Mexican organisations in flood management.

Explaining intermittent exporting:exit and conditional re-entry in export markets

Intermittent exporting is something of a puzzle. In theory, exporting represents a major commitment, and is often the starting point for further internationalisation. However, intermittent exporters exit and subsequently re-enter exporting, sometimes frequently. We develop a conceptual model to explain how firm characteristics and market conditions interact to affect the decision to exit and re-enter exporting, and model this process using an extensive dataset of French manufacturing firms from 1997 to 2007. As anticipated, smaller and less productive firms are more likely to exit exporting, and react more strongly to changes in both domestic and foreign markets than larger firms. Exit and re-entry are closely linked. Firms with a low exit probability also have a high likelihood of re-entry, and vice versa. However, the way in which firms react to market conditions at the time of exit matters greatly in determining the likelihood of re-entry: thus re-entry depends crucially on the strategic rationale for exit. Our analysis helps explain the opportunistic and intermittent exporting of (mainly) small firms, the demand conditions under which intermittent exporting is most likely to occur, and the firm attributes most likely to give rise to such behavior.