Management and Marketing - Research Publications
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ItemNominal wage rigidity prior to compulsory arbitration: Evidence from the Victorian Railways, 1902-1921(Springer, 2011)Studies across a wide range of countries have shown that relatively few workers have received year-to-year wage cuts since the Second World War. However, there is very little micro-level evidence from earlier years, when lower inflation rates and a less regulated labour market may have led to stronger downwards pressure on wages. This paper examines wage adjustment at the Victorian Railways, Australia, between 1902 and 1921. It is shown that, despite strong downwards pressure on wages, nominal wages were rigid downwards and a high proportion of triennial wage changes were exactly zero. Even for workers with very long tenure and in years when the national price level declined, wage cuts were rare. We also show that the characteristics of workers whose wages were unchanged were very similar to those receiving wage cuts. Finally, we show that unlike the wages of incumbent staff, entry wages for new junior staff frequently declined from year to year.
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ItemFlexible Footprints: Reconfiguring MNCs for New Value Opportunities(Sage, 2012)Powerful technological, regulatory, and economic forces compel the senior executives of multinational corporations (MNCs) to repeatedly re-evaluate and reconfigure value chains in the search for ongoing competitive advantage. However, releasing assets from existing activities and redeploying them to new opportunities is a challenging and poorly understood task. In particular, the standard strategic management concepts of use- and firm-flexibility overlook the crucial international dimension of location. Utilizing examples from GM, Qantas, and a mining MNC, this article argues that strategic flexibility should be consciously measured along all three dimensions. By using the decision tool set out in this article, MNC executives can map their worldwide footprint of strategic roadblocks and opportunities to expand into new markets, divest redundant businesses, and build flexibility to adapt to future challenges.
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ItemWork and Wages at a Melbourne Factory, the Guest Biscuit Works 1870-1921(Wiley, 2013)The story of wages in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Australia has largely been told through official published statistics and the experiences of skilled artisans and construction labourers. Utilising wage book data from an early successful manufacturing plant - a biscuit factory - we reveal the earning histories of several neglected groups of Australian workers. We specifically investigate the effects of the 1890s depression, the introduction of a wages board, and shifting demographics on the wages of unskilled factory hands, women, juvenile workers, and commercial clerks. We demonstrate that typical Australian wage series studies have misinterpreted the impact of these phenomena.
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ItemDissecting home regionalisation: how large does the region loom?(Emerald, 2013)Purpose: The paper aims to motivate more rigorous theoretical and empirical specification of the home regionalization phenomenon, in particular the dynamics of shifting advantage over time within a multinational enterprise. It aims to improve dialogue among regionalization researchers. Design/methodology/approach: Contrasting the economizing and behavioral perspectives on internationalization, the paper presents five different archetypes of the home‐regionalization phenomenon. These archetypes are predicated on strategic management stylizations of competitive advantage. Findings: The paper demonstrates that the notion of home regionalization as a dominant and superior model for firm internationalization remains a promising yet under‐explained and inconsistently articulated thesis. By introducing and exploring the archetypes, it shows the diversity of home‐regionalization theses, and the prospect that multiple forms of regionalization may be at play for different firms, industries and locations. Originality/value: The paper presents the full complement of archetypes of the home‐regionalization phenomenon and explores their corresponding assumptions. These explorations open up new empirical and theoretical research avenues for distinguishing any genuine region effects.
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ItemAustralia's Underestimated Resource: Women Doing Business Globally(University of Melbourne & Women in Global Business, 2013)This Report reveals, for the first time, the wide-ranging successes of women-owned Australian organisations in the global marketplace, and the speed with which new women-owned organisations are venturing internationally. We also capture the experiences of Australian women contributing to their organisations’ global expansion strategies in senior management roles.
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ItemExploring Home-Regionalisation: The Case of Cross-Border M&A(Academy of International Business (AIB), 2010)This paper explores the home region bias of multinational corporations. We utilise a new dataset of more than 64,000 merger and acquisition (M&A) transactions from across the globe over a 19-year period. We demonstrate a very strong home country bias on the part of firms, and a substantially weaker, but still important home region bias. Nevertheless, MNCs appear far from home region-bound, and M&As appear an effective and increasingly utilised strategic mechanism for building and complementing firm-specific advantages within and across regions.