Critically discuss to what extent Porter’s Diamond is a useful concept in explaining home and host location strategies of international business? Illustrate your answer with reference to at least two case companies.
The main aim of International business is to build and sustain competitiveness for economic value creation in both domestic and overseas markets (Besanko et al. 2007). Internalization business theory however has a variety of models that can identify the environmental analysis of specific countries. These models are used for companies to internationalize and find the right location(s) overseas by taking; institutional, cultural fit and success opportunities into consideration. These models also give in-depth information on…show more content… The adoption of total quality management, just‑in‑time production systems and synchronous manufacturing all created a demand for improved performance measures that would support companies' continuous improvement initiatives. Therefore, much work had already occurred by 1990, the time when the balanced scorecard concept initially emerged (Berliner and Brimson 1987; Howell et al. 1987; Kaplan 1990b). Much of the need for improved operational performance measurements had been satisfied by measures such as part‑per‑million defect rates, yields, cost of nonconformance, process cycle times, manufacturing cycle effectiveness, throughput times, customer satisfaction, customer complaints and employee satisfaction. What remained missing was a theory for how the myriad of nonfinancial performance measures now being used on the factory floor could be reconciled with and achieve comparable status to the financial measures that still dominated the agenda of senior company executives.
Fortunately (again), a skilled practitioner, Arthur Schneiderman of Analog Devices, contacted me to assist his company with launching an activity-based costing project. In our initial conversation, I learned that he had developed an innovative approach, the half-life system, to measure the rate of improvement of his company's TQM program. As part of my research agenda (see step 1 in exhibit 1), I asked for and received approval to visit Analog
