Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Reading, 1990. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 352-366).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Northern Illinois University, 1990. / Dept. of Political Science. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 321-378).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Notre Dame, 2005. / "October 2005." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 241-264).

Foreign direct investment is a topic that currently ranks highly on the agenda of most countries, forming the basis of policy design and development on both a microeconomic and macroeconomic level. From a microeconomic perspective, business strategies are undergoing radical shifts in order to compete in an ever-competitive global climate. Businesses therefore need to diversify their operations across borders as this is essential for ensuring survival. Yet, the motivation and desire of business are not necessarily beneficial to the country, region or market that a particular business plans to enter. Some types of foreign direct investment are positive, enabling a useful and efficient flow of technology, ideas and capital and this, as highlighted in conventional literature, is the key determinant of underlining macroeconomic policy regarding foreign direct investment. Governments attempt to capture such flows. They design efficient policy tools to attract foreign investors into their regions, so that their countries may benefit from these flows in the form of job creation and receiving capital inflows from the induced investments and exports, which aid to offset balance of payment deficits. Countries may enjoy the positive spill-over of such investment that may help local business become more competitive within the international arena. Certain business interests may have strong negative effects such as abusing supplies of natural resources and the abundance of low-skilled labour that exists within developing countries, as few policies are in place to protect these often weaker economies. This may cause conflict between business and government, challenging policy makers to implement protective measures such as trade restrictions, capital market regulation and the development of organised labour policies which may seem only to encourage the flow of negative investment. The gains of such investment become ambiguous, cheering the antiglobalisation movements and discouraging the flows of foreign direct investment that may actually induce positive developments within the economies concerned. The battlefields of such fixed investment movements often establish themselves on emerging market territory, where economies are prone to both helpful and hostile attacks of foreign direct investment. The emerging economies are ever increasing in global importance on the international trade arenas. These countries, many with sound macroeconomic policy, often display rapid economic growth, developed markets and an abundant supply of cheap skilled and unskilled labour, consequently absorbing an ever-increasing share of foreign direct investment. However, the direction of foreign direct investment is difficult to determine, especially when using common constraints, such as economic, political, social and geographic factors. The focus of attention needs to be shifted to those people who are responsible for the decisions to invest. These decision-makers are not to be grouped into a singular globular mass of uniformity; neither should they be treated as a single variable in the equation attempting to explain fixed investment. They make decisions regarding foreign direct investment and are extremely complex beings, cognitively weighting certain factors that determine the decision to invest over other factors. This is an ever-changing process, and seldom will any two investors act in exactly the same way. Consequently, there is a need to explain the decision-making process of foreign direct investors in a model that is fluid, not static and that allows for the flexibility required for the survival of businesses within an ever-changing emerging market economy. This can only be explored by analysing the psychological and cognitive structure of the decisionmaking process that is not totally dependent on the macroeconomic or microeconomic forces present in policy design or company structure respectively. By understanding the process underlying decision-making, it is possible to construct a decision-making model applicable to the unique cognitive workings of the foreign investor.Clear-cut factors need to be identified which map decision-making prior to the act of investment. Therefore, the decision-making model should be constructed using an intentional bias. By using an intentional bias, the decision to act may not yet be consciously considered, but a need to act exists. If the decision-maker is presented by an opportunity, the intent may become the action. By highlighting decision-makers with a positive attitude towards an action, i.e. investment, it is possible to map the factors relevant in the decision-making process. This allows for the construction of a model mapping the intention to act, thereby creating a decision-making model. For the purpose of this thesis a survey was designed and presented to the key decisionmakers within established companies. They included senior business executives, company CEOs, managing directors, owners of businesses and others that play an executive decisionmaking role within their businesses. From these responses key factors were identified from which a behavioural model was constructed by using suitable statistical tools and constraints. This behavioural model is independent, yet influenced by factors such as economic freedom, political instability and corruption, labour market regulation and the existence of development zones within host countries. The identified factors that become relevant to the behavioural model of decision-making are attitude, level and extent of other related or competitive companies within the host country, risk type and ability to overcome such risk, the vision of the company and the social fulfilment experienced by the decision-makers. The necessity for a decision-making model regarding foreign direct investment in the emerging economies is one that cannot be underestimated. This model is designed to contribute towards the current literature on foreign direct investment, with the aim and intent of improving this body of knowledge and assisting towards streamlining policy formation.

Foreign direct investment (FDI) in China is popular these days and this also applies to the pharmaceutical manufacturing industry. China seems to be a promising market for pharmaceuticals with over 1.2 billion potential consumers. This huge number of people together with the outstanding economic performance attracted multinational pharmaceutical firms that were looking for a new market for their products. By the end of 1998, China had established over 1,500 pharmaceutical enterprises with foreign investment and 117 of which were invested by foreign pharmaceutical firms. Foreign pharmaceutical firms invested their capital and technology in what is likely to be developed as the world�s largest pharmaceutical market in the future with the expectation they will earn an excellent return in the longer term. When a firm decides to establish an overseas operation, it has to decide whether to pursue the venture alone or with a joint venture partner (Bell, 1996). For most manufacturers that want to invest abroad, the first-best entry strategy remains the sole venture (SV), and joint venture (JV) would be a second-best invest entry strategy (Root, 1994), because JV is inferior to SV which allows investing firms to maximise the returns on ownership-specific advantages (Caves, 1982) and to have full control over the business operations. Foreign pharmaceutical firms who invested in China during the period from 1980 to 1998 basically chose either a SV or JV entry mode, and over 84 percent of the foreign pharmaceutical firms chose a JV entry mode rather than a SV, even though foreign investors have been allowed to set up 100 percent solely foreign owned sole venture operations in China since the passage of �Law of the People�s Republic of China on Foreign Capital Enterprises� at the Fourth Session of the Sixth National People�s Congress on 12 April 1986. This research was designed to investigate why the large majority of pharmaceutical firms preferred the second-best entry mode for entering into the Chinese market. This research has incorporated in Root (1994), Mockler and Dologite�s (1997) conventional foreign market entry mode framework, and the relevance of Kumar and Subramaniam�s (1997) contingency entry mode framework is acknowledged. Fieldwork was mainly conducted in China by personal interviews as well as mail questionnaire surveys over a period of three months in 1999 and 44 companies participated in total. Using multiple indicators by means of logistic regression analysis to examine the effects of groups of factors on entry mode decision choice between SV and JV options. Seven groups of factors (independent variables) were examined: China environmental factors, China market factors, China production factors, parent firm�s home country/region factors, parent firm�s product factors, parent firm�s resource commitment factors, and parent firm�s decision task related factors. This research has found that the probability for establishing joint ventures with Chinese partner (s) is significantly and positively related to the importance of China environmental factors and market factors. Parent firm�s decision task related factors had a positive impact on firms� decision to choose a SV entry mode. Bivariate analyses have also discovered a number of individual variables that had significant impacts on firms� entry mode choice decisions. The research did not show sufficient evidence to support that China production factors,parent firm�s home country/region factors, parent firm�s product factors, and parent firm�s resource commitment factors had significant influences on foreign pharmaceutical firms� entry mode decisions, although the results showed expected directions of the relationships between the entry mode choice and independent variables. This research has contributed to the entry mode theory literature in the way of developing, as the result of the research in this thesis, an eclectic framework for better understanding of theories in choosing an entry mode between a sole venture and a joint venture in the context of foreign direct investment into the Chinese market, particularly it has discovered significant variables that affected the foreign pharmaceutical firms� FDI entry mode decisions into the Chinese pharmaceutical manufacturing industry during the period of 1980~1998. The framework can be used as a base by researchers to develop further the theories of foreign market entry strategies and to test its relevance in other industries or countries. This research has also extended its examinations to some other important issues in relations to foreign direct investment in China. They are the difference between early and late entrants, and between eastern and western firms on FDI entry mode decisions, foreign pharmaceutical firms� FDI decision formulation, FDI implementation, FDI performance evaluation, joint venture partner and operation location selections in China were also analysed and discussed in this thesis. Further research with larger sample size into the interrelationships among strategic FDI decision formulation, entry mode choice,strategy implementation and evaluation would be worthwhile to help understand the entire process of strategic FDI planning and implementation.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hong Kong, 2006. / Title proper from title frame. Also available in printed format.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2001. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 101-103). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2001. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 101-103). Also available on the Internet.

Master's thesis. / Format: PDF. Bibl.

Specialopgave. / Format: PDF. Bibl.