A research report submitted to the Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Commerce (specialising in Taxation). / There has been significant advances in the international arena with regards to global economic growth and trade, as well as enormous competition by countries to attract inward foreign direct investment from multinational enterprises (MNEs) to ensure the sustainability of their own economies. Fundamentally the contentious issue is the possibility of double taxation (DT), due to the dual residency of the MNE. The MNE operates in various markets which results in cross-border transactions, whether physical or electronic, and this ultimately means that different tax jurisdictions will become applicable and enforceable by each relevant country. These dual resident MNEs could be seen as a tax resident in both countries and thus be liable for tax obligations in both of these countries. This would therefore lead to the same income incurring DT or double non-taxation (DNT), which would have a devastating impact on that MNE. This lead to the establishment of double taxation treaties, agreements and conventions (DTA’s), between various countries which are aimed at addressing this imbalance. As technology advances at an alarming rate, so too does the possibility of abuse of tax treaties. Two important criteria are ‘the place of effective management’ (POEM) and the ‘permanent establishment’ (PE), which are critical to the determination of the correct tax jurisdiction where the dual resident MNE will incur various tax liabilities. These concepts, POEM and PE, can be confusing but are imperative, in order to prevent DT, and which could prejudice the relevant fiscus, as well as an attempt to avoid any conflict between the taxing regimes. An interesting facet of the POEM and PE conundrum is the interpretation by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (’the OECD’) Model Tax Convention (MTC) compared to the interpretations by the South African Revenue Service (SARS). Another area of contention for MNEs is the current enormous global focus on the concept of Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS), which is under great scrutiny, and is of great concern for the majority of revenue authorities. These authorities are intensifying their focus on improving and enforcing anti-avoidance provisions to prevent taxation leakage in their respective tax jurisdictions. This shift in priorities opposes one of a MNE’s main business objectives which is to maximize profits, by either diverting, extracting and/or distributing profits out of a high tax paying jurisdiction into a lower tax paying jurisdiction. This will consequently create an additional business risk which emphasises the need for international tax expertise. The international tax expert is a valuable business team member, as their knowledge and expertise is imperative for the mitigation of possible tax risks, correct interpretation and application of the relevant tax legislation on the business flows of the MNEs as a result of operational expansion or any cross-border transactions or activities. Key Words: Taxation, Tax Treaties, Agreements, BEPS, Conventions; Cross-border, Double Taxation; Dual Residency; International tax, Multinational enterprises; Permanent Establishment, Place of Effective Management; OECD Model Tax Convention; Tax Intelligence, Tax Jurisdictions

Background: Supplier integration is becoming increasingly important due to the increased globalisation in the business world nowadays. Today’s focal firm does not operate independently, but as a part of its supply chain which competes with other supply chains in the market. The number of the focal SMEs in Europe comprises 99% of companies operating throughout the continent. However, the vast majority of the existing literature is investigating supplier integration from MNEs’ perspectives. Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to generate a new supplier integration theory for SMEs. The study aims to compare how SMEs and MNEs conduct supplier integration, spotting the similarities and differences in their approaches and finding out the reasons behind these varying approaches. Method: We choose a relativist ontology and a constructionist epistemology. Within the boundaries of these research assumptions, we follow an inductive multiple case study approach with exploratory characteristics. The case study consists out of 12 cases, six out of the plant engineering industry and six from the mechanical engineering industry. Each industry is represented by three SMEs and three MNEs. Our findings are gathered through coded and categorised interview transcripts, based on which a critical comparative discussion is done. Conclusion: Through our study we find size and industry related differences in conducting supplier integration. Next to obvious circumstances such as limited resources, we identify personal contact, trust creation and industry specifics as main drivers for variation in supplier integration approaches. Furthermore, we conclude that SMEs fit in particular cases better into the reviewed supplier integration literature, since their focus in relationships leads to a more sustainable interest into the partner’s economic well-being. Finally, our findings show mimetic behaviour in SMEs adopting MNEs’ managerial approaches, characterised by classification, evaluation and strategizing.

Este estudo visa analisar a implementação, no Brasil, das Linhas Diretrizes da OCDE para as Empresas Multinacionais, documento que integra a Declaração sobre o Investimento Internacional e as Empresas Multinacionais. De acordo com os termos estabelecidos nessa Declaração, os Estados devem promover essas Linhas Diretrizes, bem como instalar um Ponto de Contato Nacional (PCN) mecanismo criado para consolidar os padrões de conduta e para receber reclamações atinentes à violação de seus termos por empresas multinacionais. A observância aos termos da Declaração é obrigatória para os Estadosmembros da Organização para Cooperação e Desenvolvimento Econômicos (OCDE) e condição para não membros participarem das atividades do Comitê de Investimentos situação na qual o Brasil se inclui. O ato internacional brasileiro de adesão à Declaração não se submeteu ao crivo parlamentar a que alude o artigo 49, inciso I, da Constituição Federal (CF) e, além disso, as medidas adotadas internamente para implementar as Diretrizes incluindo a instalação de PCN foram ordenadas por uma Portaria , que constitui ato do Ministério da Fazenda. Essas circunstâncias evidenciam como a cooperação e legitimidade fundada no consenso são base importante para que se promovam os direitos através das fronteiras sem desrespeitar a legislação brasileira, consoante este trabalho se propõe demonstrar. / This study analyses the implementation in Brazil of the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises, which constitute an integral part of the Declaration on International Investment and Multinational Enterprises. In accordance with the terms of the Declaration on International Investment and Multinational Enterprises, the states are to promote the Guidelines and install a National Point of Contact (NCP), the mechanism created to consolidate the Guidelines and receive complaints against the violation of their terms by multinational companies. Compliance with the terms of the Declaration is mandatory for the OECD member countries and the condition for non-members to participate in the activities of the Investment Committee like in the case of Brazil. The Brazilian international subscription act to the Declaration was not submitted to the approval of the parliament as per article 49, I of the Federal Constitution; in addition, the measures adopted internally to implement the Guidelines and install the NCP were ordered by Decreean act within the competence of the Ministry. These circumstances show how cooperation and legitimacy founded on consensus are an important basis for the promotion of rights across borders without infringing Brazilian Law. This is what the present study proposes to discuss.

O presente trabalho investiga empiricamente os determinantes de investimentos chineses e brasileiros no exterior e faz uma comparação entre a China e o Brasil no sentido de determinantes e características gerais de investimento no exterior, como o volume, a escolha de destinação. Em base de uma revisão teórica da área de investimento no exterior no primeiro artigo, testamos empiricamente, no secondo artigo, as hipóteses sugeridas pela teoria de Paradigma Eclético do Dunning e pelas outras literaturas nesta área pelo modelo de painel, utilizando os dados oficiais do Brasil e da China coletados no período entre 2006 e 2012. Encontramos os mesmos resultados de variáveis principais, os quais indicam que investimentos no exterior de ambos dois países tem motivação significativa de buscar mercado, eficiência e exportar capital intelectual, mas a busca de recurso natural é uma motivação insignificativa para os dois países. Encontramos também os diferentes resultados em variáveis controladas entre dois países. / This study investigates the determinants of Chinese and Brazilian outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) and conducts a comparison between China and Brazil in terms of FDI determinants and general FDI features like volume, location choice. Based on an extensive and in-depth theoretical review of main FDI theories in first article, we, in second article, test empirically our hypotheses suggested by Dunning\'s Eclectic Paradigm theory and others FDI literature through a panel data model, using Brazil and China official data collected between 2006 and 2012. We find same results of main variables that both Chinese and Brazilian OFDI have significant motivations of market-seeking, efficiency-seeking and asset-exporting (contrary to hypothesis), but resource-seeking OFDI is insignificant for both countries. We also find their difference in results of control variables.

Orientador: Mário Augusto Bertella / Banca: André Luiz Correa / Banca: Roseli da Silva / Resumo: Este trabalho tem o objetivo de analisar o processo de internacionalização via investimento direto externo (IDE) das empresas espanholas e coreanas a partir dos anos 90. Para isso, será feita uma revisão das abordagens não convencionais da lógica do investimento direto externo e de seus condicionantes. Ademais, serão tratadas as mudanças nos ambientes macroeconômicos e institucionais desde o pós-guerra e seus impactos sobre as estratégias de concorrência das corporações e dos movimentos de IDE. É a partir deste mapeamento global do IDE que se dará o estudo dos determinantes, das características e da evolução do investimento direto externo das empresas espanholas e coreanas nas décadas de 1990 e 2000 / Abstract: This dissertation aims to analyze the internationalization process through foreign direct investment (FDI) of Spanish and Korean companies since the 90's. For that, it will be made a review of unconventional approaches about the logic of foreign direct investment and its limitations. Moreover, it will be explicited the changes in macroeconomic and institutional environments in the post-war and its impact on the competitive strategies of corporations and FDI flows. It is from this FDI global mapping that it will be studied the determinants, characteristics and evolution of foreign direct investment of Spanish companies and Korea in the past two decades / Mestre

Abstract Organizational structures are surrounding the entire businesses and are essential for the functionality of an organization. The importance of a structure that satisfies and encourages the staff in the success of the organization to do a god job reflects on the organization’s success. There are many different kinds of people and behaviours in the world, which makes the world we live in very complex and diversified. The perceptions of one human being, living in Europe, most likely aren’t the same as the perceptions of one person living on the other side of the globe. This difference between people all over the world also diversifies the organizations, which consists of these people. Different behaviour and organization structures are preferred by different organizations. This fact makes it difficult to operate an organization that is expanding to operate between national boarders. The difficulties in moving to new nations and meeting new cultures leads to many problems. How will an organization that operates over national boarders adopt to the different countries involved? This thesis will examine the difficulties for these kinds of problems and how they should minimize possible problems that might occur through internationalization. The main question in this thesis will look at exactly how the transformation to go from one organizational structure to another in a Multinational corporations. For a further analyse of the problem, one organization in an expanding situation will be examined. The organization that will be analysed is LG Electronics, which is a Multinational Enterprise organization that operates in several countries. The LG Electronics is an organization from South Korea which in Sweden has an IT-division that has worked as an experiment, in an attempt to minimize the problems that might occur when different organization cultures starts to work with each other. The thesis will be strengthened mainly through background and organizational preferences information about differences between nations and the nations that act as the host and the home country for the organization, the two different structures involved and a list of different types of Multinational organizations. To examine the situation in LG Electronics interviews with two different purposes will be done, one with investigational purpose and one with informational purpose. Keywords Culture, Organization structure, Multinational Enterprises, Matrix structure, Hierarchical structure, Organizational change, Transformation, Host country, Home country

This doctoral thesis concerns the interplay between multinational enterprises (MNE) and spatial economies, with an orientation towards the location and spillover effects of inward foreign direct investments (FDI). The thesis consists of four essays that are self-contained studies. The first essay relates to the shift away from FDI in manufacturing to services and examines whether service FDI locates differently from manufacturing FDI. The second essay concerns the relationship between FDI and public incentives and whether investment promotion schemes are useful to attract FDI. The third essay examines the link between human capital and FDI and how different types of skilled workers influence FDI location. Taken together, these three essays examine conditions and factors that determine the location decision of foreign MNEs in the contemporary era of globalisation. The forth essay examines whether labour mobility is a potential source for spillovers from FDI in a spatial context. Although the latter essay does not provide any final answer to whether spillovers actually arise through this channel, it shows that the potentials for an effect to arise are larger in some regions than others because there are very few or no such knowledge spillover agents in many parts of the country. The thesis concludes by discussing the link between FDI and the policy work on regional development, and some avenues for future studies. / <p>QC 20130816</p>

The development of adequate performance evaluation techniques for appraising foreign subsidiaries and their managers in an environment different from their domestic ones has been suggested as an area where management accounting should be extended. This study concerned the performance evaluation of foreign subsidiary managers with the following objectives: (1) to examine the relationships among environmental factors and foreign subsidiary performance, (2) to develop a multinational enterprise (MNE) environmental model to evaluate the performance of subsidiary managers on the basis of controllable factors only, and (3) to test the model in American multinational enterprises for the existence of association among environmental factors and measured performance of foreign subsidiaries. The research method employed in this study was to test for association between noncontrollable environmental factors of a particular foreign country and measured performance of the foreign subsidiary (in terms of ROI) in that particular country. Major noncontrollable factor groups used were economic, political-legal, educational, and social environmental constraints.

Company-taxation policies in the Central and East European New Member States (CEE-NMS) have been frequently characterised as tax-cutting strategies in order to attract Foreign Direct Investment (FDI). On the basis of a survey of six empirical studies a median value of the tax-rate elasticities of FDI of -0.22 in CEE-NMS and mediterranean periphery countries is derived. Yet, these tax-rate elasticities probably suffer from a sort of measurement error bias since these studies entirely rely on the host country Statutory tax rate as measure of tax burden. Building on a thorough criticism of FDI as a measure reflecting multinational activity and the Statutory tax rate as a reliable measure of the effective tax burden, 315 effective average bilateral tax rates (BEATR) are calculated for seven home countries and five CEE-NMS for the period 1996-2004, following the approach of Devereux and Griffith (1998). Since our empirical results show substantial differences in the variability of the host country Statutory tax rates and the BEATRs, it is contended that the latter should be used as explanatory variables in empirical studies. / Series: Discussion Papers SFB International Tax Coordination

Este estudo visa analisar a implementação, no Brasil, das Linhas Diretrizes da OCDE para as Empresas Multinacionais, documento que integra a Declaração sobre o Investimento Internacional e as Empresas Multinacionais. De acordo com os termos estabelecidos nessa Declaração, os Estados devem promover essas Linhas Diretrizes, bem como instalar um Ponto de Contato Nacional (PCN) mecanismo criado para consolidar os padrões de conduta e para receber reclamações atinentes à violação de seus termos por empresas multinacionais. A observância aos termos da Declaração é obrigatória para os Estadosmembros da Organização para Cooperação e Desenvolvimento Econômicos (OCDE) e condição para não membros participarem das atividades do Comitê de Investimentos situação na qual o Brasil se inclui. O ato internacional brasileiro de adesão à Declaração não se submeteu ao crivo parlamentar a que alude o artigo 49, inciso I, da Constituição Federal (CF) e, além disso, as medidas adotadas internamente para implementar as Diretrizes incluindo a instalação de PCN foram ordenadas por uma Portaria , que constitui ato do Ministério da Fazenda. Essas circunstâncias evidenciam como a cooperação e legitimidade fundada no consenso são base importante para que se promovam os direitos através das fronteiras sem desrespeitar a legislação brasileira, consoante este trabalho se propõe demonstrar. / This study analyses the implementation in Brazil of the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises, which constitute an integral part of the Declaration on International Investment and Multinational Enterprises. In accordance with the terms of the Declaration on International Investment and Multinational Enterprises, the states are to promote the Guidelines and install a National Point of Contact (NCP), the mechanism created to consolidate the Guidelines and receive complaints against the violation of their terms by multinational companies. Compliance with the terms of the Declaration is mandatory for the OECD member countries and the condition for non-members to participate in the activities of the Investment Committee like in the case of Brazil. The Brazilian international subscription act to the Declaration was not submitted to the approval of the parliament as per article 49, I of the Federal Constitution; in addition, the measures adopted internally to implement the Guidelines and install the NCP were ordered by Decreean act within the competence of the Ministry. These circumstances show how cooperation and legitimacy founded on consensus are an important basis for the promotion of rights across borders without infringing Brazilian Law. This is what the present study proposes to discuss.