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­^¤åºK­n Abstract Thesis: The Influence of Resource Characteristics and R&D Strategies to the Competitive Advantage --- A Study on the Semiconductors Industries in Taiwan To ground on Resource-Based Theory, in this thesis tried to investigate the relationships among resource characteristics, R&D strategies, and competitive advantage in Semiconductors industries, Taiwan. The resource characteristics here are ¡§substantial of resource,¡¨ ¡§sustainability of resource,¡¨ and ¡§appropriability of resource¡¨; R&D strategy could be divided into ¡§product innovation oriented,¡¨ ¡§product improvement oriented,¡¨ and ¡§process improvement oriented.¡¨ This research mainly adopted questionnaire survey as investigating method, and its target group in semiconductors industry Taiwan, were focused on the firm of circuit of design, wafer foundry, assembly and test, and material & equipment manufacturing. Structured questionnaire was used to collect quantitative data so as to test hypothesizes brought by this research. Though the hypothesizes of this research are not fully supported by collected data, following consequences are still able to grasp: (1) The resource characteristics of an organization have significant effected on formulating R&D strategies; (2) R&D strategies would shape corporate competitive advantages of ¡§performance of product development,¡¨ ¡§performance of product quality,¡¨ and ¡§operation cost.¡¨ However, whether to affect on corporate overall profit level, this research has not yet acquired significant differences. Hence, it will rely on further explore of follow-up research; (3) this research shows that resource characteristics are not directly affected on all aspects of corporate competitive advantage, but it might shape competitive advantage by formulating corporate strategy; (4) regarding organizational resource characteristics, in current stage, that businesses emphasize more on value than on sustainability of resources; and (5) innovation, refinement, and improvement orientation of R&D strategy, businesses pay equally attentions on. The findings of this research will be contributed to follow-up study and practical application. Keywords¡GResource characteristics,R&D Strategies,Competitive Advantage¡C

Caused by the transition of global economic structure, competition between companies is changing toward knowledge management and innovation. Especially at the field of quick-change product, the superiority of technology is always the key factor of competition. Today, R&D department is important in any company. However, the efficiency of R&D not only depends on the ability of technology development but also management. Therefore, the managerial competency of R&D manager also attracts more and more attention. This study focus on the relationship between the management competency of R&D manager and department performance to find out what managerial competency can do to benefit the department performance. In addition, this study also tries to figure out the influence of education background on management competency of R&D manager. Through real case investigation, in this study two significant results are found: 1. The leadership domain, technical domain and conceptual domain of management competency of R&D manager have significantly positive influence on R&D outcome, staff competence, cost and budget control, financial benefits and control of schedule and quality of R&D department performance. The human domain has significantly positive influence on R&D outcome, staff competence and financial benefits. However, the administrative domain has no significant influence on all factors of R&D department performance. 2. The education background has significant difference on administrative domain of management competency. The administrative competency of a manager whose education background is not the science and engineering is better than whose education background is the science and engineering. On the other hand, The education background has no significant difference on leadership domain, technical domain, conceptual domain and human domain.

This dissertation investigates three sets of research questions. First, how can partner selection be used as a mechanism to minimize R&D alliance participants’ concerns about knowledge leakage? And what is the nature of the relationship among partner selection and two previously-studied protection mechanisms – governance structure and alliance scope? Extending this research question to the international context, the second set of research questions asks how international R&D alliances differ from their domestic counterparts in partner selection to protect their participants’ valuable knowledge, and how different types of international R&D alliances vary in this regard. Distinguishing bilateral from multilateral R&D alliances, this dissertation examines a third set of questions about how multilateral R&D alliances differ from bilateral ones in partner selection for the purpose of protecting participants’ technological assets. Hypotheses are proposed and tested with a sample of 2,185 R&D alliances involving companies in high technology industries. Results indicate that the more radical the innovation an R&D alliance intends to develop, the more likely the alliance will be formed between Friends than Strangers. However, under the same situation, firms are less likely to select Acquaintances than Strangers. A substitution effect was detected among partner selection, governance structure, and alliance scope used by firms to protect their valuable technological assets from being appropriated in R&D alliances. In addition, no empirical support was found for different partner selection preferences for firms forming domestic R&D alliances versus international R&D alliances. However, results show that firms, when forming trinational R&D alliances and/or traditional international R&D alliances, are more likely to select their prior partners than when forming cross-nation domestic R&D alliances. Moreover, this study shows that when an R&D alliance is formed by multiple companies, partner firms are more likely to be prior partners. I argue that concerns about knowledge leakage explain this result.

Toady, the rapid changes in business environment of shortened product life cycles and advanced technology, drew the attention upon research and development¡¦s (R&D) contribution to competitive advantage. As a result, valuing the performance of R&D has become exceedingly important. This study established a general framework of R&D performance measurements by reviewing and organizing literatures and researches on R&D performance, along with giving an insight on what are the most valued measurements with applying the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) method. The questionnaire which developed from AHP was filled by senior managers of R&D. Valuing from industry and R&D function perspective, we had the results of four similar core R&D performance measurements of Customer Satisfaction, Technology commercialized, Market Share, and Technical achievement. However, the individual ranking from these perspectives, are quite different. In the sense of high-technology and traditional industry, having the same top five measurements of Customer Satisfaction, Market Share, Technical achievement, Technology commercialized, and Profitability, the ranking for each industry is differ. As for new product development (NPD) and process improving function, having the same four out of five core R&D performance measurements of Customer Satisfaction, Market Share, Access to New Market, and Technology commercialized, the ranking for each function is differ. The results for priorities and weights of each R&D performance measurements, are not only giving an insight on the most preferred measurements, but also when coming for measuring performance, the weights upon the measurements should be considered for more accuracy in performance evaluation. Also the indifference of core measurements for differ industries or R&D functions, which indicates when establishing performance measurement in practice, there can be same measurements; however there should be different ways upon valuing, since the priority for them are different.

This study focuses on four Asia Pacific countries ¡V Australia, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan ¡V and analyses how the other three influence one¡¦s domestic manufacturing sectors through international trade and FDI activities. To reveal the truth that different industrial structures and absorption capacity may affect each country's efficiency to assimilate spillovers, the index of capture parameter is built in the dynamic adjustment model. By applying the unbalanced panel data from 1990-2003, it is found that both trade and FDI serve as important channels of international technology diffusion. With all sectors are considered, Korea is the country that benefits the most from international trade and FDI activities. For Australia and Japan, FDI spillovers bring more sectors with positive effects than what trade spillovers do. Taiwan, on the other hand, receives beneficial spillovers from both trade and FDI in two sectors. While the positive spillovers effect occurs in every manufacturing sector, negative relationship between domestic sectors¡¦ productivity and international spillovers can be found in some sectors as well. This phenomenon can be accounted for the lack of technology capture ability and the occurrence of market-stealing effect or asymmetric bargaining power.

If the market of military procurement conforms to the double auction (Chatterjee and Samuelson, 1983), the government and the manufacturer can try to reach a binding agreement and maximize the monopoly profit. When they both comply with the agreement, the game constitutes a cooperative game. The government and the firm can extend the periods of the game from one to two through signing the research and development contract. When they carry out the research and development contract in the second phase, the trading probability in the first phase that is double auction model will rise. However the R&D contract causes an increase of transaction probability, the market offers an opportunity let the ineligible manufacturer participate in the defense procurement. We can find the trade-off relationship between the advancement of trading probability and the appearances of unqualified firm. The result is consistent with Inefficiency theorem that an incentive-compatible mechanism which is ex post efficient will not be individual theorem.

The R&D Alliance was developed as the third strategic option to face the environment in a rapid change world. Based on the operating mechanism of the R&D Alliance, the beneficial results such as resource gathering, development risk and capital dropping will be achieved. However, when all members in the R&D Alliance mutually cooperate for the given benefits and targets, another question about keeping the own characteristics risen and need to further reconsider it. Therefore, the connective patterns between members play an important role in determining whether these operations will be successful, especially for the Chinese-major communities which have more obvious interference hiding in relational capital. The present study focuses on pattern of the R&D Alliance from the view of the relational capital. Adopting the individual case to study two R&D Alliances related with the juridical-person institutions is the main framework of this research and the results are analyzed from the three subcomponents in the relational capital that are trust, friendship and respect. Conclusions are drawn as follows: 1.Impacts of the trust relationship in the R&D alliance: members were constrained by the long-run contact, mutual cooperation experience and the formal contract (e.g. cooperation signatures or nondisclosure agreements) to reduce member suspicions and lead the positive Impact to the R&D alliance. 2.Impacts of the friendship in the R&D alliance: through the way of the frequent interaction, the beneficial receptions, and the explicit cooperative objectives, a conflict or a distant feeling between each others will be reduced, instead of increasing communication or rapidly uniting members to smoothly work the alliance. 3.Impacts of the respect in the R&D alliance: through the way of the good-will interactions, suppressing the opportunistic behaviors, globally adopting the opinions, predicting the next move about members, regulations in the contracts as well as self-constraints, the harmonics and the advantages existed in the members will be benefited for the development of the R&D alliance. 4.Impacts of the achievements in the R&D alliance: In the operating process, the partnership in the R&D alliance achieved the goals by means of the well, routine and miscellaneous communications, an explicit objective management, and the good interactions.

<p>The purpose with this thesis was to examine the most significant factors that affect the number of patents applications submitted on a municipality level in Sweden, with the objective to find the most significant of them. Three factors was chosen and analyzed more closely. The three factors was, investments in R&D made by firms, share of human capital and investments in R&D made by universities. Theses factors was tested against the dependent variable patent applications in three hypothesis and a stepwise regression model was conducted, with the objective to find the most significant variable. The result of the study, shows that not all of the factors had a positive effect on the number of patent applications, further the study indicated that the most significant factor for a municipality in order to have a high number of patent applications, was to have a high share of human capital.</p>

Due to increasing global competition and narrowing customer requirements companies are moving towards quality focused improvements. It is becoming equally important how you perform as what you perform. Companies are thriving to identify, measure and control their processes in order to as efficiently as possible satisfy their customers regarding quality, price and delivery time. The process orientation is changing the way companies develop routines, tools and communications systems. Management roles and responsibilities are changing and in order to manage future success companies focus on process management to assure quality. Corporate quality assurance systems and international standardization organizations are creating a system for managing quality assurance with high level strategies and metrics. The difficulty for companies is to implement quality assurance and systems to really fit their business and specific operational routines. Concepts like Toyota Way, BPR, and TQM are originating from production units. Implementing them within the intangible, value adding and complex activities in R&amp;D requires a systematic and holistic approach to identify and visualize the flow of information rather than material. Input to the R&amp;D process is information on needs, requirements or possibilities and output is new and improved products through a wide range of exploring and developing phases consisting of both artistic and technical challenges. In order to standardize the development process and at the same time maintain creativity front-loading proactive process management may accomplish issues and planning for potential modifications. The result of the thesis project is an interactive cross-functional computer based process management system. In order to implement the scientifically approved process tools into specific processes a strong learning culture among the whole company is required. In order to stimulate the use and training of quality tools and systems the authors have discovered that visualization and interaction is a core success factor. Corporate management needs to interact with employees in order to translate tacit knowledge into corporate best practice. The developed collaborative platform is a tool to enhance communication, enforce quality methods and improve knowledge management to assure the final delivery of total quality to customers. / På grund av den ökande globala konkurrensen och striktare krav från kunder så satsar företag på utveckling och förbättringar genom fokus på kvalitet. Vikten av att göra rätt sak på rätt sätt ökar. Företag eftersträvar att identifiera, mäta och kontrollera sina processer för att så effektivt som möjligt tillfredsställa sina kunder med avseende på kvalitet, pris och leveranstid. Processorienteringen påverkar sättet som företaget utvecklar sina rutiner, verktyg och kommunikationssystem så ledningsroller och ansvar förändras för att planera inför framtida utveckling och framgång så tillämpas processledningssystem för kvalitetssäkring. Kvalitetsledningssystem och internationella standarder skapar ett system för att hantera kvalitetssäkring på ledningsnivå genom strategier och mätverktyg. Svårigheten för företag är att designa och implementera system och verktyg som passar företagets unika processer och operationer. Framgångsrika koncept som Toyota Way, BPR och TQM har utvecklats inom produktionsområdet. För att kunna tillämpa dessa koncept inom området för F &amp; U, vars process är fokuserad på värdeförädling genom nyskapande och är obestämd samt komplex krävs ett systematiskt och holistiskt förhållningssätt. Utmaningen är att identifiera och visualisera flöde av information och kunskap snarare än material. Input till processen F &amp; U är behov, krav och identifierade utvecklingsmöjligheter som behandlas genom utforskning och utvecklingsfaser som innefattar både tekniska och estetiska discipliner. Genom processen genereras nya och förbättrade produkter. För att standardisera utvecklingsprocessen samtidigt som utrymmet för kreativitet bibehålls har författarna funnit att tidig identifiering av möjliga risker samt planering av potentiella ändringar kan åstadkommas genom proaktiv processledning. Då man implementerar användning av kvalitetsverktyg och utför utbildning är visualisering och interaktion viktiga framgångsfaktorer. För att implementera vetenskapligt framtagna verktyg inom processerna på företaget krävs en stark lärande kultur inom hela företaget och för att översätta tyst kunskap till företagsspecifika metoder krävs att anställda och ledningen samarbetar dynamiskt. Resultatet av examensarbetet är ett datorbaserad och interaktivt processledningssystem. Det utvecklade verktyget stödjer kvalitetsförbättringar och sprider kunnande för att förbättra och säkerställa leveransen av kvalitet till kunder.