This is my principal theoretical research project, where the aim is to help build a framework for strategizing that is adapted to the discontinuous and disequilibrium industrial dynamics of real economies. The framework sought is one that makes sense of entrepreneurial and evolutionary dynamics as well as challengers attacking incumbent positions. It is grounded in extensive empirical work on the rise of new industries in Asia-Pacific such as semiconductors, flat panel displays and optical disk drives.

An article on this theme was published as an editorial essay in the journal Strategic Organization in 2005:

Ricardian rents or Knightian profits? More on Austrian insights on strategic organization, Strategic Organization, 4 (1): 97-108.

A book is being published in 2006, by Stanford University Press. For sample chapters, click here:

Reviews

1. Academy of Management Review, January 2007, Review by Prof Charles Snow, Penn State University'

2.  Cyclical industrial dynamics and strategy

This research is funded by an Australian Research Council large Discovery Project grant in 2006-2008. The research started with investigations of the entry by new firms into the Flat Panel Display industry, and the discovery that all successful entries were clustered in downturns; not a single firm successfully entered the industry during an upturn.

The first publication in this new series was in California Management Review (2005):

Strategy and the crystal cycle, California Management Review, 47 (2) (Winter 2005): 6-31.

This work is now proceeding with investigations of cyclical dynamics in the FPD industry, the semiconductor industry and the hard disk drive industry, together with the linked cycles in the PC/IT industry. A doctoral student, Hao Tan, is working on these issues with me. Working papers will be posted here as they are developed.

For more detailed information on this research, please click here.

3. Renewable energies and latecomer industrial development

Brazil, India and China are leading the world in the uptake of renewable energy technologies, including biofuels, wind and solar energies. By doing so, they are solving their own problems regarding potentially crippling costs of imported oil supplies; enhancing their energy security; and helping to solve the world’s problem with greenhouse gases and climate change. But they are also triggering their own successful industrial development through the establishment of renewable energy industries, and exporting the conditions for industrialization to other developing countries, particularly those in tropical countries in Central and South America, Africa and SEAsia. This is a shift in the propsetcs for developing countries of epochal proportions, and one that is driven by the rising price of oil, peaking of oil supplies, and availability of alternative energy technologies. The advanced industrial countries, and in particular the United States, are falling behind in these sectors, presumably because of the political and economic dominance of fossil fuel interests – but this is cxreating a once-in-a-million opportunity for developing countries – led by Brazil, India and China (the BICs) to dead the developed world rather than be forced to follow.

An initial overview paper on this topic can be found here: Biofuels manifesto

Further papers will be posted as developed.

* Prospects for biofuels in Australia. (MGSM working paper)

* Can renewable energies be turned to a source of advantage by developing countries? Revue de l'Energie (in press; corrected proof)

* Viewpoint. Biofuels: What a Biopact between North and South could achieve, Energy Policy.

4. Accelerated internationalization from the Periphery

This is a project concerned with the processes through which newcomer and latecomer firms from emerging markets acquire a rapid global spread through strategic and organizational innovation. A number of case studies have been prepared, including The Acer Group, headquartered in Taiwan. Professor Charles Snow, of Penn State University, is collaborating on aspects of this project. A book on this topic was published by Oxford University Press (New York) in the year 2002.

See sample chapters here

A review article on Dragon Multinationals was published in Asia Pacific Journal of Management in 2006, together with commentary from Professors John Dunning and Rajneesh Narula, and my own response to them later in 2006.

Response to Dunning and Narula, Asia Pacific Journal of Management     

Dragon Multinationals: New players in 21^st century globalization, Asia   Pacific Journal of Management, 23: 5-27.

5. Schumpeterian entrepreneurial dynamics

This project is an outcome of a long-standing interest in Schumpeter and entrepreneurial dynamics, dating at least to the discovery of Schumpeter’s “lost” seventh chaptyer to his 1912 masterpiece, The Theory of Economic Development. The first full English language translation of this lost chapter was published by me in the journal Industry and Innovation in

One avenue being explored is the use of simulation techniques, utilizing agent-based computing programs such as SWARM, to investigate entrepreneurial dynamics in an experimental economy. Two doctoral students are engaged in this research project: Craig Lynch and Paul Davis.

A copy of a 2005 conference paper by Craig Lynch is here: Lynch Investigations into Schumpeterian Economic Behaviour

More descriptive aspects of the project focus on the contribution of entrepreneurial strategies to a wider reformulation of strategy. A paper that contrasts Schumpeterian and Kirznerian approaches to entrepreneurship, and reconciles them within a disequilibrium setting, was accepted by the 2006 Schumpeter Society conference. The paper is here: DRUID Paper

6. Latecomer industrial strategies

This is a long-standing interest that goes back to the work on the rise of a semiconductor industry in East Asia, and the latecomer strategies pursued by firms as they strategized over entry to this industry.

Papers published on this theme include:

Catch-up strategies and the latecomer effect in industrial development, New Political Economy, 11 (3) (forthcoming)

The intellectual roots of latecomer industrial development, International Journal of Technology and Globalisation, 1 (3/4): 433-450.

A report for the World Bank was prepared in 2004, on latecomer strategies employed in establishing an electronics industry in Taiwan.

The report is here: Understanding the “how to” of technological change in fast growing economies: The case of electronics in Taiwan

The book published by the World Bank containing an edited version of this paper is here: World Bank 2006 Technology Adaptation and Exports

This work was extended to patent analysis, with my doctoral student Mei-Chih Hu, who was awarded her PhD in 2005. Our joint paper on “Innovative capacity in East Asia” was published in Research Policy in 2005. This paper provides a rigorous demonstration that latecomers build special institutions to compensate for their deficiencies, and to accelerate their catch-up, in typical Gerschenkronian fashion.

The paper is here: National innovative capacity in East Asia, Research Policy, 34: 1322- 1349 (with Mei-Chih Hu)

7. Cooperative R&D and the biotech sector

There are several aspects to this project. A series of case studies have been prepared, dating back to 2000 and research work undertaken in Queensland, then Korea, then Denmark:

2002 Proteome Systems Ltd: A Macquarie Life Sciences Spinoff, MGSM Case 2002-2 (with Ramon del Carmen) Macquarie Graduate School of Management

2001 The birth of the biotechnology era: Penicillin in Australia, 1943-1980,( MGSM Case 2001-2)

The new face of entrepreneurship in Korea: ChemTech Research Inc (MGSM Case 2001-1, Macquarie Graduate School of Management)

2000 Give biotech wings and it will fly. Courier Mail, Edition 1, 31 August 2000 Page 015

2003 Cobento Biotech (Denmark) (with Poul H. Andersen)

Another strand focused on the use of R&D consortia in the biotech sector, and in wider sectors in the Asia-Pacific. This strand of the work was funded by the Australian Research Council with a Discovery Grant, awarded jointly to JM and Professor Mark Dodgson, who was at the National Graduate School of Management at the ANU, Canberra, and moved in late 2002 to become Director of the Technology and Innovation Management Centre at the University of Queensland.

The first publication in this new series was in California Management Review

A joint paper was presented on this theme to the 2006 DRUID conference, in Denmark: Dodgson Mathews et al DRUID 2006

This work built on earlier work on the use of R&D consortia in Taiwan as a means of accelerating the diffusion of technology from the public sector (e.g. at ITRI) to the private sector. An initial paper was published in 2002 in the leading journal Research Policy:

The origins and dynamics of Taiwan's R&D consortia, Research Policy 31 (4): 633-651.

This project  started in Korea in 1994 in collaboration with Professor Dong-Sung Cho of Seoul National University, and has involved field work in firms during repeated visits to Korea Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia and China 1994 - 1999, has been my principal research activity of the 1990s. It has attracted major research funding, eg from the Australian Research Council under its Large Grant scheme (1997 - 1998). The focus on the semiconductor industry in East Asia has resulted in a major research study to be published worldwide in 2000 by Cambridge University Press: Tiger Technology: The Creation of a Semiconductor Industry in East Asia, (co-authored with Professor Cho). The study has also resulted in a series of papers on this theme published in California Management Review (in 1997 on Taiwan's Hsinchu park; and in 1999 on Singapore's strategies); and Journal of World Business (on organizational learning in Korea's semiconductor industry).

8. The management of global cellular organizations

This study, being conducted jointly with Professor Charles Snow (Penn State University), is concerned with elaborating the cellular model as an organizational form for the 21st century that can accommodate rapid global expansion and the demands of global management. The study takes The Acer Group, which originated in Taiwan but is now a truly global PC and IT series of firms, as exemplar of the new structure. The study has so far resulted in several papers published in Academy of Management Executive (with Professor Miles et al); and Organizational Dynamics; and papers submitted to other journals.

9. Building institutional capacity in Asia: A research project of the Research Institute for Asia and the Pacific (University of Sydney) (1997-1999)

This project, commissioned by the Japanese Ministry of Finance, is concerned with elucidating the institutional foundations of the East Asian "Miracle" -- and, since the Asian crisis broke in July 1997, with elucidating the institutional sources of the crisis (in Asia and beyond) and the institutional rebuilding that needs to be undertaken. Professor Mathews was the principal investigator of Phases I and II of this project. Major reports were submitted in 1998 and in 1999. A Working Paper on 'Building institutional capacity in Asia' was co-authored with Fred Argy, principal adviser to the project.