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Suchetana Chattopadhyay, Voices of Komagata Maru: Imperial Surveillance and Workers from Punjab in Bengal. New Delhi: Tulika Books, 2018, 178 pp.

The book provides insights into how two important industries in India coped with the WTO initiated global institutional change. Its use of comparative and multi-level approaches to study institutions and institutional change and findings would appeal to the readers of public policy, management and political economy.

This book explores the mobilities of capital and labour in the contemporary global economy, with a particular focus on Asia. Using an analytical framework around three dimensions related to the forms, institutions, and spatialities of mobility, the chapters use a variety of sub-national, national and transnational sites within and beyond Asia to examine the interrelationships between mobilities of capital and labour at multiple levels of analyses. The book foregrounds the intricate and persistent linkages between the two mobilities, which have played an important role in capitalist development, but have hitherto mostly been analyzed as separate processes.

This paper develops a multidimensional, process-based conceptualization of alliance portfolio management capability. Arguing that such a capability consists of organizational processes to proactively pursue alliance formation opportunities, engage in relational governance, and coordinate knowledge and strategies across the portfolio, we examine the impact of such a capability on organizational outcomes in the context of formal structure (alliance function) and strategy (portfolio diversity). Using data from 235 firms, we find that these three processes have a positive effect on a firm's alliance portfolio capital, and some of these effects are conditioned by a formal alliance function and diversity of the portfolio. Whereas the ability of proactive formation and relational governance processes to create value is further strengthened in the presence of an alliance function, that of the coordination dimension is weakened. Furthermore, the benefits of relational governance are strengthened for firms with diverse portfolios, whereas the benefits of coordination processes are weakened. We discuss implications of these findings for the alliance and network literature, and in general, for firm heterogeneity. In summary, we find evidence that variance in process-based capabilities to manage alliance portfolios can explain performance heterogeneity among firms.

This paper investigates whether and when affiliation to business groups enables or constrains firms' international search behavior during institutional transitions. We theorize that given the unique structure and complex form of business group organizations, the search behavior of affiliated firms is influenced by the degree of (mis)alignment in outlook at the group and affiliate levels of management. We identify the scope of institutional changes, business group attributes, and affiliate characteristics as sources of such (mis)alignment. The results from panel data on 298 firms from the Indian pharmaceutical industry for the 1992–2007 period show that the constraining effects of business group affiliation are observed only when institutional changes are specific to the affiliates' industry and not when broad institutional changes affect the business group as a whole. Moreover, we observe heterogeneity in the search behavior of group affiliated firms. First, the degree of misalignment is greater in the case of affiliates belonging to older business groups and those that are more distant in terms of age and industry since the group's founding. Second, by contrast and suggesting an alignment in outlook, we find that affiliated firms that occupy a prominent position within a group or industry are able to bargain for and receive attention and support from the business group to undertake international search. Our findings have implications for research on the role of business groups in a changing institutional context and for the strategic adaptation of firms embedded in complex organizational and institutional settings.

This article investigates how Indian pharmaceutical firms, facing discontinuous institutional changes in their domestic environment due to economic liberalization and intellectual property reforms, have undertaken organizational transformation. Internationalization of resources and product markets constitutes an important component of organizational transformation for local firms in emerging economies. Using longitudinal data on 206 Indian pharmaceutical firms from 1995–2004, we find that firms' access to international technological and financial resources enables product market internationalization. Furthermore, we theorize and find support for our predictions that the association between international resources and markets is conditioned by time and business group affiliation, and product market internationalization affects financial performance. Several implications thus emerge for theory and practice associated with the sources of competitiveness in emerging economy firms and their transformation into globally competitive multinational firms.

Top scholars in the field of international business (IB) contribute to this comprehensive analysis of the current state-of-the-art in IB research. The focus of the book is to examine the current state of international business research from an issue-oriented approach rather than the functional approaches that have been characteristic in the recent evolution of the field. In evaluating the current state and future research directions in research areas unique to international business, the book is structured in three parts: the macro-environment, interactions between business and institutions, and competition and strategy