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Foreign investors access local knowledge by co-locating with other foreign direct investment (FDI) firms. However, different aspects of local knowledge can be obtained from different local businesses. Thus some foreign investors co-locate with FDI firms from the same country of origin, while others co-locate with foreign industry peers. We argue that, relative to industry FDI agglomeration, country-of-origin agglomeration provides an effective channel for the sharing of sensitive and tacit knowledge about local business environments. Therefore foreign investors in need of such local knowledge are more likely to locate in country-of-origin agglomerations. Empirical evidence based on FDI in Vietnam indicates that foreign investors who perceive local institutions as particularly weak, and those with a high degree of outsidership in the local environment, are more likely to seek country-of-origin agglomerations than industry FDI agglomerations.

Plural forms exist when managers use two owners to perform one activity. Franchising is a plural form explained by agency theory, however, the theory is unable to explain two franchisor actions: 1) allowing franchisees to own multiple outlets and 2) co-locating company-owned and franchised outlets. We use research that describes a symbiosis between company-owned and franchised outlets to extend agency theory and explain these actions. Our investigation of ownership patterns among 4,339 outlets of 16 plural form franchisors is consistent with our theory that multi-outlet franchising is cost efficient and that co-location occurs when franchisors fill market gaps left by franchisees.

We investigate evidence for spatially mediated knowledge transfer from university research. We examine whether firms locate R&D near universities, and whether those that do are more likely to co-operate with, or source knowledge from them. We find that pharmaceutical firms locate R&D near to frontier chemistry research departments, consistent with accessing localized knowledge spillovers, but also linked to the presence of science parks. Chemicals R&D exhibits co-location with materials science departments, with firms within 10 km more likely to directly engage with universities. In other industries we find less, or no evidence of co-location with university research.

This paper examines how functional and line-management stakeholders evaluate operational human resource management capabilities in multinational corporation (MNC) subsidiaries. We suggest that such evaluations are a function of two key structural factors: (1) that focal subsidiary human resource (HR) departments respond differentially to the expectations of differently located stakeholders; and (2) that the structural position of the stakeholder determines what cues he or she relies upon to construct the evaluation. Our findings show that the focal HR subsidiary department is likely to exert more effort towards meeting the expectations of line-management stakeholders, and we suggest that this is a function of line management's co-location with the focal HR department. Second, we find that co-located line-management stakeholders are more likely to rely on experience-based cues when constructing evaluations, whereas headquarters-located functional stakeholders tend to rely on cognitionbased evaluation, driven by their ability to compare across different subsidiary HR departments. We contribute to the literature by going beyond existing research that has tended to focus on evaluation from the perspective of organizational behavior, by providing a structural perspective on capability evaluation in MNCs that combines the insights of role theory and cognitive choice heuristics.

A European attempt to remain competitive by boosting innovation is off to a shaky start. The European Union is considering a major expansion of the European Institute of Technology (EIT), which was meant to give Europe a leg up in the innovation competition. In June, EIT issued a strategic plan that would cost €4 billion over the next budget round, from 2014 to 2020. But the young institute is beset by problems. A scathing external review has criticized its track record, universities say they feel out of the loop about its targets and activities, and industry appears divided on its usefulness and reluctant to pay its share of the bill. Managing the institute has been complicated by the rapid turnover of senior staff.

Reducing the physical distance among R&D engineers and between R&D and marketing is widely believed to result in more frequent communication, and hence higher product development performance. However, the empirical evidence for the effect of co-location on communication frequency is problematic for two reasons: (1) the evidence often features either little contextual realism or doubtful internal validity, and (2) the analysis does not deal with the statistical problems typical of network data. Our study avoids the first problem by using sequential network data collected from a quasi-experiment at an industrial company that regrouped its R&D teams into a new facility. We avoid the second problem by using Wasserman and Iacobucci's (1988) method for the statistical analysis of sequential network data. Our results show that communication among R&D teams was enhanced after co-locating these teams. Surprisingly, communication frequency between R&D and marketing was not affected by the increased physical distance. This may suggest that business procedures accompanying the relocation prevented a widening gap between R&D and marketing. Alternatively, it may indicate that the effect of co-location depends on the content and medium of the communication flows.

If the knowledge field is to move forward, there are—from a business perspective—three priority areas for further research and experimentation. They are: research on how tacit knowledge can continue to be \"tapped into and utilized\" despite increasing economic and business forces that are disrupting the social nature of the workplace community where tacit knowledge lives and thrives; research on how to optimally structure knowledge flow between knowledge seekers and knowledge providers to maximize the impact of knowledge; and research on how to make knowledge, which by its nature is fuzzy and intangible, visible and concrete. Progress in each of these three areas would significantly contribute to making the relationship between knowledge and the firm a significant business reality.

Both theoretical work on knowledge spillovers and regional policy initiatives often assume that there exists a general and unanimous advantage for firms to cluster. But opposed to the benefit is the disadvantage of sharing knowledge with other (rival) firms. This paper highlights the \"downside\" associated with knowledge spillovers and presents a four-stage game of location choice where spillovers result from labour poaching and where the strategic interaction between firms may make them avoid co-location with spillovers. The model provides an explanation for the dispersion of German high-tech industries found in a companion paper.

Developers of business systems must \"work very closely together\" with the customer, \"so that the business processes are re-engineered together with the development of the software that is going to be implemented,\" he said.