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This chapter compiles and summarizes the various strategies in the literature about emerging markets (EMs). Moreover, competitive strategies, market entry strategies in the international market, developing marketing strategy, and Porter's competitive strategies are also presented and discussed. Competitive strategies, market entry strategies, developing marketing strategy, and Porter's competitive strategies don't directly deal with EMs but they are deemed to be helpful and relevant to the research problem in the study of the transformation of strategic alliances in Eastern and Central Europe. The reason for compiling the various strategies is because one can clearly understand from the literature that researchers do agree in the value of a strategy, but there is no shared view among researchers of what a strategy is, what its benefits are, and how it should be developed, implemented, and evaluated. At the end of the book, the authors have tried to assess how and to what extent those strategies are applicable and helpful for a firm operating in EMs.

The main objective of the present chapter is to address empirically the impacts of institutional distance (ID) on the multinationality level of firms from developing countries and interpret how the interaction between ID and firm resources affects firms from developing countries. Using data of firms from developing countries, we estimated an empirical cross-section model. The results show that while cultural distance was not found statistically significant, ID, on the other hand, was statistically significant. The higher the distance between home and host country, the higher the multinationality of firms from developing countries. We also found a positive and statistically significant correlation between intangible resource and multinationality, which suggests a tendency toward new pattern in the internationalization of firms from emerging economies.

Outpatient departments (OPDs) need to monitor the quality of care and patient satisfaction for continuous quality improvement. Additionally, there is a need for an increase in focused literature on patient satisfaction and quality of health care at a tertiary care level. The purpose of this paper is to attempt to fulfil this need.

A cross‐sectional hospital‐based study among OPD patients was undertaken, where investigators conducted interviews with 120 patients at entry (registration), 120 patients at the OPD clinic (60 doctor‐patient interactions and 60 exit interviews), and a further 120 patients at investigation facilities. Patient satisfaction, client convenience facilities, prescription quality, doctor‐patient interaction and other quality elements as described in the study were given score of 0 or 1.

At exit, 52 (86.6 percent) patients were satisfied with the OPD care. The mean total quality score was 80.9 percent of the total scores. It was above 90 percent of the total score for patient convenience facilities and for doctor‐patient interaction, 76 percent for the prescription quality of the doctors and 43.3 percent for signage display. The mean score for patient‐doctor interaction was found to be significantly lower (3.6/5) among dissatisfied patients compared to the satisfied patients (4.7/5). Satisfied patients reported a significantly higher consultation time (12.4 minutes) with a doctor compared to dissatisfied patients (8.5 minutes) (p=0.04).

Not using a Likert scale to measure patient satisfaction could be considered a limitation. However, the authors also arrived at similar conclusions with their tools as with the use of Likert scales in other studies. Furthermore, findings are limited to medicine and surgery general OPDs in a tertiary care setting. Any interpretation beyond this frame may be done with caution.

Hospitals should encourage good patient‐doctor interaction as it has emerged as the key factor associated with patient satisfaction.

Quality improvements in public sector health institutes can lead to better utilization of health care by the poor and compromised sections of society and can lead to a reduction in the inequity associated with health care.

This paper fulfils the need to evaluate quality of hospital care in public sector hospitals at the tertiary care level. The methods and tools used are simple and extensive enough to capture information at multiple service points.

The authors characterize the conditions under which a country may eventually split and when it splits within an infinite horizon multi-stage differential game.

In contrast to the existing literature, the authors do not assume that after splitting, players will adopt Markovian strategies. Instead, the authors assume that while the splitting country plays Markovian, the remaining coalition remains committed to the collective control of pollution and plays open-loop.

Within a full linear-quadratic model, the authors characterize the optimal strategies. The authors later compare with the outcomes of the case where the splitting country and the remaining coalition play both Markovian. The authors highlight several interesting results in terms of the implications for long-term pollution levels and the duration of coalitions under heterogenous strategies as compared to Markovian behavior.

In this paper, the authors have illustrated the richness of the simplications of enlarging the set of strategies in terms of the emergence of coalitions, their duration and the implied welfare levels per player. Varying only three parameters (the technological gap, pollution damage and coalition payoff share distribution across players), the authors have been able to generate, among other findings, quite different rankings of welfare per player depending on whether the remaining coalitions after split play Markovian or stay precommited to the pre-splitting period decisions.

The purpose of this chapter is to analyse the possible causes of the Peruvian Amazon Company’s death.

This study uses secondary sources to document the trajectory of the Peruvian Amazon Company, the rubber export boom, and the different market forces affecting the wild rubber industry. By examining different sources that document the case of the Peruvian Amazon Company and the wild rubber extraction in the Amazon, this text aims to analyse the possible causes of the Peruvian Amazon Company extinction.

After analysing the existing literature on the Peruvian Amazon Company and the wild rubber industry, it was possible to find evidence about the problems related with land ownership, labour and international prices, along with the internationally known scandals, as the principal causes of the company’s death.

The case of the Peruvian Amazon Company, explores how an unsustainable business model could eventually lead a once successful company to its death. The contribution of the following chapter is based on the description of the causes of the Peruvian Amazon Company’s death. Previous studies had analysed the internationalization strategies implemented by the company. Although, an evaluation of causes of the company’s real extinction had not been presented.

The purpose of this paper is to study the corrosion rate for X52, X60, X65, X70 and X80 steel immersed in Mexican oilfield produced water. For the electrochemical characterization of the five steels rotating disk electrodes, 20°C, 30°C and 45°C of experimental temperature and 0, 500, 1,000 and 2,000 rpm of rotation speed were taken into account. The temperature dependence was analyzed using Arrhenius law. Thus, Rct values obtained from EIS data in comparison with the corrosion rate obtained from polarization curves data were taken into account. Hydrodynamic effects were analyzed by Rct and corrosion rate data.

Electrochemical impedance spectroscopy and potentiodynamic polarization techniques were used to assess the electrochemical behavior for five pipe steels steel immersed in a natural solution.

The resistance and corrosion rate taken from electrochemical tests decreased as temperature and hydrodynamic condition also decreased. In addition, the Arrhenius parameter revealed that the natural solution increased the corrosion rate as the activation energy decreased. Typical branches related to reduction-oxidation reaction (dissolution-activation process or corrosion products dissolution) on steel surface were discussed. Optical images analysis shows that corrosion products for X65 steel exposed to oilfield produced water can be attributed to more susceptibility to corrosion damage for this steel grade (Quej-Ake et al., 2018), which is increased with the temperature and rotation speed of the working electrode.

Corrosion process of the five steels exposed to oilfield produced water could be perceptive when Arrhenius analysis is taken into account. This is because oilfield produced water is the most aggressive condition (brine reservoir and sour water) for internal pipelines walls and storage tanks (brine tanks). Thus, stagnant condition was considered as a more extreme corrosive condition because produced water is stored in atmospheric stationary tanks as well as it is transported under laminar condition in zones where oilfield produced water is maintaining in the bottom of the pipe during the production, transporting and storing of the crude oil. In addition, a brief operational process for Reynolds number and the flowrate of the stock tank barrel per day (Q in STBD) using field and Reynolds number data is discussed.

This article reviews research in the USA bearing on trust in physicians and medical institutions.

This article provides a conceptual analysis, and general review of the literature.

Empirical research of medical trust is burgeoning in the USA, and a fairly clear conceptual model of interpersonal physician trust has emerged. However, most studies focus on individual patients and their physicians, due to the highly individualistic attitudes that prevail in the USA. Lacking are studies of more social dimensions of trust in broader medical institutions. A conceptual model of trust is presented to help draw these relevant distinctions, and to review the US literature. Also presented are the full set of trust scales, developed at Wake Forest University, which follow this conceptual model. These conceptual categories may differ, however, in other languages and cultures.

The considerable body of research in the USA on patients' trust in individual physicians should help inform and focus international efforts to study social trust in medical institutions.

The understanding of the later stage (i.e. the exploitation phase) in the new product development (NPD) process by companies from emerging markets is underdeveloped. The purpose of this paper is to address this lack and, by drawing upon a data set from Turkish firms, explore how different factors affect the exploitation phase of the NPD process.

Multiple hierarchical regression analyses were carried out on a sample of 671 Turkish firms operating in five industries (i.e. information and communication technologies, biomedical, machinery, chemical and plastic, and food and beverage) in the Izmir region (Turkey) to test the hypotheses.

Results reveal major differences regarding human capital, leadership, marketing capabilities, and business and institutional networks in terms of the commercialization of newly developed products in domestic and international markets.

By focusing on the exploitation stage, this paper extents the growing research efforts to study the NPD process of companies in emerging economies other than China by using primary data from Turkey.

In the context of Dynamic Factor Models, we compare point and interval estimates of the underlying unobserved factors extracted using small- and big-data procedures. Our paper differs from previous works in the related literature in several ways. First, we focus on factor extraction rather than on prediction of a given variable in the system. Second, the comparisons are carried out by implementing the procedures considered to the same data. Third, we are interested not only on point estimates but also on confidence intervals for the factors. Based on a simulated system and the macroeconomic data set popularized by Stock and Watson (2012), we show that, for a given procedure, factor estimates based on different cross-sectional dimensions are highly correlated. On the other hand, given the cross-sectional dimension, the maximum likelihood Kalman filter and smoother factor estimates are highly correlated with those obtained using hybrid procedures. The PC estimates are somehow less correlated. Finally, the PC intervals based on asymptotic approximations are unrealistically tiny.

The overall aim of this paper is to identify the human capital and organizational factors that facilitate knowledge supporting system to boost innovation in emerging markets. The innovative capability of organizations depends undoubtedly on how successful they are in the generation of knowledge, either via external acquisition or internal creation, and how organizational culture, management support and human capital factors are significant.

To validate this phenomenon, a quantitative explanatory study was designed. Data collection was carried out through a questionnaire completed by 211 respondent of firms located in Mexico. During data analysis, structural equation modeling was implemented with the support of SmartPLS 3.0 to understand the moderating role of organizational factors and human capital between knowledge support system and innovativeness.

The findings show that it is fundamental to build theories grounded in the particular realities of Latin American countries. For instance, these results suggest that there are two paths of innovation in Mexico in which organizational and human factors play key but differentiated roles. On the one hand, organizational culture, top management support, commitment and openness to innovation are essential to building and maintaining a knowledge support system that enables innovation. Additionally, promoting people-oriented organizations is key to innovation. Human capital factors, such as collaborators' motivation, professional skills and the opportunity to learn, intensify the knowledge support system and innovative capability.

The main limitations of the study are that only Mexican firms have been analyzed, and it is not possible to generalize the results to other contexts. Additionally, we have not identified whether the organizations that participated in the study originated in Mexico or are global enterprises that operate in Mexico. It could be significant to analyze whether multinationals from other countries that are operating in Mexico are more committed to learning to innovate than Mexican firms and the differences in their knowledge generation activities.

The results of this study invite: (1) Managers to develop strategic initiatives that systematically promote knowledge generation activities identifying external and internal activities that allow them to build and maintain a knowledge support system, (2) Organizations to promote collaborative spaces in which employees can work in teams and strengthen their social ties, identifying communication physical and virtual spaces to share new ideas, seek new ways of doing things, and explore new processes and activities. This process will be significant in a culture where resistance to change predefines how knowledge translates into innovation.

The improvement of collaborators skills must be accompanied by other policies to enhance the innovation and business environment including the modernization and expansion of infrastructure. It is fundamental that governments firms and universities jointly develop a research agenda that will lead to the identification of significant issues and the effectiveness of solutions to foster innovation in Mexico. Only a holistic approach is likely to help the country move up the value chain and become a knowledge economy. In fact innovation is seen as a social process of public sector organizations that promote knowledge infrastructure such as universities and the government agencies that produce knowledge.

These results suggest that there are two paths of innovation in Mexico in which organizational and human factors play a key but differentiated role. In Mexican firms, innovative capability is possible due to knowledge support systems built on organizational factors, and human capital factors, such as professional skills and motivation for opportunities to learn which intensify innovation.