Donald Lessard

Massachusetts Institute of Technology | MIT · MIT Sloan School of Management

Strategy in a global setting involves competition in industries that extend across national boundaries and among firms with different national home bases that may tap into strategic resources in more than one location. The resources that the firm accesses from its home country provide it with international competitive advantage only if they are rel...

Raymond E. Levitt, W. Richard Scott and Michael J. Garvin 2019. All rights reserved. Social network analysis (SNA), supported by multiple software tools, has become an accepted methodology to document, visualize and interpret relationships among participants in an organization, community or other social network. Participants are represented as node...

Plain language summary Today's multinational enterprises (MNEs) exhibit characteristics that have not been discussed very much in previous studies. They are stateless in the sense that operations are spread across nations, but also maintain some central authority. We call such MNEs ‘meta‐MNEs’ and analyze them using the Dynamic Capabilities framewo...

Megaprojects (MPs) are intricate solutions shaped over many years to fit specific contexts and market needs. This chapter focuses on MPs as games of innovation where sponsors, experts, and potentially opposing stakeholders interact to shape opportunities into projects, and to design and deliver these projects. Each project calls for multiple innova...

Megaprojects (MPs) are intricate solutions shaped over many years to fit specific contexts and market needs. This chapter focuses on MPs as games of innovation where sponsors, experts, and potentially opposing stakeholders interact to shape opportunities into projects, and to design and deliver these projects. Each project calls for multiple innova...

A firm's strategy typically is defined in terms of its position in the industry or landscape that operates in and the competitive advantage of the firm on that landscape. This competitive advantage, in turn, derives from a combination of assets (what the firm owns) and capabilities (how the firm does what it does). While the image of the oil and ga...

Twenty-five years ago, Dunning articulated a vision for greater interdisciplinary grounding in international business (IB) research. Motivated by his foresight, this special issue aims to encourage research that explicitly combines ideas from different disciplines, with a view to creating new integrative theories with greater explanatory power than...

Why have relatively poor and underdeveloped countries been able to spawn so many global firms in the last two decades? Are emerging market multinationals (EMNCs) really different from successful multinationals from developed economies? This book tackles these and other fundamental theoretical questions about EMNCs. A distinguished group of research...

A critical element in the shaping of large engineering projects (LEPs) is associated with the multi-type and networked relationships between LEPs and their stakeholders in both market and nonmarket environments. In this paper, we advance a multidisciplinary network approach, namely Stakeholder Value Network (SVN), as a lens to examine, understand,...

This paper describes our conceptualization of complexity in Large Infrastructure Projects (LIPs). Since complexity itself is an emergent concept that is hard to pin down, we focus on the relationship between various project features and, particularly, properties associated with complexity such as difficulty, outcome variability and non-linearity, a...

This chapter explores the uncertainties associated with today’s highly interdependent supply chains and the risks inherent their geographic dispersion and organizational fragmentation. It first lays out the sources of risk and their potential consequences to the corporations who are supply chain owners, orchestrators, or customers; workers engaged...

This chapter explores the parallel evolution of international business forms, the context for international business, and that ways that IB scholars frame these two. It employs a capabilities-based perspective, the RAT-CAT framework, to argue that Emerging Market Multinational Companies do have so-called “O-advantages”, built both on experience at...

In order to understand the strategic implications of indirect stakeholder relationships on large engineering projects, this research develops a qualitative/quantitative network approach, namely the Stakeholder Value Network analysis, to model the multiple relationships between stakeholders as value exchanges. With theoretical support from the Socia...

La creciente presencia de multinacionales de países emergentes (EMNEs) entre las empresas más importantes del mundo hace necesario entender cuáles son los factores que determinan la sostenibilidad de sus ventajas competitivas a nivel internacional. En el presente artículo nos basamos en el análisis detallado de la expansión internacional de CEMEX,...

Based on the analysis of the international expansion of CEMEX, the Mexican construction materials firm, we propose that the sustainable growth of multinationals from emerging markets depends on the continuous renewal of its capabilities platform. In contrast with previous studies, we suggest that the new capabilities come, in many cases, from the p...

The key to international business is that it approaches empirical phenomena at a variety of levels of analysis, using a variety of theoretical frameworks. The most important levels of analysis are the individual manager, the firm, the industry, and the environment. In each category there is vast heterogeneity. Figure 2.1 illustrates this interactio...

Nos basamos en el análisis de la expansión internacional de CEMEX, el fabricante de materiales de construcción mexicano, para proponer que el crecimiento sostenido de las multinacionales de países emergentes depende de la continua renovación su plataforma de capacidades. En contraste con estudios previos, apuntamos que las nuevas capacidades provie...

The present geographic pattern of investment in oil and gas exploration is skewed away from the developing countries and towards the developed countries. This paper presents statistical data relevant to this situation, analyzes its causes, and proposes solutions. The paper argues that this phenomenon is largely distributional, arising from continui...

In this paper we argue that risk management can be an important source of competitive advantage for firms. For this to happen, managers must overcome four deep-seated notions about the management of risk: the myopic conception that risk is a collection of unconnected threats to the survival of a firm, the belief that risk management is largely a fi...

Since Vernon's seminal work (Vernon 1966; Vernon 1971), international firm expansion has been predominantly portrayed as a phenomenon led by firms located in economically and technologically developed countries in search of new markets, natural resources, knowledge leverage, and/or risk diversification. While venturing abroad is not devoid of obsta...

Different valuation methods can lead to different corporate investment decisions, and the conventional “static, single discount rate” DCF approach in particular is biased against many of the kinds of decisions that corporate managers tend to view as “strategic.” Reducing the bias from valuations involves two main tasks: treating risk in a way that...

In this paper we examine the practices of representative samples of U.S.- and U.K.-based international investment managers in order to determine whether and how they are affected by accounting diversity and, therefore, by the presence or absence of quantitative reconciliation, and what their views are towards greater disclosure, reconciliation, or...

Large engineering projects (LEPs) are high-stakes games characterized by substantial irreversible commitments, skewed reward structures when they are successful, and high probabilities of failure. Their dynamics also change over time. The journey from initial conception to ramp-up and revenue generation takes 10 years on average. While the €ܦront...

In this study of the international oil market, the relationship between primary and secondary recycling in the capital markets as well as the accommodating movements in the goods market are discussed in a context of an adjustment process. It is argued that time for adjustment is necessary for both oil-importing and oil-exporting countries. An inter...

Strategic analysis in a global setting involves competition in industries that extend across national boundaries and among firms with different national home bases that may tap into strategic resources in more than one location. This note provides frameworks for global strategic analysis at four levels: the geographic scope of the industry, the co...

Understanding and managing risks in projects especially large engineering initiatives are challenging tasks. Risks first need to be dissected into categories such as (1) market-related: demand, financial and supply; (2) completion: technical, construction and operational; (3) institutional: regulatory, social acceptibility and sovereign. Strategies...

The book is based on an international research project that analyzed sixty LEPs, among them the Boston Harbor cleanup; the first phase of subway construction in Ankara, Turkey; a hydro dam on the Caroni River in Venezuela; and the construction of offshore oil platforms west of Flor, Norway. As the number, complexity, and scope of large engineering...

The book is based on an international research project that analyzed sixty LEPs, among them the Boston Harbor cleanup; the first phase of subway construction in Ankara, Turkey; a hydro dam on the Caroni River in Venezuela; and the construction of offshore oil platforms west of Flor, Norway. As the number, complexity, and scope of large engineering...

The book is based on an international research project that analyzed sixty LEPs, among them the Boston Harbor cleanup; the first phase of subway construction in Ankara, Turkey; a hydro dam on the Caroni River in Venezuela; and the construction of offshore oil platforms west of Flor, Norway. As the number, complexity, and scope of large engineering...

The book is based on an international research project that analyzed sixty LEPs, among them the Boston Harbor cleanup; the first phase of subway construction in Ankara, Turkey; a hydro dam on the Caroni River in Venezuela; and the construction of offshore oil platforms west of Flor, Norway. As the number, complexity, and scope of large engineering...

this document have personal views that range widely across the political spectrum. We all believe, however, that it is important---and possible---to think about these issues at a level that goes beyond today's political debates. We hope that, by appealing to deep human values and imagining new possibilities, it will be possible to reframe today's p...

"Presented at the 1997 SMS Conference in Barcelona, Spain."

Offshore projects, especially those in emerging economies, are generally viewed as more risky, and thus as contributing less to shareholder value, than otherwise comparable domestic investments. Emerging economies are typically more volatile than the economies of industrialized countries. They also present a greater array of risks that are (perceiv...

A model of effective decision-making in a situation of distributed knowledge is developed, drawing on three perspectives: the sociocognitive perspective, which focuses on framing issues; the economic perspective, which focuses on the role played by incentives in the integration of knowledge and decision-making authority; and the process perspective...

According to top managers of multinational enterprises (MNEs) and the applied international management literature studies of their strategy and organization, a unique benefit that these firms seek to obtain from their multinational reach is a richer learning experience about products, processes and organizing principles.1 A major challenge is how t...

Die Globalisierung der Märkte stellt eine ernste Bedrohung für alle Unternehmen dar, die sich ihre Wettbewerbsvorteile unter Ausnutzung der alten länderspezifischen Marktregeln erkämpft haben. Sie bietet aber auch neue Chancen für Unternehmen, die in der Lage sind, ihre Aktivitäten so umzustrukturieren, daß die durch eine globale Tätigkeit induzier...

"Paper presented at World Bank Symposium on Dealing with the Debt Crisis: The Evolution of Developing Country Debt Difficulties and a Range of Policy Options, Washington, DC, September 22, 1988--Revised February 1989."--T.p.

Despite the political saliency of employment, the growing scholarly literature on financial centers contains only a few cursory estimates of employment in international banking. We use simple methods to calculate the total and marginal direct employment effects of Panama's International Banking Center. The results, which appear reasonable, suggest...

"This paper draws substantially on a much longer study that John Williamson and I published, entitled: Financial intermediation beyond the debt crisis, Washington : Institute for Internal Economics, 1985"--P.2. Bibliography: p. 40-41. Donald R. Lessard.

Country risk stands out in today’s global financial system for several reasons. It is perceived to be a major threat to the system’s stability, more so than virtually any other single category of risk. It also is perceived to follow different rules than most other types of risks, and hence to require different institutional approaches. This is refl...

Four principal conclusions emerge from this analysis. First, the present geographic pattern of oil and gas exploration and development is skewed away from developing countries and toward industrialized countries - the US in particular. Second, one explanation of why more exploration investments in LDCs have not been undertaken may arise from contin...

In evaluating projects that cut across national boundaries, firms must deal with a variety of issues seldom encountered within a single country that affect the distribution of net operating cash flows available to the parent, as well as the valuation of these cash flows.1 Factors influencing the statistical distribution of net operating cash flows,...

The availability of appropriate financing is likely to be a dominant factor determining the scope and pace of energy investment by developing countries in the 1980s. Reliance on self-finance will severely limit development for most countries, but traditional external finance-credit from private banks or multilateral agencies such as the World Bank-...

The structure of taxes and fiscal contracts between host countries and foreign companies has major implications for the success of oil development projects. This is because of several key characteristics of such projects: large investment outlays, long lead times to project completion, and long periods of project output and payout. These characteri...

Many contract forms have been designed to address the unique characteristics of foreign oil companies and host countries, but none has withstood the pressures of changing circumstances for either party. The authors design appropriate contracts that match risk and return by taking advantage of differences in ability to bear risk, providing appropria...

Multinational corporations with decentralized responsibility for operations face a serious dilemma. If financial policies, including the treatment of foreign exchange risks, are set centrally, the performances of operating groups will be influenced by exchange risk policies over whose effect they have little control. If financial decisions are left...

International finance has emerged as one of the most active and exciting areas of management for positive and normative research in recent years. The international economic environment has changed radically, raising new questions but also providing fascinating observations of the interaction of the various elements of the world financial system. At...

International finance should be of great value to developing countries because their potential growth paths are ‘out of step’ with the world economy and because the gambles they must take to develop are much more diversifiable in the context of the world economy than locally. However, the actual benefits of North-South finance have been limited by...

Les budgets fédéraux ne tiennent aucun compte des politiques qui garantissent les emprunts privés: c'est une lacune importante. Si les garanties n'impliquent pas de déboursés immédiats, elles n'en coûtent pas moins cher puisqu'elles engagent le gouvernement à des dépenses futures (conditionnelles). Le coût prévu des garanties devrait donc faire par...

This volume consists of papers chosen from the Boston Area Public Enterprise Group Conference that was held in 1980 and concentrated on public enterprises in less-developed countries. The Boston Area Public Enterprise Group is composed of scholars dedicated to understanding the public enterprises operating in the world's mixed economies. Public ent...

Monetary policies of the ECB and US Fed can be characterised by Taylor rules, that is both central banks seem to be setting rates by taking into account the output gap and inflation. We also set up and tested Taylor rules which incorporate money growth and the euro-dollar exchange rate, thereby improving the fit between actual and Taylor rule based...

A vast and often confusing economics literature relates competition to investment in innovation. Following Joseph Schumpeter, one view is that monopoly and large scale promote investment in research and development by allowing a firm to capture a larger fraction of its benefits and by providing a more stable platform for a firm to invest in R&D. Ot...

The purpose of the proposed research is to develop an approach to public enterprise finance that provides insights into the financial linkages of public enterprises with their parent governments and capital markets, the financial behavior of the public enterprises themselves, and most importantly, the implications of these linkages and behavioral p...

Much of the existing literature on homeownership assumes that financial markets work well enough to allow households to translate permanent income into effective demand. However, transaction costs, imperfections, and uncertainties all constrain the markets' operation so that people are often forced to choose a quantity of housing stock that diverge...

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Zusammenfassung Umfangreiche OPEC Direktinvestitionen in IndustrielÄndern und die Theorie auslÄndischer Direktinvestitionen — Ein Widerspruch ? — Dieser Aufsatz befa\t sich mit dem Ausma\, in welchem die Vermögensverschiebung zugunsten ölexportierender LÄnder zu umfangreichen Direktinvestitionen in wichtige Privatunternehmen der IndustrielÄnder dur...