Plant shutdowns shape industry productivity, the dynamics of employment, and industrial restructuring. Plant closures account for more than half of gross job destruction in US manufacturing. This paper examines the effects of firm structure on US manufacturing plant closures. Plants belonging to multi-plant firms and those owned by US multinationals are less likely to exit. However, the superio...

Empirical studies document that resource reallocation across production units plays an important role in accounting for aggregate productivity growth in the U.S. manufacturing. Distortions in financial market could hinder the reallocation process and hence may adversely affect aggregate productivity growth. This paper studies the quantitative impact of costly external finance on aggregate produ...

Purpose – This paper seeks to investigate whether linkages, proposed by previous researchers, among business strategies and structural and infrastructural investment decisions of manufacturing are empirically supported. Design/methodology/approach – A sample of 101 US manufacturing firms is classified into three groups based on their predominant business strategies. The classification is valida...

This chapter describes an empirical analysis of the mediating effects of supply chain coordination strategy and manufacturing IT infrastructure on the relationship between business complexity and inventory turnover. Business complexity describes the diversity and volatility associated with a firm’s product markets. To cope with this complexity, firms deploy inventory buffers. This deployment sh...

Supply chain management (SCM) is the integration and strategic alliance involving all the value-creating elements in the supply, manufacturing, and distribution processes from raw material extraction, the transformation process, and end user consumption. This paper explores the SCM activities carried out by electronic manufacturing organizations in Malaysia and determines the correlation betwee...

This paper uses longitudinal data of more than 13,000 firms to analyze the effects of on-the-job training on firm level productivity and wages. Workers receiving training are on average more productive than workers not receiving training. This makes firms more productive. On-the-job training increases firm level measured productivity between 1 and 2%, compared to firms that do not provide train...

Web-based B2B exchanges have experienced a significant growth in recent years. While some B2B exchanges have met with huge success, several others have failed to live up to expectations. There is hardly any systematic study to assess the value of B2B marketplaces for participating firms. Our research employs an event-study methodology to investigate the effect of various industry, firm, and exc...

Precis: Studies of foreign direct investment in Ireland have concentrated on the absence of linkages and the high proportion of output exported. This paper analyses a sample of manufacturing firms in the Mid-West Region to highlight other relatively neglected aspects, such as managerial skills and technology and argues that the managerial differences between foreign and native firms are such as...