Critically discuss the reasons why location has again become a Essay

Critically discuss the reasons why location has again become a critical issue in explaining the global competitiveness of firms - Essay Example They should use all the resources at their disposal to make their markets competitive globally, while at the same time reducing any international trade barriers and limitations. On their part, businesses need to make adjustments in order to compete effectively in the global market since they cannot purely rely on good location as was the case before this trend. They must heavily invest in information technology and adopt cost effective management practices to reach this new status. Moreover, they need to adopt international management practices and culture as well as develop a positive attitude for efficient management. Companies should also consider making regional and global partnerships and connections but taking into account all pros and cons of such ventures. This paper examines the role of location in global competitiveness of multi-national enterprises, MNEs. It then investigates why location has ceased to be the only factor in the success of international business. Role of location, competitiveness and advantage The geography of international business activities greatly depends on the entry mode and competitive advantages of the firms involved. This interdependence becomes clear when one tries examining the dynamics of the activities of knowledge intensive multinational enterprises, MNE (Dunning, 1998).... economy characterized by the emergence of intellectual capital as an important wealth creation asset, globalization of economic activities due to advancement in transport and communication technologies and the emergence of collaborative capitalism. These developments have had an impact on the geography of the activities of foreign direct investments, FDIs and MNEs (Dunning, 1998). The role of spatial transaction costs is slowly shifting, reflecting the liberalisation of cross border markets and the varying attributes of economic performance (Yip, 2002). This cost reduction caused the formation of more market-seeking FDIs and at the same time boosted a welfare enhancing division of labour and also favoured the spatial bunching of firms engaged in allied activities, so that each may gain from the existence of the other, and having access to localized support services, specialized factor inputs, custom-made demand patterns, distribution networks and shared service centres (Tallman and Yip, 2001). Complementary foreign asset and capability sought after by MNEs who wish to add value to their main competitive advantages are progressively more of a knowledge facilitating type and that is mostly the case as their affiliates become more firmly rooted in host economies. A good example is the increasing of value addition in Japanese manufacturing subsidiaries of Europe and North America. An exception to this is some low value-adding activities in the under developed areas of the globe (Tallman and Yip, 2001).As the calculated asset acquiring investment has turned out to be more essential, the location requirements of corporations have changed from the market-oriented or natural resource-oriented to those concerning access to knowledge intensive assets and learning

Was William Shakespeare the author of his plays and sonnets Essay

Was William Shakespeare the author of his plays and sonnets - Essay Example It is difficult to determine the identity of the young man, which is apparent from references made in individual sonnets (Baxter, 1917). As the most important the documents of the time did not mentioned such name such as a Shakespeare. During the Renaissance period, poets were not allowed to publish poetry, so it is possible to assume that one of the poets took a pseudonym "William Shake-speare". Critics suppose that his true name was Edward de Vere. Edward de Vere was better educated than Shakespeare which allowed de Vere to describe events and manners of those times in details. On the other hand, the main problem is that there is no evidence that Shakespeare was an actor. "For example, there is no record of any part he may have played, and only two posthumous traditions to bit parts" (A Beginner's Guide, n.d.). The main fact against Shakespeare's authorship is that no manuscripts of Shakespeare's plays survive. Indeed, there are very few manuscripts available to scholars of plays of the Elizabethan and Jacobean period. Also, many editions, used as a basis for making modern texts into performances in modern theatres, have been put together by editors from early (sixteenth and seventeenth century) printed versions of the plays, published in small editions after the play itself had ceased to be regularly performed. In these editions the text is not always divided into acts and scenes, and when it is, the work, together with the punctuation, spelling and stage directions, is that of the first compositors who set the type from a manuscript probably supplied by the theatre. The first eight plays of Shakespeare to be published did not bear his name, but this was standard practice at the time, since few editions of plays bore the name of the author. It is important to note that this was normal pra ctice at the time, for once a dramatist had sold his play to a theatrical enterprise, he gave up his ownership and copyright of the work. So, it is possible to say that the plays were not written by Shakespeare. In a preface to their work, the editors claim that their texts are more reliable than those to be found in the quartos, many of which were illegally or hastily prepared. (Lancashire, 1998). Other facts against Shakespeare's authorship state that some of the earliest printed versions of the same Shakespeare play differ, quite significantly, in the text that they print. The question then arises as to which of the different versions is the 'correct' one. The main problem is that there is no definitive, generally excepted edition. Also most all texts have been reconstructed by generations of scholars from several of the earliest printed editions of the play. In the practice of Shakespeare's theatre, the authority of the written text was secondary to that of the spoken and the visual, and what was considered to be theatrically effective - what made people actually want to pay money to visit the theatre - was the paramount consideration of the actors and dramatist. The Elizabethan theatre did not possess a huge repertory of classic plays from the past. Almost all the plays shown on the public stages were being shown for the first time, this meant that there was tremendous pressure on dramatists such as Shakespeare to go on producing new plays, because audiences wanted, above all, to see new work. The players, or certainly