TY  - JOUR
TI  - Globalization of Industrial R&D in Developing Countries: A Sociological Perspective
T2  - Foresight and STI Governance
IS  - Foresight and STI Governance
KW  - internationalization
KW  - multinational companies
KW  - triad countries
KW  - flatter technological regime
KW  - off-shoring R&D services
KW  - semi-periphery stage
KW  - multinationalization
KW  - globalization
AB  - Binay Kumar Pattnaik — Professor of Sociology, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur. E-mail: binay@iitk.ac.in   Address: Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, 208016, IndiaThe study analyses the impact of changing patterns of globalization on the diffusion of R&D in developing countries. The main drivers of R&D globalization are multinational companies (MNCs). In early stages of globalization, these companies were hesitant to extend their R&D base in the developing world due to weak knowledge-based assets, poor infrastructure, and limited markets. The changing context of competition and necessity of enhancing their performance, however, forced large corporations to be increasingly active in involving fast-developing countries into their own R&D and innovation projects. Emerging countries previously served as suppliers of low-waged workforce for MNCs. However, in due course, some of them, especially China, India, Brazil, Singapore, have built their own S&T capacities and become new R&D and innovation hubs.The paper distinguishes between internationalization, multinationalization and globalization. For globalization, it shows how R&D indicators for industrial enterprises, universities, and public research organizations, drawn from developed country data, can be applied for adaptation to evolution in developing countries. The paper conceptualizes the impact of R&D globalization in the following areas: the emerging international division of labour in R&D; the emerging flatter world technological regime; the multinationalization of R&D in developing country firms; the globalization of local R&D developed in firms of peripheral countries; and the off-shoring of R&D services by firms in developing countries. These formulations are based on a wide spectrum of reported empirical and secondary data from across developing countries.Placing the impact in the theoretical framework of the new dependence school, the author concludes that center-periphery relations are also evolving, eroding the distinctiveness of the concept of periphery.
AU  - Binay Kumar Pattnaik
UR  - https://foresight-journal.hse.ru/en/2011-5-3/37322266.html
PY  - 2011
SP  - 4-16
VL  - 5