Globalization of Industrial R&D in Developing Countries: A Sociological Perspective

Abstract

The 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.