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This study aims to analyse how multinational corporations (MNCs) organise value chain activities to penetrate new market segments. It contributes by expanding traditional decisions regarding the vertical fine-slicing of value chain activities (whether performed internally or externally) and the consideration of resource-sharing decisions (integration or separation) for each value chain function.

The authors draw on primary data collected from two case study firms operating in the large emerging Chinese market: Volvo Construction Equipment AB and Epiroc AB. In-depth cases illustrate how foreign MNCs expand into new market segments and simultaneously target both the lower-priced mid-market and the premium segments in the Chinese mining and construction industry.

The results reveal that product diversification creates challenges for managers who must oversee new (vertical) value chains, often simultaneously. Beyond geography and modes of governance, managers must decide whether to integrate or separate value chain activities for the new product lines. The study identifies four main strategic choices for firms to address this complexity, focusing on the decision to internalise or externalise (i.e. within or across organisational boundaries) and integrate or separate value chain activities between different product lines.

This study builds upon the internalisation theory and recent international business contributions that focus on value chain configurations to explain MNCs’ product diversification as a growth strategy in a host emerging market. It also sheds light on the choice of conducting new activities in-house or externally and elucidates firms’ managerial decisions to operationally integrate or separate individual value chain activities. The study provides insights into the drivers explaining managerial decisions to configure value chain activities across product lines and contributes to the growing body of literature on MNC activities in emerging economies by highlighting that product diversification impacts entry mode diversity and resource sharing across units.

In electronic commerce, businesses require to integrate two kinds of activities – ones that are embedded into the physical value chains and the others that are built through information into the virtual chain. Although the relative importance of these two kinds of chain depends on the characteristics of the products and services, their integration, nevertheless, plays a critical role in the success of e‐commerce. In e‐commerce, more and more value chain activities are conducted electronically, therefore, businesses should understand the implication of the virtual value chain activities. The virtual chain offers a number of distinct advantages over the physical value chain. Some of these advantages lie in forging alliances between customers and manufacturers, advertising products and services selectively with effects of audio, video, and graphics, and saving time and money in efficiently processing customer orders and enquiries. Besides, e‐commerce offers flexibility in option pricing and customization of products and service, by reducing the constraints of time and space.

This study aims to discover a practical and effective way to apply the quality cost concept in Strategic Cost Management (SCM) framework. The interaction of preventive, appraisal and failure (PAF) activities in a company's internal value chain will be the starting point of SCM implementation.

This study begins by establishing value chain and quality costs as the scope of conceptual analysis. Discussions on the interrelationships between activities, quality and costs were gathered to clarify conceptual and practical gaps in the scope of the study. The PAF quality cost model is applied to find viable, practical solutions. The costs of activities will serve as performance indicators.

The PAF quality cost model depicts opportunities to lower costs and increase profit in a business simultaneously; current poor quality costs are the benchmark. Identifying PAF activities and costs in the business value chain and linking it with others is crucial in evaluating SCM applications. These linkages will generate a Quality Cost Chain (QCC). The leading indicator of improvement is a higher ratio between new possible failure costs (FC) and the combination of prevention and appraisal costs (PAC) than the current value, followed by a lower total quality cost (TQC). The subsequent attention is a lower ratio between the appraisal cost (AC) and prevention cost (PC). Mathematically, for assessing the operability of new quality-related activities, ΔPAC_new < ΔFC_new, TQC_new < TQC_current, (FC/PC)_new>(FC/PC)_current and (AC/PC)_new<(AC/PC)_current are proposed as feasible conditional-quantitative improvement criteria.

This study only discusses the relationship between quality costs and activities related to quality management in the PAF quality cost model, not cost behavior. This limitation opens up opportunities for future research that intends to link QCC with cost behavior in the context of managerial accounting and Strategic Cost Management. The use of QCC in certain industrial areas is the next research opportunity. The variety of PAF activities this study addresses originates from a wide range of industrial sectors; QCC research by sector may produce unique industrial quality cost phenomena.

QCC will make it easier for managers to evaluate how strategically their departments or activities contribute to quality costs at the departmental or organizational level, as well as to effectively and efficiently improve quality cost performance.

The quality-related activity and quality cost issues are still rarely treated as subjects of research studies in the field of Strategic Cost Management. Even so, the discussion tends to be very broad, complex and difficult to apply. This study combines a simple diagrammatic and mathematical approach to simplify the discussion and, at the same time, manage the value of strategic quality management.

This paper aims to investigate if the world top manufacturing corporations' cost structures are moving from tangible to intangible activities and their impact on profitability.

The theoretical approach is interdisciplinary, combining global value chains, international manufacturing networks, cost management literatures. The empirical approach has a sample out of financial statements' data from 220 multinational corporations between 2006 and 2017, grouping them by technological intensity. It is created the “COGS-share” indicator – the ratio between the costs of goods sold and overall costs and expenses – as a proxy for the firms' expenses of tangible and intangible value chain activities. It is tested as an explanatory variable for the companies' profits through dynamic panel data econometric models.

The results show that the cost structure still is very concentrated in tangibles. Though costs of both tangible and intangible activities negatively impact profits, they affect value generation differently: the higher the share of intangible in comparison to tangible activities in overall cost and expenses, the greater the profits in most manufacturing groups, regardless of their technological intensity.

The empirical analysis simplifies the composition of value chains per activity because financial statements data are aggregates, preventing detailed analysis by markets, business units or products. Stocks' levels are assumed to be at the desired level during the time series. The dataset does not allow value curves to be drawn because direct wages' data and more precise information on cost (especially deferred assets and wages) are missing.

The presented approach, particularly the COGS-share indicator, contribute to assess value generation from activities for improving corporate strategies and public policies on operations and cost management of global value chains.

Supporting upgrading decisions that impact value production, allocation and distribution between workers, firms and countries.

Interdisciplinary theoretical and empirical assessment of the manufacturing companies' cost structures and profits based on financial statements data for the better understanding of value generation from tangible and intangible activities.

Cocoa is regarded as a brown-golden crop, but its value chain activities are dominated by the elderly. Hence, focussing attention on the young generation of farmers is the surest way to reverse this trend and secure the future of the cocoa industry. This paper, therefore explores factors influencing youth participation in cocoa value chain activities in Ghana.

Primary data were collected using a multistage sampling technique. The authors used a semi-structured questionnaire in collecting data via interviews. Through the theory of utility maximization, a multivariate probit (MVP) model was estimated to identify factors influencing youth participation in cocoa value chain activities in Ghana.

The author found that some of the value chain activities are complementary, while others are substitutes. Participation in cocoa value chain activities is influenced by access to land, participation in training programmes in cocoa production, membership of Next Generation Cocoa Youth Programme (MASO), access to agricultural credit and other demographic characteristics.

Relevant information and youth-targeted projects enhance their participation in value chain activities.

This paper is one of the few studies that empirically analyses drivers of youth participation in cocoa value chain activities in Africa.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the value chain activities of shrimp firms in Bangladesh, and mapping the Porter’s (1985) value chain framework to see if it works or not. The present study identifies the gap, synthesizes and analyzes those gaps which lead the firms to create more values from firms to consumers.

Interviews were conducted with the shrimp industry managers in the southern region of Bangladesh. Exploratory qualitative research method was used and the questionnaire was semi-structured. Data were gathered from 43 firm managers. After sending multiple phone calls and face to face meeting, the response rate was 35.83 percentages.

Poor transportation, communication gap between the stakeholders, shortage of raw shrimps and lack of quality standard were the areas where shrimp industries were suffering. It was found that some of the primary and secondary activities of shrimp industries did not map with Porter’s framework. Based on Porter’s framework, the study suggested that analyzing and synthesizing those gaps can lead the firm more value and competitive advantages.

Limitations include a lack of knowledge on value chain and shortages of raw materials for the processing plants. Moreover, the sample size was small for this exploratory study.

Shrimp industries will learn standard value chain activities, and identify the gaps based on the mapping of Porter’s value chain.

Using Porter’s value chain this is the first empirical study in the shrimp firms in Bangladesh. The primary research contribution is the revised theoretical framework which can be used for further research on shrimp industries in Bangladesh.

Drawing on concepts from the resource-based view, the dynamic capabilities school, and competence-base theory, this chapter develops a value chain framework for evaluating and managing resources and capabilities. In common with activity-based value chains, our framework is a method for representing and analyzing the firm, and identifying what may be its optimal configuration. However, as opposed to an activity-based value chain, our approach is specifically designed to help clarify interrelationships between a firm's various assets and capabilities. Thus, it may help researchers and managers alike to analyze to what extent a firm's successes may be attributed to a certain set of resources and capabilities and whether there is scope to further develop them to advance the firm's strategies. Our value chain framework can be used singly or in conjunction with an activity value chain framework, depending on the strategic problem being addressed. However, we suggest that our resource and capabilities value chain will be most useful when determining how a firm's business processes should be funded, what resources and capabilities should make them up, or how these decisions could affect the firm's present organizational structure.

This paper aims to investigate the current value chain activities grounded on Porter’s value chain theory and to examine the drivers of strategic environmentalism that influence sustainable value chain adoption. This study further constructs a prescriptive model to reveal the extent to which information communication technology (ICT)-based industries are adopting sustainable value chain practices.

Data were collected using questionnaire from selected ISO 14000/14001-certified ICT-based firms in Malaysia and analyzed using partial least square-structural equation modeling.

Results reveal that the primary activities positively influence sustainable value chain. Moreover, results indicate that support activities significantly influence sustainable value chain adoption in ICT-based firms. Results further show that strategic environmentalism drivers have an impact on sustainable value chain adoption.

Data were collected from ICT-based industries in Malaysia only. Additionally, this research extends the body of knowledge and offers theoretical implications for ICT-based industries in Malaysia and other emerging economies in adopting sustainable value chain activities.

Practically, this study assists ICT-based industries to change their current paradigm from the traditional operations to a more holistic approach toward supporting practitioners to simultaneously achieve social responsibility, environmental and economic growth.

This study offers social implications for ICT-based industries to implement cleaner operations by decreasing CO₂ emission, lessening energy usage, diminishing cost incurred and minimizing usage of natural resources, thereby increasing product recovery and recycle-ability of IT hardware.

This study is one of the first to address the issue related to sustainable value chain in ICT-based industry by providing a roadmap on how practitioners can implement sustainable initiatives or more significantly, how to infuse these initiatives in their current chain, while concurrently enhancing competitiveness. Furthermore, this paper examines the current activities implemented by practitioners toward sustainable value chain adoption and explores the correlation of the drivers of strategic environmentalism with regard to sustainable value chain.

We continue to be intrigued by the number of managers we meet who haven't read Michael Porter's book Competitive Advantage. For them and practitioners on the corporate battlefront, we offer this synopsis of Porter's ideas from Professor Reimann's Managing for Value.

There has been a constant evolution over the past two decades in the banking business portfolio, due to economic globalisation, deregulation, and the advent of new technologies. This trend continues today and is even more marked by the emergence of production businesses which have traditionally been included in the value chain of banking services.

An examination of this phenomenon is made possible by value chain analysis. This concept has been adapted to banking. The notions of organisational competencies and value chain have been linked to detect value-adding activities in the various bank services and identify opportunities for new conditions for value production.