Seminar: The Internationalization of Firms and Management Practices: A Firm-Level Study of Vietnam

About the Seminar

Production fragmentation has become a global trend in recent decades. Observers claim that participating in a global value chain (GVC) is crucial for a country’s economic development. However, local firms in developing countries still tend to find it difficult to participate in global production networks, and it is not clear how local workers can benefit from these networks. This seminar explores the mechanism of the GVC participation of firms from the perspective of firms’ management practices, using results from a survey of Vietnamese firms.

Presentation I:

Internationalization of Firms, Human Resource Management Practices, and Workers in Developing Countries:  An Overview

Isao Kamata, Kobe University

The presentation provides an overview of the relationship between internationalization and productivity of firms in which human-resource management practices play an important role as a key determinant of firms’ productivity. The presentation also discusses some of the potential benefits from firms’ participation in GVCs that would accrue to local workers, especially in developing economies.  Finally, It will lay out the background of the survey that we have been conducting.

Isao Kamata is an Associate Professor at Kobe University. His research covers a variety of topics in international trade such as firm heterogeneity in the comparative-advantage framework and labor in trade. He was previously researching and teaching as an assistant professor at the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Wisconsin. He received PhD in Economics from the University of Michigan–Ann Arbor.

Presentation 2:

How Do Internationalized Firms Differ from Non-internationalized?:  Evidence from Survey Results

Hitoshi Sato, IDE-JETRO

The presentation will discuss the role of management practices in the internationalization of domestic firms, based on the results of an original survey in the Vietnamese manufacturing sector. Special attention will be given to human resource management (HRM) practices, such as compensation, recruitment, and job training, to capture the effect of globalization on workers at the firm level. We find that internationalized firms tend to be more enthusiastic about the formal training of production workers, modernization of production and operation, and product and process innovation. Differences in skill and experience requirement for newly employed managers are less recognizable, but internationalized firms tend to have managers with overseas education.

Hitoshi Sato is a Senior Research Fellow at IDE-JETRO. His research field is international trade. Dr Sato’s recent research interest include the interaction between the internationalization of firms and labor markets. He recently worked with ILO on the labor market consequences of globalized East Asian economies. He received PhD in Economics from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Registration

To register, please fill in this form and email it to iseasevents3@iseas.edu.sg by 12 December 2016.