International Production in Times of Industrial Internet of Things Platforms: Reassessing the Eclectic Paradigm in light of platform-based MNE Activity in China’s Manufacturing Sector
(2019) EKHS33 20191Department of Economic History
- Abstract
- Fueled by the maturity of digital infrastructures and intelligent technologies, the industrial Internet of Things (IoT) plays a pivotal role in transforming the scope and pattern of international production. The platform as a service market (PaaS) as a major field of the industrial IoT has emerged only recently and enables factory operators with smart connected machinery to access data-driven cloud services. The early providers of these industrial IoT-platforms, however, face great challenges in their global scale expansion such as market fragmentation, technological and operational complexity. So far, International Business (IB) research on the subject is either introductory in nature or have been mostly restricted to the... (More)
- Fueled by the maturity of digital infrastructures and intelligent technologies, the industrial Internet of Things (IoT) plays a pivotal role in transforming the scope and pattern of international production. The platform as a service market (PaaS) as a major field of the industrial IoT has emerged only recently and enables factory operators with smart connected machinery to access data-driven cloud services. The early providers of these industrial IoT-platforms, however, face great challenges in their global scale expansion such as market fragmentation, technological and operational complexity. So far, International Business (IB) research on the subject is either introductory in nature or have been mostly restricted to the internationalisation of digital platform-companies in the Business-to-Consumer (B2C) market. This Thesis employs a single case study approach and aims to fill the research gap by reassessing the Eclectic Paradigm in light of emerging industrial IoT-platform activities by multinational firms in China’s manufacturing sector. The findings pose fresh challenges to the original key assumptions especially behind the internalization advantages of multinational enterprises (MNEs). By conducting semi-structured interviews with industry experts, the Thesis further finds that a highly diversified bundle of technological and service ownership advantages, the institutional regulatory environment and the development of the service ecosystem are essential aspects for an industrial IoT platform provider in China. The contributions of the Thesis are two-fold: The conceptual advances reveal new IB research avenues suitable for industrial IoT platform internationalisation whereas the studied case of China allows to contextually understand the highly complex and emerging research topic better. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
http://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/record/8994451
- author
- Ebert, Elisabeth LU
- supervisor
- organization
- course
- EKHS33 20191
- year
- 2019
- type
- H2 - Master's Degree (Two Years)
- subject
- keywords
- Industrial Internet of Things, Digital Platforms, B2B, Ecosystem, International Business, MNEs, Eclectic Paradigm, China
- language
- English
- id
- 8994451
- date added to LUP
- 2019-10-22 14:45:26
- date last changed
- 2019-10-22 14:45:26
@misc{8994451,
abstract = {{Fueled by the maturity of digital infrastructures and intelligent technologies, the industrial Internet of Things (IoT) plays a pivotal role in transforming the scope and pattern of international production. The platform as a service market (PaaS) as a major field of the industrial IoT has emerged only recently and enables factory operators with smart connected machinery to access data-driven cloud services. The early providers of these industrial IoT-platforms, however, face great challenges in their global scale expansion such as market fragmentation, technological and operational complexity. So far, International Business (IB) research on the subject is either introductory in nature or have been mostly restricted to the internationalisation of digital platform-companies in the Business-to-Consumer (B2C) market. This Thesis employs a single case study approach and aims to fill the research gap by reassessing the Eclectic Paradigm in light of emerging industrial IoT-platform activities by multinational firms in China’s manufacturing sector. The findings pose fresh challenges to the original key assumptions especially behind the internalization advantages of multinational enterprises (MNEs). By conducting semi-structured interviews with industry experts, the Thesis further finds that a highly diversified bundle of technological and service ownership advantages, the institutional regulatory environment and the development of the service ecosystem are essential aspects for an industrial IoT platform provider in China. The contributions of the Thesis are two-fold: The conceptual advances reveal new IB research avenues suitable for industrial IoT platform internationalisation whereas the studied case of China allows to contextually understand the highly complex and emerging research topic better.}},
author = {{Ebert, Elisabeth}},
language = {{eng}},
note = {{Student Paper}},
title = {{International Production in Times of Industrial Internet of Things Platforms: Reassessing the Eclectic Paradigm in light of platform-based MNE Activity in China’s Manufacturing Sector}},
year = {{2019}},
}