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Abstract

The thesis investigates the conditions under which technological strengths can be transformed into corporate and industrial competitive advantages. The thesis focuses on advanced materials and advanced materials technologies and argues that this task can be achieved if a minimum set of practices is followed by firms, industries and nations.

The thesis builds a set of internationally accepted “codes of practice”, which act as a globally accepted analytical basis, and tests them in the case of Greece and selected Greek industrial sectors (i.e. cement and consumer ceramic producers, ferrous and non-ferrous metals producers, the defence industry and the construction industry). Given that Greece is an economy under transition (with weak R&D tradition and national system of innovation), the central research hypothesis examines whether the international “codes of practice” have to be modified first before being applied to each industrial sector and the national level or significant structural and institutional changes have to occur first in either the case of a specific industry or that of the national economy or both.

The combination of all the available evidence (literature review, evaluation and analysis of empirical research results such as in-situ data collection and interviews results) and findings lead to the conclusion that:

At corporate level, the international "codes of practice", can be universally and successfully adopted and applied even in the case of industrial sectors or corporations operating within weak national innovation systems or in environments significantly different from those where the "codes of practice" have been fonnulated. At national level, the international “codes of practice” per se are relevant as a coherent whole at the conceptual level, even in the case of transition economies with weak R&D infrastructure or institutional arrangements as in the case of Greece. The problem becomes one of policies and institutional mechanisms for supporting them and implementing them. This leads to the proposition that in the case of industrial sectors or corporations operating within weak national innovation systems and especially in the case of transition economies with weak R&D infrastructure or institutional arrangements (national level), organisational and institutional changes have to occur first before these industries and economies become able to fully develop and implement complex and multilevel materials strategies in response to the intensification of global competition.

Publication Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HJ Public Finance J Political Science > JN Political institutions (Europe)
Departments:	Bayes Business School > Bayes Business School Doctoral Theses Bayes Business School > Management Doctoral Theses

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