Essays on the role of location in strategy

This dissertation consists of three essays that examine the role of location in fundamental issues in strategy and international management. The first essay estimates the locus of profitability in four OECD countries and addresses methodological issues related to location-specific influences on profitability. The second and third papers examine factors driving pharmaceutical laboratories' adoption of "science-oriented" organizational practices. The results in the second essay demonstrate that organizational practices are more similar among laboratories within firms and within geographic regions than across these domains. The findings imply that while organizations may be broadly homogeneous within particular environments, simultaneous exposure to multiple environments can yield heterogeneity among a population of organizations. The final paper evaluates the hypothesis that laboratory-level scientific orientation varies systematically across location in a manner that reflects the strength of the local scientific and technical base. The results of both qualitative and quantitative data suggest that pharmaceutical firms' strategic organizing decisions reflect qualities embedded in their local geographic environments. A. set of prominent papers in strategy research explores the locus of firm rent generation by decomposing accounting profits into effects attributable to time, industry, corporate parent, and business segment.