Multifaceted Spectrum of De Facto Strategies to Enforce IPR in China

Professors Marcus M. Keupp, Angela Beckenbauer and Oliver Gassmann all connected to the Department of Business Administration, Institute of Technology Management of University of St. Gallen, Switzerland, wrote a very interesting article: 'Enforcing Intellectual Property Rights in Weak Appropriability Regimes, The Case of de Facto Protection Strategies in China'.

Appropriability are "the environmental factors that govern an innovator's ability to capture profits generated by an innovation". It is well known that in the People's Republic of China enforcement of intellectual property rights can be difficult. So how do managers deal with such a challenging environment? After interviews the authors came to the conclusion that a multifaceted spectrum of strategies exists, which is not mutually exclusive, and that most firms rely on more than one strategy.

The authors categorise the different strategies as:

• Technological specialisation;
• De facto secrecy;
• Internal guanxi;
• External guanxi and
• Educate the customer.

Read Professors Keupp, Beckenbauer and Gassmann's article here.