European Management Review最新文献

We look at the past, present and possible futures of the theory of the multinational enterprise (MNE). We argue that the modern theory of the MNE, propounded by Stephen Hymer, viewed rivalry reduction and/through the internalization of advantages by firms as a strategy to acquire market power. Hymer anticipated the modern theory of the domestic firm and strategic management and later the transaction costs-focused ‘internalization theory’. While ‘internalization theory’ focused on efficiency, Hymer viewed efficiency and market power as complementary. His theory of the MNE was influential in the development of International Business scholarship and has itself developed through cross-fertilization with adjacent fields. It has significant scope for further development by leveraging resource-based, international entrepreneurship and dynamic capabilities ideas. It faces technical and substantive challenges, notably that its focus on the sustainability of firm-level competitive advantage underplays wider multilevel environmental, economic and social sustainability challenges.

This article provides a commentary on the paper by Pitelis and Piteli on Hymer as the pioneer of the theory of the multinational enterprise (MNE). I suggest that Stephen Hymer and his contemporary, John Dunning, also laid the foundation for an analysis of an international business (IB) system, which reaches well beyond the theory of the MNE and its strategy. I argue firstly that early IB theories, including Hymer's, which emerged from the late 1950s onwards, mostly had a holistic view of the IB system, of which the MNE was just one element. Secondly, I contend that both Hymer and Dunning developed from the outset some seminal ideas on the interrelationships that exist between the MNE and its strategy, on the one hand, and the wider economic and social environment in which firms are embedded, on the other. I suggest that Dunning's eclectic paradigm was intended as a framework for the study of the IB system in its entirety as a complex, relational system. Thirdly, while Hymer's ideas on cross-border geographic hierarchy, uneven development and IB were highly original and remain relevant today, they need to be substantially updated and revised in the current IB context, as opposed to the context which prevailed in the IB system of the 1950s through to the 1970s.

The discussion of the economic theory of the multinational enterprise (MNE) in Pitelis and Piteli (2024) illuminates how different strands of thought have been developed and built upon one another. In this commentary, I focus on two aspects that remain in the shadows in Pitelis and Piteli (2024): the nature of the “international” dimension in the theory of the MNE and the social embeddedness of the MNE. More attention to these two interrelated aspects is necessary for developing a satisfactory theory of the MNE.

Knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS) provide industry-changing inputs to the business processes of other organizations that face complex tendering procedures. Service triads emerge as a response to resource and capability constraints due to high procedure benchmarks. Despite calls, research remains fragmented. Recent challenges driven by a pandemic and conflicts call for a systematic literature review that coherently integrates and describes the body of knowledge on sourcing KIBS triads. Employing the SPAR-4-SLR protocol to systematically review 205 articles, we integrate and describe key areas such as sourcing strategies, service delivery, ante-contract considerations, and overarching relationship dynamics. We highlight future research avenues toward bridging domain linkages including the development of an integrated model and the exploration of environmental uncertainties and individual behaviors in the sourcing of KIBS triads.

We propose a novel methodological framework based on the emerging field of quantum cognition and illustrate its application to a central problem in management and strategy research: causal ambiguity. The current literature often assumes that causal ambiguity—the difficulty of managers to understand the causal link between resources and outcomes at the basis of a firm's performance—can be reduced through learning. This literature overlooks the fact that causal ambiguity reduction is impossible when causal systems exhibit so-called complementary properties. Building upon quantum cognition—specifically the idea of complementarity as an alternative to causality—we illustrate that causal ambiguity is only a special case of ambiguity and we offer a novel methodological framework to model what we label as ‘acausal ambiguity’, which refers to the insurmountable limit of managers to achieve causal ambiguity reduction. Managers can, of course, cognize some causal links. However, this comes at the price of being agnostic about complementary ones. The implications of this novel methodological framework applied to causal ambiguity are twofold: while complementarity opacifies the attentional faculties of managers, it also accounts for the cognitive origins of novelty.

Research shows how blame shifting deemed unethical by evaluators leads to a damaging reputational backlash. Yet, scholars have not determined how evaluators judge if blame-shifting messages are ethical. To fill this gap, we develop a conceptual model of evaluators' judgments of blame-shifting ethicality, integrating insights from ethical decision-making and the ethics of blame. The ethical evaluation of blame shifting is based on perceptions of target blameworthiness, the motives of the blamer, and message fairness. These three perceptions explain the evaluators' judgment of whether blame shifting is ethical. Furthermore, the model explains why at times evaluators fail to develop a detailed ethical evaluation of the message. Organizational blame shifting in these circumstances can be effective and yet unethical because evaluators do not cognitively process the relevant ethical factors. This article contributes to research on blame shifting by explaining how evaluators judge ethicality and examining the conditions for ethical blame shifting.