Thunderbird International Business Review最新文献

The sharing economy initially aimed to disrupt traditional financial and ownership business models by creating a new operating logic. However, it has since evolved to resemble the very institutions it sought to challenge. This paper examines the transformation of the sharing economy through the lens of institutionalization, focusing on how its business models have transformed from their original ambitions. The paper theorizes that endogenous mechanisms drive business model content changes, while exogenous ones reshape business model structure and governance. The concept of digital institutionalization is introduced to describe how these mechanisms led the sharing economy to conform to traditional practices. This paper contributes to past research by integrating institutional theory with business model studies and offering insights into the creation and breakdown of new institutional attempts related to digitalization.

Platform-enabled innovation has come to dominate contemporary discourse on digital sustainability initiatives in emerging markets. Rather than offering a celebratory account of this new turn, this research explores how a digital platform initiative pioneered by Ant Forest leverages a gamified reward system to mobilize emotional incentives, platform integration, and social participation to cultivate what we term “digital green citizenry.” Incentivizing millions of users in China to engage in low-carbon behaviors—such as walking and making digital payments, we unpack how Ant Forest's dual incentive model—combining habit formation with emotional fulfillment—has enabled the integration of sustainability into users' everyday routines. Explicating a culturally grounded transferable framework for digital sustainability, we theorize how platform strategies could be aligned with environmental responsibility and ecological incentives in diverse sociotechnical environments to support digital sustainability.

Effectively evaluating and selecting foreign markets is essential for successful internationalization. Traditional International Market Selection (IMS) frameworks typically follow a linear, sequential process: identifying motives, selecting markets, and subsequently determining entry modes. However, such sequential frameworks inadequately account for today's dynamic global market conditions, often resulting in firms entering appropriate markets via an unsuitable entry mode—termed herein as Type III error. Addressing this dangerous error, our study proposes a novel IMS approach that simultaneously integrates market attractiveness and considerations of the suitability of the entry mode selected. Using a dual-criteria ranking method combined with a 45° line analysis, we evaluate 86 prospective international markets across 30 variables. This approach enables firms to align market selection and entry mode decisions from the outset and responds directly to recent research emphasizing their interdependent nature. Our findings reveal that not all markets are analogous, that is, equally attractive for export and FDI, and that some markets are quite distinct, requiring specific entry modes. By adopting this integrated, flexible framework, firms can make more nuanced, strategically coherent internationalization decisions, minimizing risks associated with entry mode misalignment and enhancing their global strategic effectiveness.

Recent disruptions and mounting vulnerabilities across global supply chains have prompted firms to reconsider long-standing offshoring strategies. In this context, reshoring—the strategic relocation of previously offshored operations—has gained renewed relevance. This study explores how the VUCA (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity) environment has reshaped the drivers, triggers, and outlook for reshoring. Adopting a qualitative approach, the research draws on in-depth interviews with seven senior executives from European and U.S. firms engaged in recent reshoring decisions. The findings reveal that VUCA pressures amplify external reshoring drivers, particularly those related to risk mitigation, control, and geopolitical resilience. VUCA events function not only as immediate triggers or accelerants but also as reflection points, prompting firms to reevaluate their global footprint. While reshoring is seen as increasingly strategic, its feasibility remains highly contingent on industry, product type, and operational complexity. The study contributes to reshoring and global value chain literature by positioning reshoring within broader trends of resilient globalization, slowbalization, and strategic adaptation under uncertainty.

Non-Chinese multinational enterprises (MNE) are wondering whether China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) creates challenges or opportunities for them. The fuzzy term “third-party market cooperation” was coined to involve non-Chinese MNEs in BRI-related business opportunities. Our contribution is threefold: First, we explore the role of non-Chinese firms in the BRI. Second, we locate “third-party market cooperation” in the international business literature and examine its originality. Third, we assess how non-Chinese MNEs can seize business potentials associated with third-party market cooperation in SSA. We conduct a qualitative analysis of official documents and substantiate our analysis by evaluating other media sources on third-party market cooperation projects in SSA. We find that firms play a decisive role in substantiating the BRI. The core novelty of third-party market cooperation is its strong political dimension, as governments may initiate and flank the participation of their MNEs in the BRI.

This research focuses on the impact of intelligent transformation on green total factor productivity (GTFP) within China's manufacturing enterprises from 2010 to 2022. To assess the extent of intelligent transformation across the sector, the study adopts natural language processing and the non-radial SBM-ML index to measure GTFP. Utilizing threshold and mediation analysis, we explore how outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) affects intelligent transformation and GTFP while additional robustness tests supplement the analysis. The study also considers the variability in the impact of intelligent transformation at enterprise, industry, and regional levels. The results reveal a significant positive relationship between intelligent transformation and GTFP, notably stronger in non-OFDI firms and more pronounced in heavily polluting industries. In particular, enterprises with smaller scale of FDI and those in China's middle region see more substantial benefits.

While the literature on internationalization in Africa is growing, much of it has traditionally emphasized the role of multinational corporations operating on the continent. In contrast, fewer studies have focused on the international entrepreneurial activities of indigenous African firms, particularly, in relation to how internal capabilities interact with external institutional environments. This study addresses this gap by drawing on dynamic capabilities theory and the institutional perspective to examine how firm-level capabilities influence export performance under varying conditions of institutional support and perceived corruption. Based on survey data from 192 exporting firms across nine African countries, the results show that the effects of vigilant market capability and open marketing capability on export performance are significantly moderated by institutional and environmental factors. These findings contribute to the literature on international firm performance in emerging markets and offer practical insights for strategy and policy development in the African context.