Journal of International Business Studies最新文献

Building upon the upper echelons theory of organizations as applied to internationalization strategies, we investigate the impact of foreign-origin top management team (TMT) members on their companies’ location choice. We propose that a manager-from-target effect may exist, by which a manager’s knowledge of their country of origin increases the likelihood of choosing that country as a target. We expect it to be stronger for acquisitions than for greenfield investments, the inputs of foreign-origin managers being more relevant in the first case. Based on a large sample of foreign direct investment from 2013 to 2019, and using name analysis to identify TMT members’ origins, we find that the effect is present in both establishment modes but larger and more robust for acquisitions. It is also larger in companies with less diverse TMTs, for which targeting one manager’s country of origin instead of others’ may be less likely to cause conflict. Future research should explore whether investments in locations suggested by managers from the target country outperform others. If this is the case, it implies that recruiting foreign-origin top managers can improve a company’s internationalization strategy via better location choices.

Nation-states are designing their industrial policies increasingly to not only enhance national competitiveness, but also to simultaneously address “Green Challenges”, concerns about the natural environment that require concerted action among different actors in society, including domestic and foreign multinational enterprises (MNEs). This blending of global and national policy objectives is leading to a new wave of industrial policies in advanced economies that are informed by scholarly discourses in evolutionary economics, innovation systems, and 'wicked problems'. We discuss the implications of these sustainability-oriented industrial policies for MNEs. They operate in increasingly diverse local ecosystems shaped by local actors and local policies as we illustrate for two such ecosystems in Nordic countries: circular economy and energy transition. Many MNEs face a tension between capabilities they could use to help nations achieve their sustainability goals and incentives to protect existing rents and business models. They may thus engage pro-actively or reactively in both market and nonmarket realms in each country in which they operate. We discuss the interactions between MNEs, governments, and other actors in host countries pursuing both sustainability and competitiveness objectives, and outline how ensuing tensions create new challenges and opportunities for international business scholarship.

Online marketplaces such as Amazon.com represent a new channel through which multinational enterprises (MNEs) can sell their products in foreign markets, either as third-party sellers or as suppliers to the platform owner. An MNE can have better control of the marketing mix when selling directly on Amazon.com as a third-party seller, but this task entails two challenges. First is the liability of foreignness, and second is the disadvantage of competing with other products that are directly sold by the platform owner. The platform owner sets the rules of the platform and has data and algorithmic advantages, putting competitive pressure on MNEs with tighter control. Data obtained from Amazon are analyzed and reveal that maintaining control as a third-party seller predicts lower sales than being a supplier to the platform owner. However, the penalty associated with retaining control is smaller for MNEs with more host-country experience and country-of-origin advantage. These findings provide new insights into how MNEs leverage platforms such as Amazon.com to expand their global reach.

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are changing the way multinational enterprises (MNEs) engage with host governments. The SDGs offer MNEs a unique opportunity to build political influence by assisting governments in attaining a host country’s social needs. However, international business scholars have largely remained silent on how MNEs strategize to repurpose ‘doing good’ into political influence. Based on a multiple case study of four Western European MNE subsidiaries in Indonesia, we uncover the strategies that MNEs use to turn their SDG initiatives into political access and influence. Our study reveals three nonmarket strategies – SDG-directed cross-sector partnership, SDG-directed conflict management, and SDG-directed constituency building. These actionable strategies help MNEs manage the tensions arising from misaligned government priorities, high levels of perceived corruption, and skepticism toward foreign firms. Our findings advance the literature on international nonmarket strategy by explaining how MNE subsidiaries resolve these tensions and convert SDG-directed investments into political access and influence without succumbing to locally institutionalized norms of corruption. Finally, our study suggests that emerging-market governments may benefit from rewarding MNEs for their investments that contribute to the SDGs, as long as they provide clear guidance and multi-stakeholder platforms that foster effective collaborations with MNEs.

We use the exogenous shock of COVID-19 to explore the resilience of firms with strong ESG (environmental, social, and governance) ratings across 63 countries and three asset classes: stocks, credit default swaps (CDS), and corporate bonds. We show that the resilience of strong ESG firms is not a consistent global phenomenon outside of North America and varies considerably across countries. Additional evidence points towards a substitution effect between firm-level sustainability performance as captured by ESG ratings and country-level sustainability performance especially in terms of healthcare coverage. Overall, our findings indicate that the capacity of strong ESG firms to serve as “rainy day assets” is geography-dependent and that ESG considerations can also affect international corporate debt markets.

Subsidiary general manager (GM) succession selection is a critical process in multinational enterprises (MNEs). Previous research, grounded in organizational learning and routines, has suggested that GM succession dynamics typically follow either an acceleration or a deceleration momentum. However, as we investigated succession decision-making heuristics through interviews with MNE managers, we observed neither acceleration nor deceleration. Instead, we found some consistent succession dynamics. Within this consistency, we found variations in decision-making models among subsidiaries—some adopting a rule-based approach with a short succession dynamic, some adopting a goal-based approach with a moderate succession dynamic, and others adopting a people-based approach with a long succession dynamic. Underlying these models were bounded rationality, bounded reliability, and their unexpected interactions. Our study sheds light on the critical role of managers in subsidiary management, enriches international business theorizing on the subsidiary GM succession process, and refines the boundary conditions of organizational learning. The central message is that looking solely at GM succession dynamics through an organizational learning lens may risk overlooking relevant causal mechanisms. To make the theorizing on the dynamics of subsidiary management more fertile, the behavioral model should account for the idiosyncrasies of decision-making as well as the heuristics of decision-makers.

As international business (IB) scholars seek to invigorate the field and steer it away from what some deem a “research coma” resulting from a narrowing scope, the significance of foreign divestment (FD) has once again been relegated amidst other pressing topics. We advocate for elevating FD to the same level of importance as foreign direct investment (FDI). Despite emerging a decade after seminal contributions on FDI, FD has suffered from a notable lack of attention in IB research and educational curricula. However, FD, like FDI, is a common practice among firms and is gaining prominence in light of recent disruptions such as geopolitical conflicts, economic decoupling, digital transformation, and growing skepticism towards globalization. We identify two main setbacks to overcome: the persistent view of FD as merely a misstep in firms' internationalization strategies, and its perception as a subordinate aspect within broader themes of internationalization, including emerging topics such as deglobalization and decoupling. As we elaborate in this commentary, delving into FD at a more granular level can uncover disruptive spillovers that require pushing the boundaries of extant theorizing in IB; neglecting FD leaves the field incomplete and hampers its ability to fully grasp the complexities of global business dynamics.

We propose a typology that captures the heterogeneity of international new ventures’ (INVs’) entrepreneurial behavior and their commitment to foreign markets. The typology identifies four types of INVs, highlighting the dynamic interplay between the degree of radicalness of their entrepreneurial behavior and the level of their foreign market commitment. By integrating theories from both international business and entrepreneurship, we illustrate how the diverse underlying capabilities and networks of different INV types provide strategic advantages. Moreover, we argue that changes in the degree of radicalness in INVs’ entrepreneurial behavior over time reveal important temporal dynamics with strategic and performance implications. Our typology addresses a limitation in international entrepreneurship research by emphasizing the INVs’ entrepreneurial essence, which has often been overlooked. Prior conceptualizations of INVs have primarily focused on aspects such as the degree and mode of internationalization, neglecting the diversity of their entrepreneurial approaches. Consequently, our understanding of the sources of INVs’ competitive advantage and resilience in international markets has been limited. Our typology offers an array of novel research questions that merit thorough empirical and theoretical explorations.

With a focus on the moral context of the cultural industry, we examine the worldwide spread of reputation loss associated with the Harvey Weinstein sex scandal in the film industry. Specifically, we explore how the scandal and the related #MeToo moral movement affect the box office of multinational enterprises (MNEs) in international markets. By leveraging an institutional approach, we predict that extensive traditional and digital media coverage of #MeToo in a host country will promote attention convergence, and robust formal and informal institutions of gender equality will drive moral convergence. Attention and moral convergence foster the cross-country spread of reputation loss following the scandal, potentially penalizing MNEs associated with The Weinstein Company and adversely affecting their international revenue. Conversely, differences in traditional and digital media coverage and misaligned formal and informal institutions hinder the spread of reputation loss. We support our predictions with weekly global box office revenue data for film MNEs from 2015 to 2019 across 86 countries and a difference-in-difference specification. Our study provides insights into research on cultural industries and international business, emphasizing the role of mass media and institutions in the worldwide moral movement. We also discuss the social impact of our study on gender equality.