Journal of International Business Studies最新文献

Market-seeking foreign direct investment (FDI) remains central for firms to expand their global presence and seize opportunities abroad. However, existing research often focuses on immediate or near-term drivers related to firms’ market-seeking FDI strategies, and thus neglects the valuable insights a historical perspective can provide. To address this gap, we draw insights from imprinting theory and propose a framework theorizing the dual-layered imprinting of historical conditions stemming from both extreme historical experiences and founding conditions. Using the U.S. alcohol industry as a research context, we employ a mixed-methods approach, integrating quantitative and qualitative techniques. Our findings reveal that firms’ experiences during extreme anti-alcohol conditions, such as Prohibition, positively correlate with regulation-driven market-seeking FDI, while firms founded in more pro-alcohol periods prioritize speed-driven market-seeking FDI. Moreover, we identify how unrelated diversification, a strategy consistent with the anti-alcohol imprint but inconsistent with the pro-alcohol imprint, affects the relationship between historical imprints and FDI strategies through imprint amplification or decay. Our qualitative analyses elucidate the role of founders’ and leaders’ strategic decision-making in reinforcing the mechanisms through which historical conditions shape FDI strategy. This longitudinal framework provides insights into imprint formation, transmission, and manifestation, accounting for contextual variations and implications for FDI strategy.

Governments worldwide use executive compensation to bond CEOs of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) to political agendas at the expense of private owners. We extend principal–principal (PP) agency theory to delve into the CEO cooption behavior of governments. First, building on the institution-based view, we theorize that political institutions shape the ability of governments to trigger PP conflicts by bonding SOE CEOs through executive compensation. Second, leveraging the comparative state capitalism literature, we conjecture that SOE CEOs who are bonded through executive compensation support strategies that are aligned with state goals. Evidence from matched samples of publicly listed firms across 20 countries supports our predictions. The effect of state ownership on CEO compensation varies substantially across countries and this variance is partly explained by the heterogeneity in political institutions. More specifically, we find that SOE CEOs enjoy higher compensation in contexts characterized by high political power and political factionalization, and low political polarization and political constraint. We also find that better-paid SOE CEOs support excessive levels of employment and corporate social performance, strategies aligned with state goals. Overall, we show that CEO compensation is a salient and effective tool used by governments to turn SOE CEOs into agents of the state.

Populism is a political phenomenon that attempts to harness existing institutions for populist ends, often leading to negative consequences for businesses. However, can national institutions resist this pressure and mitigate the damage to firms? This paper investigates how populist electoral success influences corporate investment, unraveling the intricate connection between a country’s political institutions and the investment behavior of companies. Through the lens of political uncertainty and transaction cost economics, we theorize that countries with fortified checks and balances—facilitated by electoral systems (situated at the entrance to power), judicial independence (supervising the exercise of power), and government accountability (serving as ex-post checks)—effectively mitigate populist impulses. However, these checks and balances are also often targeted by populist leaders, as they prevent full implementation of a populist agenda. Analyzing a dataset spanning over 36,000 firms across 42 countries from 1995 to 2021, we find that existing checks and balances shield firms from populist excesses. In line with our theory, the longer a ruler is in power, the weaker these checks and balances remain. Our study highlights populism’s harm to business and the role of robust political institutions as mitigating factors.

With multinational corporations (MNCs) increasingly taking public stances on sociopolitical issues such as immigration, LGBTQ+ rights, and racism, it is imperative that international business (IB) research keeps pace with normative societal debates. In this paper, we introduce the concept of corporate sociopolitical activism (SPA) to the IB literature and develop a theory on why MNCs consistently or inconsistently engage in SPA in response to the same issue in their home country and a host country. We theorize that institutional complexity at three levels of analysis – within a host country, between home and host countries, and beyond the home and host countries – shapes MNCs’ decisions. This paper contributes to the IB literature by situating SPA as a new area within international nonmarket strategy research. In addition, we extend IB research on institutional complexity by theorizing how heterogeneity within a host country influences MNCs’ behaviors. We also expand the focus of the literature on corporate SPA from domestic firms to MNCs. Overall, this paper represents a call to action for IB researchers to examine MNCs’ responses to sociopolitical issues in an increasingly polarized world.

Emerging extended reality (XR) technologies, such as augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR), enable global businesses to deliver immersive experiences to customers beyond geographical borders. Despite the opportunities, leveraging XR innovations in foreign markets can present significant challenges. This study investigates whether and under what conditions global businesses experience liability of foreignness (LOF) when leveraging XR innovations. We argue that LOF in XR innovations arises from the inherent disadvantages foreign firms face in delivering mentally fluent XR experiences, which in turn can diminish the effectiveness of their XR innovations compared to local counterparts. We further contend that the extent of LOF in XR innovations varies depending on the features of XR technology, with greater LOF in less realistic, more interactive, and more vivid XR innovations. We also suggest that foreign businesses can mitigate LOF by strategically leveraging brand newness and brand platforms. Our empirical analyses, based on a dataset of 257 beauty brands in South Korea from 2019 to 2022, support the presence of LOF in XR innovations and show how technology features and brand-specific factors influence the extent of LOF. Our findings provide valuable insights for global businesses developing strategies to configure immersive technologies in international markets.

This essay revisits my 2014 JIBS article about the potential for integrating international business internalization theory with a strategic management capabilities perspective. It recaps the capabilities framework with an emphasis on the learning required of emerging market multinationals and illustrates this with the case of Hyundai Motor Company’s internationalization and growth. It also discusses two aspects of the global economy that have become more prominent since 2014 in shaping international business: geopolitical uncertainty and digitalization. A rise in geopolitical tensions appears to be rebalancing the relationships between multinationals and home/host governments. Digitalization facilitates international business; but it adds new vulnerabilities by (further) accelerating competition, enabling new rivals, and introducing systemic risks into digital supply chains. Implications for managers, board members, and international business scholars are drawn.

Multinational enterprises (MNEs) can be agents of positive climate action by deploying their vast resources, technology, capital, and collaborative partnerships. They can also promote cross-border mobility of corporate governance and regulatory standards. Allen et al. (J Int Bus Stud, 2024) provide a systematic descriptive analysis to support such an MNE role. In my commentary, I provide a perspective from low-income countries, particularly Africa. Although they face disproportionate climate impact, these economies possess abundant clean energy resources. I discuss the potential of MNEs to help unlock the value associated with these resources. On the financing side, MNE banks can deploy their technology and resources to promote climate finance startups. They can also play a role in public–private partnerships to unlock private capital at scale for low-income countries. Allen et al. focus on the bright side of the MNEs in climate action. I expand my commentary to provide a balanced view and discuss the dark side with a focus on Africa. In particular, I highlight the role of MNE banks in rapid sovereign debt build-up and difficulties in debt restructuring. Further, I discuss the role of MNEs in capital flight. Successful debt distress resolutions and curbing capital flight can free up resources for green financing.

Climate change and the associated issue of curbing carbon emissions have risen on the agenda of policymakers worldwide. However, global coordination on matters such as harmonized regulation has been subject to significant political frictions, and the large intergovernmental transfers needed to finance the transition of developing economies have proven hard to raise. Recently, there have been considerable responses to climate change from the private sector, with stakeholders placing more pressure on firms, and financial markets mobilizing increasingly more capital towards the reduction of negative externalities. We argue that although multinational enterprises (MNEs) have been a major contributor to the problem, they can be an important part of the solution – they have unique features that enable them to play an important role in the fight against climate change. MNEs have extensive and efficient internal markets for governance, financing, and technology, which enable them to circumvent country-specific frictions to climate action such as heterogeneous regulation, corruption, and the lack of technology. We analyze how different public and private incentive mechanisms could be designed to leverage MNEs’ unique features, realign their incentives, and engage their potential to play a role in decarbonizing the economy. Lastly, we discuss challenges, opportunities, and future research.

Despite thorough attention to how context shapes subsidiary behavior, very little IB research has explored the dynamic impact of disruptive changes in historical context on organizational innovations in MNEs. Existing IB theory has robustly theorized the growth of competence-creating subsidiaries from the 1980s to the 2000s. However, our historical research demonstrates that this body of existing theory fails to explain an equally significant growth in subsidiaries with protean competence-creating characteristics from 1945 to 1970. We show that the introduction of the U.K. National Health Service in 1948 precipitated a major upgrade of research capabilities among a near majority of the population of subsidiaries in U.K. pharmaceuticals by 1970. Synthesizing from both IB and literature on historical methods, we analyze the impact of this disruptive transformation in context, identifying the specific mechanisms that produced the rapid growth in what we identify as proto-competence-creating subsidiaries. This occurred in response to a dramatically new context, in ways that differ from those predicted by current theoretical explanations, and led to an institutional innovation hitherto unknown to IB. The implications of this are significant in a contemporary moment of rapid institutional disruption, when existing conceptualizations of subsidiary behavior may increasingly fail to capture real-world dynamics.