Journal of International Business Studies最新文献

Host-country corruption discourages multinational firms’ foreign investments. Nonetheless, multinationals may still want to invest to benefit from local business opportunities. To deal with the challenges of operating in a corrupt host country, they can use experience gained in other corrupt countries. We distinguish between “clean hands” and “dirty hands” learning about corruption – that is to say, learning how to avoid bribing, or learning how to pay bribes and avoid traceability. We disentangle these two competing mechanisms, which were confounded in previous studies, by assessing how home-country enforcement of laws against bribery abroad modifies how prior experience in corrupt countries mitigates the discouraging effect of host-country corruption on investment. We propose that, under clean hands learning, home-country enforcement strengthens the mitigating influence whereas, under dirty hands learning, home-country enforcement weakens this influence. Results from analyzing the location choices made by 25,067 multinationals from 97 countries for their 91,371 greenfield investments in 101 countries from 2008 to 2016 reveal that corruption experience mitigates the discouraging influence of host country corruption but that home country enforcement of laws against bribery reverses this influence. This is consistent with the view that dirty hands learning prevails over clean hands learning.

Allen et al. (J Int Bus Stud, 2024) present a compelling argument that MNEs can play a role in mitigating climate change by utilizing their vast resources, technological advancements, and global reach. They provide a broad set of suggestions of what MNEs can do to advance sustainability across borders but leave the critical question of why MNEs would engage in this effort less explored. In reflecting on their work, I suggest that sustainable MNE initiatives require an interplay of both extrinsic and intrinsic drivers, encompassing stakeholder pressures, regulatory frameworks, and private and public incentives; and recognition by the firms themselves of how climate mitigation could support their strategy and self-interest. The more MNEs recognize the intrinsic benefits of climate-mitigation action in advancing their strategic vision and organizational legitimacy, the greater the likelihood that sustainable practices will become ingrained in their business models, enhancing employee engagement and competitive outcomes, while also contributing positively to societal well-being.

Teece (J Int Bus Stud 45(1):8–37, 2014) identifies two theories of the emergence of multinational enterprises (MNEs)—one that focuses on how MNEs solve transactional difficulties that can emerge in market exchanges and another that focuses on how MNEs facilitate economic value creation that is difficult to realize through market exchanges—and suggests that both theories are important in understanding MNE emergence. However, the organizational and managerial implications of these two theories are very different. MNEs that solve transactional difficulties are typically hierarchical in nature, where senior managers exercise managerial fiat to direct subordinates, firm boundaries are well defined, and subordinate behavior is monitored to minimize opportunism. MNEs that create economic value are typically less hierarchical, involve the creation of cooperative relations among stakeholders to facilitate co-specialized investments, have less well-defined boundaries, and reduce the threat of opportunism by ensuring that stakeholders gain more continuing in this exchange than other exchanges. The organizational and managerial implications of these two theories suggest that MNEs that form to both solve transactional difficulties and to create economic value will face difficult challenges trying to reconcile the organizational and management imperatives implied by these theories. This paper concludes by discussing how MNEs might address these organizational and managerial conflicts.

A substantial body of literature has shown that political connections have benefited firms domestically, but their cross-border value for multinational enterprises (MNEs) remains understudied. This paper provides novel evidence on the strategic advantages MNEs gain through political ties in host countries and the consequences for domestic firms. Examining foreign companies’ contributions to US political campaigns through political action committees (PACs) sponsored by their US subsidiaries, we find that contributing foreign firms win significantly more U.S. government contracts than non-contributing foreign firms. Crucially, this increased access for foreign contributing firms crowds out government contract allocation to similar domestic firms that do not make political donations, even in regulated industries favoring domestic suppliers. Our findings demonstrate that MNEs can effectively leverage political connections as a non-market strategy to gain preferential treatment over local competitors in a host nation. However, these cross-border political ties come at the expense of domestic firms’ competitiveness, informing policy debates around restricting foreign corporate influence in domestic elections. From a managerial perspective, our findings suggest that strategic political ties are an important consideration for MNEs alongside traditional location factors when evaluating foreign investment decisions and navigating institutional complexities abroad.

This study examines reputational penalty spillovers in the context of multinational enterprises’ (MNE) Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) violations. We focus on investor reactions to unaccused industry bystander MNEs upon two FCPA regulatory events: investigation and enforcement. Expanding on the notion of categorization, we theorize that unaccused bystander MNEs would experience reputation spillover penalties in the investigation stage due to investors’ similarity-based categorization. In the enforcement stage, investors focus more on individual firm traits and no longer rely on similarity-based categorization in their evaluation, resulting in penalties isolated to the focal MNE and competitive benefits to bystander MNEs. Additionally, due to causal-based categorization, these investor reactions would be further influenced by whether the bystander MNEs had subsidiaries in the host country where the bribery had occurred, as well as the level of host-country corruption. We test these arguments using event study methods involving US-listed bystander MNEs upon 190 FCPA regulatory events from 1998 to 2021 and find support for most of our hypotheses. This study provides more nuanced theoretical underpinnings for reputation spillovers and highlights social evaluation aspects in studying MNE corruption and other socially irresponsible practices.

Allen et al. (2024a) present an insightful and comprehensive analysis of the role multinationals (MNEs) can play in tackling worldwide climate change challenges. Acknowledging that this role is complex and multifaceted, they pay special attention to the financing of climate change initiatives and the unique advantages MNEs have in this regard. I reflect on Allen et al.’s key arguments and proposals and their underlying assumptions, which I found to be overly optimistic on multiple grounds. The common denominator in the range of issues and questions I raise is the challenge of coordinating collective action – either among nation-states, MNEs, NGOs, or some combination thereof – on what is inherently a global-scale issue. I conclude by outlining a future research agenda.

Employing a prosocial perspective, this study examines how crowdfunders' prosocial motivation influences their lending decisions on international crowdfunding platforms, addressing the global challenge of poverty alleviation. We posit that prosocially motivated crowdfunders, concerned about economic inequality and others' well-being, are more likely to lend to poorer borrowers to minimize inequality and improve welfare. Analyzing a large dataset from Kiva.org with machine learning techniques, we find that higher prosocial motivation indeed leads to the lending choice of poorer borrowers across borders. However, cultural distance weakens this relationship by creating cognitive and emotional barriers, while crowdfunders' platform experience and women-owned businesses strengthen it. These findings highlight how digital platforms enable prosocial motivations to cross national borders in poverty-reduction efforts, while revealing barriers and enablers in cross-border lending. Our study contributes to the international business literature by introducing a prosocial perspective to digital platform research and advancing methodological approaches through machine learning. For practitioners, we suggest strategies to enhance prosocial crowdfunding platforms' effectiveness, including cultural bridge-building initiatives, leveraging experienced users as mentors, and highlighting women-owned businesses. Policymakers can use these insights to create frameworks maximizing prosocial crowdfunding's impact on poverty alleviation.

Dynamic capabilities refer to an organization’s ability to integrate, build, and reconfigure internal and external competencies to address a rapidly developing environment. In his highly influential 2014 JIBS paper, David Teece provides a holistic explanation of how firms can: achieve sustained competitive advantage, adjust and preserve superior performance, and adapt to changing environments. The article, along with Teece’s related contributions, is remarkable in that it has led us to rethink and reframe our conventional understanding of markets, strategy, competitive advantage, and the firm. In this commentary, we reflect on the transformative contributions of the article. We argue that the dynamic capabilities framework provides a foundation for theorizing and developing a coherent logic that guides theory development.

The global mobility of people has transformed how multinational enterprises (MNEs) manage and benefit from multiple locations. We examine the changing locational boundedness of human capital with globalization and how this has impacted the competitiveness of MNEs. The growing use of quasi-internalization through the active reliance on global value chains and outsourcing has altered the way MNEs spatially organize their activities to optimize their access to human capital, a key source of ownership advantages. We identify areas for further research, including new strategies for managing human resources using these new forms of cross-border governance. Collectively, the papers in this special issue provide insights into how MNEs can leverage the movement and reorganization of their human capital to enhance their unique capabilities and succeed in international business.

The literature on expatriation typically assumes that cultural and institutional familiarity facilitates expatriate adjustment. This assumption underplays the role of the historical context, especially the influence of painful colonial pasts that often lie beneath such familiarity. In addition, seeking to capture expatriate adjustment as a single measure, such literature does not engage with the differences in the extent to which expatriates achieve cognitive, behavioral, and affective adjustment. Using a qualitative study addressing the work experiences of Brazilians living in Portugal, we argue that to fully understand expatriate adjustment, we must pay attention to the historical colonial relationship between the expatriate’s home and host country. Specifically, we discuss the importance of social representations of history for how expatriates narrate, interpret, and act in response to their experiences. Our research makes two theoretical contributions. First, we explain how historical colonial relationships affect expatriate adjustment and how this leads to adjustment only being partial. Second, we develop a nuanced understanding of expatriate adjustment by drawing attention to its three interdependent dimensions (cognitive, behavioral, and affective), showing that an expatriate may be well adjusted in one dimension but less adjusted in another. We call for organizations to engage more, and more critically, with history.