Journal of International Business Studies最新文献

We show that shared and improved auditing standards, as induced by the audit oversight arising from the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB)’s inspections on non-U.S. auditors, help global exporting firms upgrade themselves and tap into global value chains (GVCs). Using a dataset of U.S. waterway imports from global suppliers of 36 countries, we find that PCAOB international inspections not only lead to significantly more exports to U.S. buyers, particularly for intermediate and capital goods, but exporters also upgrade their product complexity. These results are consistent with enhanced information quality of exporters and thus reduced informational frictions with downstream importers. Echoing this notion, we find stronger GVC effects of PCAOB inspections for exporters facing more informational problems, i.e., for those with ex-ante lower reporting quality or smaller market shares, and those located in countries with weaker institutions or higher geopolitical risk with the U.S. PCAOB inspections also increase the duration length of the chain relationship and supplier firms’ relationship-specific investments in the chain. We further find that U.S. importers with a greater share of suppliers audited by PCAOB-inspected auditors exhibit boosted financial outcomes. Overall, our findings suggest that audit oversight facilitates the formation, upgrading, and performance along GVCs.

Notwithstanding their popularity, veto rights are inadequately understood features of international agreements, particularly interfirm exchanges such as international joint ventures (IJVs). As an interesting feature of an IJV’s governance design, they shape decision-making of the most powerful administrative mechanism of an IJV – the IJV board. IJVs’ boards play a crucial part in supporting adaptation to contingencies, but their adaptive capacity can also give rise to a different set of concerns, however: their opportunistic use by a partner in control of the board. Such behavior, we argue, can be reined in by veto rights. Building on transaction cost economics, we posit that goal conflicts owing to partner competition and environmental uncertainty contribute to the allocation of veto rights to partners. Concerns surrounding the maladaptive use of board control weaken when institutional safeguards are strong, reducing the need for veto rights. Findings from a survey of IJVs furnish evidence in support of the core proposition that veto rights can help parent firms address maladaptation. We conclude that veto rights can be an important element of partners’ arsenal when designing and governing IJVs based on comparative efficiency considerations.

The current evolution of global value chains (GVCs) calls for moving beyond the “unipolar” view of lead multinational enterprises (MNEs) as sole rulers to examine how their characteristics and those of partner firms affect GVC governance. In response to this call, we focus on family firms, which are the most ubiquitous organizational form worldwide and represent the majority of firms participating in GVCs. Unlike non-family firms, these organizations face distinct mixed gambles, driven by both economic and non-economic goals. However, internalization theory and the associated global factory model, which explain GVC governance, rely solely on economic assessments, limiting our understanding and predictability of MNE behavior. Therefore, in this study, we show how location decisions, degree of internalization, and relationship management in GVCs differ from the conventional global factory model when family firms are involved as lead MNEs and/or partners. By analyzing how comparative efficiency considerations change when family firms are involved, we offer implications for internalization theory and provide a more comprehensive framework for understanding control and trust dynamics in GVCs. Thus, we pave the way for future research to revise and enrich international business theories, taking into account the distinctiveness and heterogeneity of family firms.

The influences of a home country’s economic and political institutions on acquirers’ cross-border acquisitions (CBAs) ownership strategies remains unexplored. Acquirers face endogenous uncertainty (i.e., uncertainty that can be resolved in part by acquirers) when transferring headquarters resources to foreign target firms and exogenous uncertainty (i.e., uncertainty that cannot be resolved by acquirers) when there is an unpredictable policy change. We argue that well-developed economic and political institutions in a home country play a market-supporting and constraining role in mitigating endogenous and exogenous uncertainty respectively, enabling acquirers to seek high ownership stakes in CBAs. We also argue that the importance of a home country’s well-developed economic and political institutions for acquirers’ CBA ownership strategic decisions depends on mutual trade dependence between the acquirers’ home country and the target firms’ host countries and also on the economic capabilities of the acquirers developed in different industries and political capabilities developed in different host countries. To test these arguments, we analyze 133,623 CBAs between 2000 and 2020 and find support for the distinct roles played by a home country’s economic and political institutions.

International business scholars have recognized the impact of political and economic nationalism on the multinational enterprise (MNE). We complement these approaches by highlighting the sociological manifestations of nationalism and their implications for the MNE. We argue that nationalist sentiments, i.e., widely shared assumptions of superiority over other nations and cultures, constitute an under-researched but critical element in international business (IB). Drawing insights from organizational sociology, we elucidate how nationalist sentiments manifest in the MNE’s external and internal environment. Specifically, we suggest that nationalist sentiments accentuate national institutional logics, generate status-based categorizations of foreign and domestic firms, and heighten emphasis on national organizational identities. These manifestations impact the MNE’s operations by limiting room for hybridization of dissimilar practices and routines, increasing the risk of discrimination and stereotyping by local audiences, and entrenching resistance to foreign ideas and practices among organizational members. We suggest that MNEs have three strategic choices in responding to nationalist sentiments: avoid their manifestations, mitigate their implications, or leverage nationalist sentiments to the MNE’s advantage. In sum, our framework provides a starting point for IB scholars to examine the strategic implications of nationalist sentiments for the MNE.

Competition has long been considered a central element of strategy for multinational enterprises in classical foreign direct investment theories. This review evaluates the large and diverse literature on competitive dynamics in international business since Knickerbocker’s (Oligopolistic reaction and the multi-national enterprise, MIT Press, Cambridge, 1973) seminal work on oligopolistic reaction. Specifically, we review the literature on follow-the-leader, awareness–motivation–capability, competitor analysis, and multimarket competition. Our review reveals that competitive interaction in the international context is a multi-arena, multi-player, and multi-level phenomenon. We also identify opportunities for future research, such as deepening the understanding of the micro-foundations of competitive dynamics, incorporating more country-level factors into the analysis of firm-level competitive interactions, broadening the consideration of international stakeholders, and giving greater emphasis to non-market strategies as competitive actions in the global environment. Our review contributes to the development of international business theory by improving our understanding of the mechanisms underlying the execution and consequences of multinational firms’ competitive strategies. Moreover, it enriches the competitive dynamics theory in strategic management by emphasizing the complexities that the international context introduces to competitive interactions among firms.

Our study examines the influence of the local financial conditions in a multinational corporation’s (MNC) home country on its global strategy and market position. Establishing a headquarters in a country grants legitimacy with local stakeholders, which enhances firms’ access to local capital markets. Consequently, MNCs headquartered in a country with favorable financial conditions might gain an advantage over MNCs based in countries with a less advantageous financial environment. To analyze this hypothesis, we utilize local projections and a major policy shift by the Swiss National Bank in January 2015, which involved an exchange rate shock and a substantial interest rate cut to −0.75%. Our analysis shows that Swiss-based MNCs, benefiting from lower domestic interest rates, significantly outperformed their EU-based rivals in terms of investment rates (8.4–9.7% points higher) and employment growth (6.7–9.8% points higher). Moreover, we show that this stimulating effect helped to offset the adverse consequences of the simultaneous appreciation of the domestic currency for Swiss-based MNCs in sectors more reliant on exports. Our results highlight the critical role of local financial conditions and, more broadly, local macroeconomic factors in shaping MNCs’ global strategies and competitive standing.

Multinational corporations and their global suppliers are increasingly expected to employ sustainability practices throughout their supply chains. As such, the global scope of corporate sustainability – including the notion of ‘full-chain responsibility’ – is a concern for firms, governments, NGOs, and other stakeholders. We evaluate the state-of-the-art of sustainability research on multinational firms and global supply chains, bringing together insights from two literatures that have examined this topic: international business and supply chain management. The articles in the Special Issue advance the research frontier by highlighting both macro impacts of legal and societal pressures as well as micro-processes of bargaining power, managerial sensemaking, and transparency to inform the relationships between global firms and their suppliers. Collectively, the research included in this Special Issue reflects a notable shift in focus from the former (macro) to the latter (micro). We elaborate on the benefits of incorporating additional notions such as power, opportunism, and negotiation in global supply chain research against the background of cross-country variation in legal and societal pressures. This would allow a more in-depth understanding of the dynamic relationships between multinational corporations, their multi-tier supplier networks, and other stakeholders that jointly shape the sustainability agenda.

Multinational enterprises (MNEs) are increasingly called upon to address sustainability issues along their supply chains. We advance prior literature on this topic by building on the argument that comprehending individual-level sensemaking is the foundational step for understanding the design and execution of corporate sustainability strategy. Hence, we undertook a qualitative study of one European agri-food MNE and captured how internal and external stakeholders along two entire supply chain segments, reaching into India and Ethiopia, respectively, make sense of farmer livelihoods as one particular sustainability issue. Using Weick’s stages of sensemaking as our theoretical lens, we find a high degree of diversity in interpretations regarding (1) the nature of the sustainability challenge, (2) the MNE’s motives for addressing it, and (3) the potential solutions to it. However, consistent patterns emerge for the three sensemaking stages in relation to the individual’s position in the supply chain. As a result of our analysis, we develop a conceptual model that elucidates differences in sensemaking of sustainability challenges by actors at different positions along global supply chains. Building on our findings, we offer a detailed explanation of how individual sensemaking influences collective sensemaking and, in turn, the direction and effectiveness of corporate strategy on sustainability.