International Business Review最新文献

Drawing on organizational learning theory, this study examines the strategic role of organizational innovation in learning to innovate by exporting, commonly known as ‘learning-by-exporting’ (LBE). We explain that mere knowledge access is distinct from the enactment of knowledge, and this matters for LBE. Despite growing interest in how firms enhance product innovation performance through exporting and thus, LBE, previous literature has remained silent on the role played by strategically induced changes to organizational routines when learning. We hypothesize that some exporters will introduce organizational innovations – aimed at changing internal practices and routines – which then allows them to enact new knowledge and enhance innovation performance following engagement in export markets. We study our hypotheses, using panel data of 1489 medium-sized manufacturing firms taken from the Mannheim Innovation Panel, the German contribution to the Community Innovation Survey (CIS). We find LBE effects solely amongst firms which adopted organizational innovations during the studied period. Further, our findings revealed that the extent and type of organizational innovation markedly influences LBE. Our study uses a novel context to explain that it is the presence and extent of organizational innovations which influence firms’ abilities to enhance product innovation performance following international engagement through exports.

This study investigates the association between the intensity of innovation activities that firms perform offshore with host-country inventors (IHCI) and the time before back-shoring, a rising form of de-internationalization. IHCI is viewed as a pull factor that alleviates liabilities of both foreignness and outsidership, hence creating incentives for more extended offshoring stays. Additionally, the study investigates whether specific types of IHCI are associated with offshoring duration, namely IHCI leading to exploratory innovation and IHCI leading to an innovation portfolio with a broad scope. The study employs a Cox model to analyze 301 offshoring initiatives implemented by US firms, partially or totally ended through back-shoring. Results suggest that IHCI is associated with longer offshore duration. Further, duration is longer when IHCI leads to a broader innovation portfolio.

In this study we examine how unfair transaction experiences with domestic partners might affect international expansion efforts, as moderated by industry competition and importing network. With survey data from the Annual Survey of Korea Venture Firms (2014–2018), we identify an explanatory role of unfair transaction experiences, together with moderating roles of industry competition and importing network, on FDI, such that small and medium-sized firms that suffer unfair transaction experiences in their home country are more likely to internationalize. Importing network can catalyze this outward investment, whereas industry competition tends to discourage such international expansion, because the firms need to focus on defending their positions at home, more so than expanding their business internationally.

This study advances our understanding of how a relational work context can promote host country nationals’ (HCNs’) advice-giving behavior. Drawing from social interdependence theory and relational signalling theory, we develop a multilevel model to demonstrate how task interdependence and expatriate advice seeking can jointly influence HCNs’ advice giving. Using data from 795 HCNs nested within 159 expatriates, we find that at the HCN level (Level 1), task interdependence facilitates HCNs’ prosocial motivation and advice-giving behavior. Also, at the expatriate level (Level 2), task interdependence facilitates expatriates’ advice-seeking behavior, which further has a cross-level interaction effect with HCNs’ task interdependence in predicting HCNs’ prosocial motivation and ultimate advice-seeking behavior. We discuss the implications for theory and practice.

Despite the growing institutional pressure derived from rising nationalism and national security concerns being recognized, we know relatively little about how this pressure influences firms’ internationalization strategy, and the policy effect of the national security review regime (NSRR) is under-researched. This study explores the impact of NSRR in host countries on foreign acquirers’ ownership participation in cross-border acquisitions (CBAs). We developed a theoretical framework from a legitimacy perspective to explain how the implementation of the NSRR impacts acquirers’ ownership decisions, and how this impact is conditional on situational conditions. Based on the data on the CBAs conducted by Chinese multinational enterprises (CMNEs) in OECD countries during 2003–2020, we found a negative effect of the NSRR on ownership participation. The negative effect is weaker for private acquirers, private targets, acquisitions in insensitive sectors, acquisitions between countries with relatively smaller ideological differences, and acquisitions in host countries with lower economic growth.

Previous research has emphasised the importance of examining institutional influences on FDI attractiveness. There is, however, relatively limited research with conflicting results exploring the relationship between informal institutional effects, such as level of corruption, and FDI motivation. Addressing this gap, we adopt a configurational fsQCA-based approach to link informal institutional influences to FDI motivation driving the presence or absence of FDI flows. Conceptualising corruption as bribery and unfair business practices, we extend our understanding of informal institutional quality impact on FDI inflows. Results reveal that informal institutional effects on FDI vary across regions, with several pathways explaining the presence or absence of FDI, according to the presence or absence of corruption. We add to previous studies by identifying the conditions that, when combined with corruption, are linked to the presence or absence of FDI. Results also indicate that whilst corruption appears unimportant in preventing FDI, and is of only secondary importance in driving FDI, it appears to have importance in determining the type of MNEs’ undertaking FDI. Overall, corruption is likely determining which companies invest in a country, rather than if, traditional reasons for FDI, particularly Resource and Market seeking, being key, with strategic and efficiency-seeking also being of secondary importance.

We analysed the impact of exporters’ social media use on export costs and relationships with foreign customers using data collected in 2013 and in 2021. Our empirical results show that better information and communication technology (ICT) capabilities positively influence social media use, enhance communications, and lead to stronger relationships with foreign customers, but do not directly reduce export costs. We highlight the significant mediating role played by exporters’ cross-country social media communication in relationship building with foreign customers. Some divergences were evident in relation to the effects on export costs in 2021 compared to 2013. In 2013, social media communication, but not relationship building, notably reduced export costs; in 2021, in contrast, marked by the increased use of social media by consumers and companies due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the scenario was reversed: relationship building, but not social media communication, exerted a notable influence on costs. Commented, in conclusion, are the theoretical and practical implications of exporters using social media to improve their internationalization.

We investigate how the duality of innovation regimes in latecomer countries is institutionally shaped. We first specify the firm-level mechanism of commitment to both knowledge use and knowledge generation regimes with reference to the allocation of government grants across investments in machinery and equipment, and in research and development. Then, we theorize the interactive effects of global and national institutional systems on firms’ commitment to these innovation regimes. Our analysis of firm-level data from 16 latecomer countries classified as either hierarchical or collaborative national institutional systems indicates that, although firms are committed to both innovation regimes, the effect of global cultural rationalization steers firms toward the knowledge generation regime and away from the knowledge use regime. However, this movement away from the knowledge use regime due to rationalization is weaker in hierarchical systems. We contribute to the innovation regime literature by elucidating the firm-level duality in innovation regimes subject to global and national institutional effects.