Journal of World Business最新文献

Exogenous shocks have long been a feature of the global economy, yet they have become particularly salient in recent years. This Special Issue of the Journal of World Business addresses the shift to a New Normal characterized by frequent events that disrupt the international business context, such as the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine conflict. In this Introduction to the Special Issue, we discuss how the IB literature has treated exogenous shocks. We posit that important lessons can be learned from history, and from the experience of MNEs in the countries of the Global South. We also suggest future research avenues centered around exogenous shocks, international business, and multinational enterprises.

We theorize that linguistic grammar structures related to gender, pronoun use, and politeness distinctions influence individuals’ cultural values toward diversity, including masculinity, collectivism, and power distance, respectively. Based on first-handed data collected from a large sample of individuals (N = 9,058) who speak various native languages, our analysis shows that languages require speakers to arrange words according to linguistic grammar structures that govern how team members perceive equity, diversity, and inclusion. Our study suggests that language is a salient source of diversity that can shape belief systems toward diversity, even after controlling for more commonly studied diversity dimensions.

The benefits of having an internationally diverse alliance portfolio are well known. However, the challenges remain overlooked, especially the potential to curb firms’ international expansion beyond such alliances. Building on global connectivity literature, we study how firms’ international footprint through their foreign subsidiaries is affected by the geographical spread of their international alliances. Using data on a sample of U.S. high-tech firms, we find that this relationship follows a U-shaped pattern and is contingent on alliance portfolio geographic distance and firms’ absorptive capacity for internationalization. Deviations from the optimal international footprint lower firms’ innovation and financial performance.

Inclusion is an important consideration for international firms to fully realize their strategic human resources, yet there is limited research on how international business competencies relate to perceived inclusion. This study proposes and tests a social identity-based framework about how cultural intelligence relates to perceived inclusion through the mediating effects of synchrony preference and perceived workgroup similarity (in work styles and cultures/ethnicities). Support was found for this model based on data from a three-wave time-lagged study of working professionals. These findings offer theoretical contributions to several literatures and provide international organizations with practical knowledge about perceived inclusion in diverse workgroups.

Methodological developments are critical for driving theoretical advancements in international business (IB) due to the field's diversity regarding disciplinary, theoretical, and conceptual bases. We provide an accessible introduction to two methodological approaches—one related to design and one to analysis—that are currently underutilized in IB despite their great potential: (a) field and quasi experiments, and (b) text-based analysis. We describe each method and provide examples of how they can be used to make advancements in several IB domains and theories including internationalization process theory; ownership, location, internalization (OLI) paradigm; knowledge-based view of multinational enterprises; dynamic capability theory; and international entrepreneurship.

We explore multinationals’ de-internationalization at the onset of the 2022 Russia/Ukraine crisis, based on their CEO's political ideology. Using motivated cognition logic, we propose that the differences between conservative- and liberal-leaning CEOs regarding their attitudes toward change and social justice influence their receptivity to stakeholders’ demands regarding divestment. Using a sample of US MNCs, we find support for our arguments. This research is of scholarly importance as this crisis may intensify the terrains of contestation which multinationals represent for stakeholders that are making claims over their location decisions, often perceived as a sign of acceptance into a country's political actions.

Building on the mixed gamble perspective, we examine family versus nonfamily firms’ propensity to increase or decrease their internationalization in response to different sources of risk. Our framework explains how a firm's mixed gamble calculus of internationalization can change as it adjusts to business, industry, and institutional circumstances. Using an unbalanced panel of 1031 publicly traded firms from 11 European countries over a 15-year period, our study offers unique insight on why firms, depending on their degree of family ownership, calculate the mixed gamble of internationalization differently and why they vary in their decisions to expand or withdraw from internationalization. Our study makes an important step toward a better understanding of internationalization strategy in family firms, clarifying the mechanisms behind whether they choose to protect and ‘fight’ for their domestic market thereby reducing their internationalization scale or prefer to escape from the uncertainty and turbulence and ‘flee’ toward international markets.

Inpatriation experience (i.e., working at headquarters) for host-country national (HCN) subsidiary managers is supposed to be beneficial for foreign subsidiaries’ knowledge transfer and financial performance. Applying upper echelons theory, we investigate whether HCN subsidiary CEOs with inpatriation experience promote knowledge transfer from multinational corporation (MNC) headquarters to their subsidiaries via the formation of social ties at MNC headquarters to drive subsidiary performance. Moreover, we theorize and investigate if HCN subsidiary CEOs’ motivational cultural intelligence can amplify the positive effect of inpatriation experience. Combining survey and archival data from 289 subsidiaries of MNCs in South Korea, our results partially support our theoretical model. Our findings offer important implications for expatriate staffing, inpatriation assignments, and subsidiary management.

Based on insights from the spillover, international business, and knowledge management literatures, we study factors that enhance multinational enterprise (MNE) scaling and growth. Viewing MNEs and their employees as potentially rich knowledge sources, we draw attention to MNE-to-MNE knowledge spillover which fuel MNE scaling throughout organizations and employ panel data spanning 44,256 foreign and 21,246 domestic MNEs during 2004-2017. Our results show that (a) foreign MNEs benefit from depth and breadth of organizational knowledge spillover available in a geographic region, (b) domestic MNEs benefit from the depth of human capital knowledge spillover, and surprisingly, (c) domestic ownership hampers MNE scaling.

Exogenous shocks have become more frequent in recent years. Responses to one major crisis have often been discussed though there has been little research on now firms can handle multiple shocks, sometimes back-to-back ones. Using Lebanon as a strategic research site, we explore how MNEs’ CSR practice helps them to adapt to multiple exogenous shocks over a period of time. First, employing a process model, this paper shows the generative capacity in MNEs’ ‘people, process and structures’ in developing the capabilities to respond to multiple shocks. Second, a phenomenon of imprinting and imbrication is highlighted as firms leverage new and existing capabilities to address a current crisis and to prepare for subsequent ones. Third, we introduce a new capability, termed here as “exigent capacity,” which enables firms to drive humanitarian aid in crises. Exigent capacity culminates from the preceding capabilities developed, specifically, creative reflexivity and multidexterity.