Journal of World Business最新文献

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.

Disasters – natural or manmade – are on the rise with far-reaching implications for international business (IB) actors and transactions. While the Covid-19 pandemic has generated much academic interest for its impact on business in general, little effort has been made to consolidate the fragmented research on disasters more broadly in the field of international business. Therefore, it is important and urgent to consolidate the existing knowledge to provide a solid basis for future research. We systematically review 132 articles published between 1991 and 2022 and critically evaluate the nascent but rapidly growing literature at the intersection of disasters and IB. Our examination of the different types of disasters (natural and manmade) shows two separate streams: (1) a dominant MNE-centric stream of strategic IB research which regards disaster as an exogenous shock impacting MNE strategies, responses, and resilience, and (2) an emergent stream which places disaster as a more central, embedded phenomenon of investigation impacted by MNEs and other global actors. Our systematic review highlights the gaps in this literature and concludes with a discussion of the intersection of IB-disasters in relation to the 17 United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to suggest directions for future research.

A limited idea of what ethnography involves, and dominant disciplinary ideas of rigour and validity stand in the way of International Business studies engaging more deeply with ethnography. For higher managerial and scholarly relevance, we propose the use of “reflexive engagement”. Reflexive engagement involves the researcher (ethnographer), the research subjects (actors) and those reading the study report (audience) in the “ethnographic triangle”. We outline the principles of reflexive ethnographic engagement with all three sides of the ethnographic triangle. We provide ethnographers in International Business studies with concrete research and writing advice regarding the three criteria of ‘excellent’ ethnography, namely positionality, plausibility and intersubjectivity.

Building on emerging debates on the ‘dark’ and ‘bright’ side of digital globalization, and calls for considering its environmental and social implications in more detail, this perspective article seeks to ‘unravel’ these components of ‘the digital age’ for International Business (IB). Inspired by the affordance perspective developed in Information Systems research, we offer IB scholars a new approach to ‘zoom in’ on the (potential) role of individual novel technologies in addressing specific sustainable development issues. Three examples illustrate the relevance of this approach for multinationals and for developing innovative research avenues in IB, which extend existing insights on digital globalization.

Deploying small world representation logic, we examine the context-specific factors that inform managerial decision-making in conflict-torn countries. Drawing on insights from thirty-one managers, we spotlight nine higher-order heuristics that commonly inform MNEs’ mental representations and their managers’ decision to exit or stay. These heuristics were identified by categorising the commonalities arising from our respondents’ accounts on what information they search for (discovery heuristics) and how it was evaluated (evaluation heuristics). We discovered that information accessibility, conditioned by firms’ in-country experiences, is paramount. Furthermore, since employees are strategy shapers, they can undermine the resilience-enhancing benefits of operational flexibility in conflict-torn countries.

Corporate social irresponsibility (CSI) can occur in the multinational enterprise's (MNE) domestic and international markets, thereby risking corporate reputation. However, are corporate reputations differentially influenced by the location of CSI events? Drawing on the ethnocentric bias perspective, we examine how CSI affects corporate reputations according to whether CSI emerges in the MNE's home or international markets. We theorize that, when CSI occurs in an international host market, the negative relationship between CSI and corporate reputation is generally weaker. Conversely, when CSI arises within the home location, home country-located CSI has the strongest negative relationship to corporate reputation. Our findings generally reflect the core argument of the paper: home-country based CSI incidents may be more consequential to an MNE's corporate reputation compared to those CSI incidents which unfold in certain host countries. Our longitudinal analysis, comprising of 2,401 CSI events, involving 465 MNEs, confirms our theorizing. Among our principal contributions, this study adds to the growing and important literature on the dark side of international business (IB).

This study investigates whether a digital business model helps firms internationalize faster. It tests the hypothesis that a digital business model accelerates the rate of internationalization because economies of scale enabled by digitalization exceed those offered by a non-digital business model. Based on analysis of foreign digital and non-digital entrants in the U.S. financial advice industry, the study found that while digital entrants scaled faster than their non-digital counterparts, a diverse product portfolio harmed digital entrants even when it benefited non-digital entrants. The contrast between scale and scope highlights that digitalization only conditionally benefits internationalization.

Literature provides insights into various mechanisms for achieving legitimacy via adaptation. Yet we know little about how internationalizing firms can break away from existing legitimacy conventions and still achieve congruence. We investigate how internationalizing firms selectively reconstruct meanings of market categories as sources of legitimacy. We qualitatively examine internationalizing craft beer industry across four countries (Australia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, and New Zealand) and find that breweries engage in stretching, corroborating, and molding market category meanings. We extend current theorizing on legitimacy by demonstrating how actors orchestrate cultural codes of their market categories to conform to legitimacy prescriptions that matter.

Time has significant implications for the functioning of international strategic alliances. Drawing on a systematic review (1943–2022), we consolidate the literature around types of time (i.e., clock, event, cyclical, and life-cycle) and time facets (e.g., duration and speed) in international strategic alliances. This review's findings aid us in developing a temporal-relational framework that intends to advance the study of how partners’ similar as well as dissimilar perspectives about time can engender either friction or enrichment. This framework supports a research agenda that emphasizes subjective time to advance theory about international strategic alliances.