Journal of World Business最新文献

How much does the host country matter in explaining foreign affiliate performance? Using a global sample of 34,708 foreign affiliates operating in 91 host countries, we revisit the relative importance of the host country effect as a performance determinant. Our variance decomposition results suggest that the host country effect is less salient than previously identified, often explaining a small portion of affiliate performance differences. We offer implications for future international strategy research on foreign affiliate performance, advancing an understanding of the relative importance of external and internal determinants. We direct scholarly attention to other effect classes, namely the affiliate effect.

Acquiring local knowledge from host-country key partners is crucial for internationalizing firms, yet it entails severe risks for both partners. Research thus emphasizes the role of interorganizational trust, but is inconclusive about how effective it is in different contexts. We theorize how different trust dimensions interact with host-country legal safeguards. We test our hypotheses with data on 210 cross-border relationships in the renewable-energy industry. Results show that weak legal safeguards render ability-based trust particularly effective for knowledge acquisition, while strong legal safeguards render integrity-based trust effective. Benevolence-based trust, however, may have detrimental effects under conditions of strong legal safeguards.

Sanctions are a tool used by political actors to induce foreign countries, firms or individuals to alter their behavior. As nonmilitary coercive measure, they have the potential to disrupt the international business environment, often on short notice, and change the rules of the game. Synthesizing the available evidence on the economic and political impacts of sanctions, we explore how sanctions disrupt the institutional framework for international business and how firms respond to sanctions. Based on a review of available scholarly evidence, we discuss how theories of international business, such as institution-based view, resource- and knowledge-based view, resource dependency theory, and behavioral theories of the firm, can contribute to explaining the impact of sanctions. At the same time, we discuss how sanctions, as politically motivated disruptions, challenge some assumptions underlying these theories. Going forward, our research agenda on sanctions is likely to help firms and governments to strategize in a geopolitically sensitive world.

We illustrated how multi-paradigm research that combines the phenomenological interpretive and the positivist paradigms in sequential studies helps problematize questionable assumptions in international business research. While observing the phenomenological principle of epoché (i.e., suspension of researchers’ pre-conceived categories), we interpreted accounts of their lived experience amongst expatriates working in foreign subsidiaries. A follow-up positivist study further led us to conclude that, unlike Edström and Galbraith's (1977) reasons for an international assignment, expatriates hardly see themselves as headquarters’ control agents, but as dual agents in charge of balancing both headquarters and subsidiary's interests.

In this review article we take stock of international business (IB) research on emerging economy multinational enterprises (EMNEs) over the past three decades. Our review covers 690 articles published in 64 high-impact peer-reviewed journals between 1990 and 2021 (inclusive). We first present bibliometric findings on some key patterns of this vast body of scholarly work. We then conduct content analysis to critically assess this literature and provide a multilevel synthesis of the existing knowledge base. To do so we propose a theoretical framework that highlights three dimensions – micro-foundations, organizational characteristics, and institutional environment – by which the distinction between EMNEs and their predecessors, namely multinational enterprises (MNEs) from advanced economies, is investigated. At each level, we seek to understand EMNEs’ convergence with and divergence from their predecessors in terms of their motives, strategies/approaches, and outcomes of internationalization. Through this process we identify opportunities to move EMNE research forward through interdisciplinary inquiry, and we propose several avenues for future research.

We extend the internationalization process literature by theorizing how institutional unpredictability and its changes can affect the foreign exit−reentry process and how the multidimensionality of foreign ownership can alter these impacts as a firm's conduit to different foreign countries. Drawing on the dynamic institution-based view, we examine a process whereby firms exit and reenter foreign countries in response to institutional dynamism. By distinguishing foreign shareholders from host and nonhost foreign countries, we identify the negative moderation effects of host-country foreign ownership but not nonhost foreign ownership. Our study, therefore, contributes an integrative framework to the de- and re- internationalization research.

We argue that decoupling, defined as the process of weakening interdependence between two nations or blocs of nations, has been ongoing between China and the United States and is likely to accelerate, with major implications for IB and MNE strategies and management. We present data that the world has experienced deglobalization and China-US decoupling and discuss the dynamics underlying decoupling and their implications for IB. We propose an initial framework of variations in decoupling by industry characteristics, and we outline novel and important questions for IB research growing out of our analysis. We conclude with a brief exposition of possible alternative scenarios.

International vertical alliances (IVAs) have garnered increasing scholarly interest in the strategy and international business (IB) literature. Our review of 111 papers published in major IB journals from 2000 to 2020 sheds light on the antecedents, key mediators, moderators and outcomes of IVAs. To generate insights, we juxtaposed forward and backward alliances and compared IVAs with their domestic vertical and horizontal counterparts. In this paper, we highlight key areas for future IVA research, including—but not limited to—broadening the scope of the investigation in order to integrate new theories and methods suited to examine such alliances in the IB field.

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused a great “reset” and has challenged many assumptions about work and life in general. Our focus in this paper is on the future of global work in the context of multinational enterprises (MNEs). We take a phenomenon-based approach to describe the important trends and challenges affecting the where, who, how and why of global work. As we highlight implications for organizations and individuals, we offer a set of research questions to guide future research and inform IHRM practitioners.

Culture and its measurement are foundational to International Business research. Hofstede's model of culture dominates cross-cultural research. Unfortunately, the evidence of poor psychometric properties of Hofstede's instrument for measuring cultural values, the VSM, has been mounting, which prompted the development of numerous alternative instruments for measuring cultural values comprising Hofstede's model of culture. The abundance of choices makes it challenging to determine which of the instruments is most suitable for a given study. Using a large international sample (N = 12,462), we evaluated the psychometric properties of seven different instruments for measuring individual-level values in Hofstede's cultural framework and assessed their content validity, reliability, factor structure, and measurement equivalence. Our tests confirmed that Hofstede's instrument suffers from several psychometric deficiencies, while other instruments, notably those developed by Dorfman and Howell (1988), Yoo et al. (2011), and Taras et al. (2013), showed good reliability and validity. Guidelines for selecting the most suitable instrument and directions for future instrument development are provided.