The international business literature, while extensive by now, has given scant attention to the direct comparison of the performance of advanced economy multinational enterprises (AMNEs) and emerging ...market multinational enterprises (EMNEs) in international markets. In particular, the question of how well these firms perform in each other’s home markets is an intriguing one. In this study, we examine “market share” performance of AMNEs and EMNEs in each other’s countries using a comprehensive, longitudinal dataset. Drawing from the eclectic paradigm, we contend that, in comparison, EMNEs perform better as they: i) develop non-traditional ownership advantages based on their learnings in their home markets, and ii) expand into advanced economy markets relying on non-traditional ownership advantages. Our findings show a declining performance of AMNEs operating in emerging markets over time, while EMNEs generally appear to benefit from increased market shares in advanced economy markets for the same period.
•A literature review on micro-level ambidexterity and multinational enterprises.•Applied a Systematic Literature Review methodology.•Provided a descriptive and thematic analysis of the ...findings.•Synthesized the literature findings according to the pattern-matching technique.•Developed an integrative framework of extant literature.
During the past decade, ambidexterity research has broadened from its traditional macro-level focus to examine the micro-level perspectives of ambidexterity on various settings. The authors systematically review and critically appraise the literature of ambidexterity from a micro-foundational perspective, within the context of Multinational Enterprises (MNEs). By synthesizing the review findings, the authors develop a comprehensive framework that maps extant literature within and across various disciplines and multiple levels of analysis. As part of their review, the authors also identify and discuss important emerging themes and fruitful areas for future research and present the implications to both research and management practice.
A central question for researchers and practitioners is whether and how IT (information technology) can help build a competitive advantage in uncertain environments. To address this question, the ...present study seeks to empirically explore the relationship between IT-enabled dynamic capabilities and competitive performance. By drawing upon recent thinking in the strategy and IT management literatures, this paper argues that the impact of IT-enabled dynamic capabilities on competitive performance is mediated by organizational agility. Using survey data from 274 international firms and by applying structural equation modelling (SEM), outcomes suggest that IT-enabled dynamic capabilities facilitate two types of agility, market capitalizing and operational adjustment agility, which in sequence enhance competitive performance. The confluence of environmental factors is examined by fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA). The results of fsQCA reinforce and refine findings of the PLS analysis concerning the limits and conditions to which IT-enabled dynamic capabilities add value.
•Strategic ambidexterity improves Product-service innovation (PSI) outcomes for MMNEs.•PSI must be developed through a sequential Exploitation-Exploration pathway.•Exploitation and exploration ...capabilities are equally important for Developed MMNEs.•Emerging MMNEs lacks technological skills that need to be developed during the delivery of PSI.•PSI enables DMMNEs to escape from price-based competition whereas EMMNEs resort to PSI to explore new technological opportunities.
This study tests whether strategic ambidexterity improves Product-service innovation (PSI) outcomes for manufacturing multinational enterprises (MMNEs). It also tests successful pathways to develop PSI properly by organizing exploitation and exploration activities. Data from a survey of 338 MMNEs are analysed through Structural Equations Modelling. The sample contains firms from five world regions, including emerging economies. This approach enables contrast to determine cross-country heterogeneity in PSI outcomes. The results show that, to maximise firm performance, PSI must be developed through a sequential Exploitation-Exploration pathway. Although this optimal sequence is consistent across all world regions (except Japan), noticeable contextual differences emerge in the relative importance of exploration and exploitation to firm performance. Our findings show that exploitation (i.e., cost efficiency through PSI design) and exploration (i.e., PSI R&D) capabilities are equally important in emerging economies.
Internationalization of R&D and innovation by multinational enterprises (MNEs) has undergone a gradual and comprehensive change in perspective over the past 50 years. From sporadic works in the late ...1950s and in the 1960s, it became a systematically analyzed topic in the 1970s, starting with pioneering reports and “foundation texts”. Our review unfolds the theoretical and empirical evolution of the literature from dyadic interpretations of centralization versus decentralization of R&D by MNEs to more comprehensive frameworks, wherein established MNEs from advanced economies still play a pivotal role, but new players and places also emerge in the global generation and diffusion of knowledge. Hence, views of R&D internationalization increasingly rely on concepts, ideas, and methods from IB and other related disciplines such as industrial organization, international economics, and economic geography. Two main findings are highlighted. First, scholarly research pays increasing attention to the network-like characteristics of international R&D activities. Second, different streams of literature have emphasized the role of location-specific factors in R&D internationalization. The increasing emphasis on these aspects has created new research opportunities in some key areas, including inter alia: cross-border knowledge-sourcing strategies, changes in the geography of R&D and innovation, and the international fragmentation of production and R&D activities.
Using an institutional theory framework we theorize, hypothesize, and empirically show that higher levels of formal and informal corruption environments found in a firm's operating portfolio are ...related to higher levels of corporate social irresponsibility (CSiR). Failing to consider corruption's informal dimension leads to potentially false perceptions about a multinational enterprise's (MNE) operating environment, particularly when the formal dimension is low but the informal corruption dimension is high, as is the case in about one third of our sample. Including the informal corruption environment component provides additional explanatory power over the formal corruption environment alone in predicting CSiR and yields a superior understanding of both the formal and informal dimensions of the corruption institutional environment's influence on corporate social irresponsibility levels of MNEs. Managerial implications and future research directions are discussed.
While attention to the social and environmental impacts of international business (IB) is not new, the past years have seen renewed interest due to pressing global problems such as climate change and ...poverty. Multinational enterprises (MNEs) are regarded as playing a specific role given their global influence and activities in which they are confronted with a range of issues, stakeholders and institutional contexts, in both home and host countries. Their potential in being not only part of the problem, but also perhaps part of the solution, is increasingly recognised and has come to the fore in research interest in corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities and sustainable development implications of IB. Systematic study and inclusion in the literature has been lacking, however. This article examines the extent to which both concepts have been addressed in IB research, and identifies some gaps in the body of knowledge and approaches so far. It also introduces recent studies that yield interesting findings, pointing at promising areas for further research.
Sustainability discourse is becoming ubiquitous. Still, a significant gap persists between corporate sustainability talk and practice. Prior research on corporate sustainability reporting has relied ...primarily on two competing theoretical framings, signaling theory and legitimacy theory, which often produce contradictory results regarding the significance and effects of such disclosures. Thus, despite this substantial body of research, the role that sustainability disclosures can play in any transition toward a less unsustainable society remains unclear. In an effort to advance our collective understanding of voluntary corporate sustainability reporting, we propose a richer and more nuanced theoretical lens by drawing on prior work in organized hypocrisy (Brunsson, 1989) and organizational façades (Abrahamson & Baumard, 2008; Nystrom & Strabuck, 1984). We argue that contradictory societal and institutional pressures, in essence, require organizations to engage in hypocrisy and develop façades, thereby severely limiting the prospects that sustainability reports will ever evolve into substantive disclosures. To illustrate the use of these theoretical concepts, we employ them to examine the talk, decisions, and actions of two highly visible U.S.-based multinational oil and gas corporations during the time period of significant national debate over oil exploration in the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge. We conclude that the concepts of organizational façade and organized hypocrisy are beneficial to the sustainability disclosure literature because they provide theoretical space to more formally acknowledge and incorporate how the prevailing economic system and conflicting stakeholder demands constrain the action choices of individual corporations.
While significant progress has been made on the contextual role of institutions, scholarly research on the dynamic process of emerging economy multinational enterprises’ (EMNEs) international ...activities interacting with home country and host country institutions still seems to be in its infancy. Therefore, in order to move the current academic debate forward, we examine the intersection between the internationalization of EMNEs and their institutional environments by undertaking a critical review of the existing literature, given that institutional forces not only shape organizational behavior but also affect EMNEs’ internationalization strategies and organizational outcomes. We propose an integrative framework of 5Cs (context, capability, change, concomitance and configuration) underlying the co-evolution of EMNEs’ internationalization and institutions, and position all the papers included in this Special Issue within this framework in order to point towards a number of directions for future scholarship.
This paper revisits and extends our earlier work (in 2005) in the pages of this journal. We argue that there is a need for more fine‐grained understanding of the country context along two dimensions: ...(1) institutional development and (2) infrastructure and factor market development. Specifically, we propose an enriched typology of emerging economies with a focus on mid‐range emerging economies, which are positioned between traditional emerging economies and newly developed economies. Then we examine new multinationals from these mid‐range emerging economies that have internationalized both regionally and globally. We outline directions for further research based on this typology in terms of (1) government influence, (2) resource orchestration, (3) market entry, and (4) corporate governance regarding the internationalization strategy of these emerging multinationals from mid‐range economies.
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