The mutual forbearance hypothesis states that when the same competitors meet in multiple markets, rivalry is deterred. Our study highlights how pressures for local responsiveness impact the veracity of this hypothesis for multinational corporations (MNCs) in host countries. We develop theory to explain how subsidiary ownership, home-host cultural distance, host country regulatory restrictions o…
An analysis of major innovations within existing corporations in the past decade shows that precious few have been business-model related. And a recent American Management Association study determined that no more than 10% of innovation investment at global companies is focused on developing new business models. A business model consists of four interlocking elements: 1. customer value proposit…
Multinational corporations from developed and developing economies alike are aggressively expanding their global presence, particularly in emerging markets. Industry traits largely determine the winners - but that needn't always be the case, say Ghemawat, of IESE Business School, and Hout, of the University of Hong Kong. Companies can break the pattern by anticipating or creating new customer s…
Growing interest has emerged in viewing the multinational corporation as a knowledge creating and diffusing entity. The importance of sharing knowledge across organizational and national boundaries has been established in previous research. However, the question of which organizational policies lead to knowledge sharing between multinational units is still not fully understood. In particular, t…
This paper was motivated by the growing interest of scholars of multinational corporations (MNCs) in the institutional perspective. Our review of the literature suggests that international management applications of this perspective have been dominated by a narrow set of neoinstitutional ideas. We develop a set of provocations that challenge the validity of traditional neoinstitutionalism in th…
Few studies have examined legitimization in multinational corporations from a discursive perspective. To complement the existing institutional literature, we adopt a critical discourse analysis perspective that allows us to examine the microlevel processes of discursive legitimation. We provide an example of a media text - dealing with a production unit shutdown - to demonstrate how this perspe…
I develop a critical framework on international management and production that draws form the literature on global commodity chains and global production networks, on institutional entrepreneurship, and on neo-Gramscian theory in international political economy. The framework views global production networks as integrated economic, political, and discursive systems in which market and political…
In this paper I use insights from postcolonial scholar Hom Bhabha to analyze international management discourse on the cross-national transfer of knowledge and practices within the multinational corporation. Stressing the increasing importance of first world-third world geopolitical relations in shaping the transfer process, I apply Bhabha's epistemology of mimicry, hybridity, and the third spa…
The cultural distance metaphor dominates international management research, promoting a sterile, detached view where statistic antecedents in the form of artificially constructed differences serve as the dominant lens through which culture is viewed and its impact assessed. We examine culture and its positivist treatment in the foreign direct investment literature using the theoretical and real…
This article provides a conceptual integration and synthesis of the literature on power and influence in multinational corporations (MNCs). To provide some focus to their synthesis, the authors concentrate on the situation facing, and the strategies pursued by, low-power actors within the MNC network, that is, actors who are currently positioned in relatively weak or low-status positions vis-a-…
We investigated the value of local partners' business group affiliations in international joint ventures (IJVs) by integrating economic and political perspectives on business groups with insights from the IJV literature. In 563 Sino-Japanese IJVs in China, we found that a local partner's affiliation to a regional business group enhances the performance of an IJV when its location restricts fore…
A phenomenon that has become the focus of recent research on interorganizational alliance network growth is that firms often enter into repeated relationships with prior partners. The implications of this tendency on corporate performance, however, are not well understood. From transaction cost and network perspectives, I test competing hypotheses on a large sample of multinational corporations…
This study focuses on control mechanisms used by multinational corporations (MNCs) to manage their extra-national R&D units. Drawing on both the literature on organizational power and contingency theory, this study develops and empirically tests a set of hypotheses aimed at explaining how headquarters control their overseas R&D units. Data collected from 134 R&D units of German MNCs serve to te…
Under what conditions does a multinational enterprise's (MNE's) investment in a developing country produce spillovers for local firms operating in the same industry? This paper views firms as unique configurations of tacit and codified knowledge, and proposes that the strategies pursued by an MNE will determine whether the investment will create positive externalities, through knowledge diffusi…
This study compares the predictions of institutional theory with those of the contingency perspective of strategic human resource management (SHRM) on the selection of an employment mode. Empirical data were collected from multinational enterprises, including the electronics and garment industries, that operate in China to test the relative importance of the determinants of the selection of an …
This article includes a one-page preview that quickly summarizes the key ideas and provides an overview of how the concepts work in practice along with suggestions for further reading..Printed Journal
A critical new battleground is emerging in China: It's the "good-enough" market segment--home of reliable-enough products at low-enough prices to attract the cream of the country's fast-growing cohort of mid-level consumers. Traditionally, foreign multinationals have dominated China's premium segment, while a plethora of domestic companies have served the low end, often unprofitably. But as mid…
From the perspectives of resource exploitation versus exploration, we argue that hazard rates of foreign direct investments will be lower in more developed and less developed countries than in countries of similar economic development as the home country. We obtained strong supporting evidence based on a sample of foreign direct investments made by Singapore firms. Using the reasoning of strate…
Climate change could devastate the economies of vulnerable regions. By taking the lead in helping those areas adapt to global warming, firms can advance their interests while building goodwill in communities where they do business. .Printed Journal
Foreign plants usually accounted for disproportionately large shares of exports in Indonesian manufacturing industries and exports of heavily-foreign plants (foreign ownership shares of 90-100 per cent) grew conspicuously after the early-1990s. Foreign plants usually had significantly higher export propensities than local plants, although accounting for variation in factor intensities, size, an…