The Role of Local Context in the Cross‐border Acquisitions by Emerging Economy Multinational Enterprises

This paper explores the role of local context in cross‐border acquisitions by emerging economy multinational enterprises (EMNEs). It argues that the importance of local context has remained despite the increased global integration of the world economy. Hypotheses are tested using data on Indian acquisitions hosted in 70 countries over an eight‐year period. Results, which are consistent across number and value of cross‐border acquisitions, show that the local context in host countries offers contrasting benefits. Emerging economy multinational enterprises exploited these benefits by embedding in host countries through acquisitions. The acquisition strategy is conventional in the motives underpinning internationalization, but novel in its geographical clustering of host countries, and idiosyncratic owing to the EMNE's ability to draw on home country embeddedness. The paper develops theoretical implications and extends the concept of embeddedness, treating it as a series of internalization or quasi‐internalization decisions across a variety of local contexts by multinationals.     

Processes Underlying Interfirm Cooperation

This special issue intended to bring together scholarly insights on the processes that underlie the formation, growth, management and termination of interfirm cooperation (IFC). In this introductory paper, we highlight what we know about IFC and why fresh perspectives are warranted on this phenomenon from a conceptual and practical standpoint. We also highlight the contribution of each paper published in this special issue. The seven selected papers differ in their theoretical perspective, context, research methodology and findings, but collectively they enhance our understanding of various IFC processes. We end this paper by highlighting fertile avenues of future research.     

A perspective on multinational enterprise’s national identity dilemma

ABSTRACT

This conceptual paper identifies gaps and contributes to the literature on ‘identity’ dilemmas faced by multinational enterprises operating in a globalised world. Various characteristics and business strategies of multinational enterprises are delineated and analysed through the lens of social identity theory and international business concepts such as market and institutional logic. Our analysis, based on multiple cases, and derived from a variety of industries and countries, associates the identity dilemma to informed business strategy. Our findings suggest that while multinational enterprises face identity dilemmas that they sometimes use to their advantage, it also poses several challenges. Through our conceptualisation, we derive five distinct propositions to shape future research directions.