Where business networks and institutions meet: Internationalization decision-making under uncertainty

Both business networks and institutional forces are relevant to firm internationalization but they have seldom been studied together. We investigate under what circumstances firms are more likely to adopt non-predictive strategy in light of the influence of the business networks, the institutional forces, and the home market background affecting their internationalization. Based on survey data from 758 small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) from Brazil, China, Poland, Italy, and Sweden, our results support the effects of formal institutional distance and cultural differences on the use of non-predictive strategies by SMEs in internationalization decisions, as well as the contingency effects of business network stability and of having an emerging market background. We integrate research on the liability of foreignness and the liability of outsidership and find that business network stability is critical. It does not moderate the relation between cultural difference and NPS adoption but attenuates the negative relation between institutional distance and NPS adoption, indicating that the liabilities of foreignness and outsidership play different roles in internationalization.     

Diaspora Ownership and Homeland Firms' Internationalization

Although the contribution of diaspora to international business is becoming more evident, little is known about the channels used by individual firms to benefit from diaspora. In this paper, we propose equity ownership as a form of connection between the homeland firms and diasporans (i.e. diaspora members). Specifically, we draw on the literature on diaspora combined with an owners-as-resources perspective to theorize about how diaspora owners can affect the homeland firm's internationalization. We suggest that the anticipated entry costs deriving from the liability of foreignness faced by homeland firms explain how the impact of diaspora owners varies depending on entry mode. Finally, we compare diaspora owners to other types of foreign owner which we argue have lower levels of motivation and ability to help homeland firms to internationalize, and contribute relatively less to their internationalization than diaspora owners. We test and confirm our predictions using data on 2608 domestically controlled Indian firms and their internationalization in 2006–2012.     

Liability of foreignness and membership in a regional economic group: Analysis of the European Union

This study examines the performance of foreign vs. domestic firms in a regional economic group. In particular, we focus on host country and foreign-owned firms in the European Union. Results provide evidence of a liability of foreignness—foreign-owned firms underperform host country firms. However, there is also evidence that liability of foreignness can vary across countries, and that foreign firms can overcome the liability of foreignness in some host countries, even industrialized ones. The results show the moderating effects of the host country and home country environments on the relative performance of foreign firms. Lastly, the results reveal that foreign-owned banks from highly competitive home countries underperform foreign firms from less competitive home countries.     

Is there a liability of localness? How emerging market firms respond to regulatory punctuations

In the 1990s, emerging economies all over the world deregulated, privatized and liberalized their domestic markets. These regulatory punctuations caused radical institutional changes for emerging market firms (EMFs). We argue that, for EMFs, regulatory punctuations created a liability of localness, parallel to the liability of foreignness that firms face when they go abroad. Whereas liability of foreignness comes from the differences caused by changing one's geographic place from ‘here’ to ‘there’; liability of localness comes from changing one's point in time from ‘then’ (pre-exogenous regulatory shock) to ‘now’ (post-exogenous regulatory shock). In both cases, firms incur additional costs, and the ones that survive are ones that best develop strategies for coping with “being in a strange land”. We apply our arguments to the Mexican banking industry, which was privatized and liberalized in the 1990s.     

An Effectual–Causal View of Managerial Decisions in the Internationalization of Indian MNEs

We use effectuation theory to understand the internationalization of emerging market multinational enterprises (EMNEs), specifically answering the questions of: (a) how managerial decision logic differs across EMNEs that face disadvantages vs. those that do not, and (b) what managerial decision logic helps EMNEs to mitigate disadvantages. We employ a case research approach to analyze decision events across eight firms that internationalized from India between 1990 and 2015. We find that EMNEs are attuned to welcoming and leveraging surprises in order to transform challenging markets into opportunities; form cautious partnerships with self-selecting stakeholders, and; balance all-or-nothing opportunities with losses they can afford. Furthermore, while EMNEs adopt relatively balanced effectual-causal actions to mitigate the liability of multinationality (LoM), they are more effectual than causal in mitigating the liabilities of foreignness (LoF) and liabilities of origin (LoR).     

Regional economic stress as moderator of liability of foreignness

In this paper we develop optimized localization strategies for multinational firms to overcome their liability of foreignness by adding a regional dimension within a country. We explore conceptually whether economic stress in a region has a mitigating or reinforcing effect. We test this analytical framework empirically on the highly internationalized German car market and find that intra-national regions under economic stress are more promising markets for foreign car manufacturers as the effects of liability of foreignness are significantly lower there.     

Overcoming the liability of foreignness without strong firm capabilities — the value of market-based resources

The concept of “liability of foreignness” — the costs of doing business abroad — has been known and discussed since the mid-1970s. At the core of these discussions is the role that firm capabilities play in overcoming or limiting these costs. This raises the question of how firms with inappropriate, limited or constrained capabilities relative to their host environment overcome the liability of foreignness. This paper focuses on the subsidiaries of “emerging multinationals” and how they manage the demands of a technologically and economically highly developed host country. A host location with sophisticated markets and well-developed institutional infrastructure may be a highly challenging environment for firms that have grown their organizational capabilities in less developed contexts. This paper explores that situation and considers how resources available on the market — for example through supplier inputs — assist subsidiaries to benefit from their presence in a munificent location. Despite the acknowledged limitations of a transaction-based approach, this paper presents evidence that purchasing knowledge provides an accessible strategy for overcoming some liabilities of foreignness.     

Coping with liability of foreignness: Different learning engagements of entrant firms

Much has been written about how international firms create and sustain firm-specific advantages that offset their liability of foreignness. Less attention has been devoted to the question of how international firms reduce their liability of foreignness. It is the contention of this study that as a consequence of managerial discretion, such as willingness to undertake local adaptation, international firms familiarize with foreign markets at different paces. The data from a sample of 494 international firms from Sweden, Denmark, and New Zealand suggest that entrant firms' learning engagement, i.e., the effort and ability to learn how to conduct business in a foreign environment, varies considerably. In particular, adoption of standardized international business routines and unwillingness to adapt products and marketing practices to local markets seem to be associated with a low learning engagement. The data also indicate that a large proportion of the entrant firms has been engaged in preentry learning.     

International offshoring of services: A parity study

Conventional wisdom suggests that firms engage in international offshoring of services primarily to reduce wage costs associated with a given service activity. Drawing on international business research on the costs of doing business abroad (CODBA), liability of foreignness (LOF), and institutional theory, we investigate the factors that contribute to the location choices for services offshoring activity, including wage differentials between the home and host countries. We find that consistent with a parity perspective but contrary to conventional expectations, a country is more likely to be a destination of services offshoring as the average wage of a country increases. We also find that education level and cultural similarity are significant drivers of offshoring location choices, again consistent with a parity perspective. This study contributes to debates about the economic impact of services offshoring by showing that firms locate offshoring facilities in destinations that are closer in wages to the home country and those with higher education levels and cultural similarity.     

Liability of foreignness as a barrier to knowledge spillovers: Lost in translation?

Multinational corporations (MNC) search increasingly for lead market knowledge and technological expertise around the globe. We investigate whether their subsidiaries gain access to these valuable sources of host country knowledge to the same degree as domestic rivals. We develop a theoretical framework for “why” and “how” a lack of embeddedness and legitimacy (liability of foreignness) may translate into additional obstacles for foreign subsidiaries. We test these hypotheses empirically using a broad dataset of more than 1100 firms in Germany. We find that MNCs can compete on an equal footing with host country competitors when it comes to generating impulses for innovations from universities. They are significantly challenged by liabilities of foreignness, though, when host country customers are involved. The disadvantages are especially pronounced when the host country industry is at the technological forefront. We suggest that the disadvantages arising from liability of foreignness in the host country are especially relevant when promising lead customers have to be identified and their tacit and often unarticulated impulses have to be transferred, understood and prioritized. Management recommendations are developed on the basis of these results.     

Top Management Team Internationalization and Firm-level Internationalization: The Moderating Effects of Home-region Institutional Diversity and Firm Global Focus

The factors that determine firms' levels of internationalization remain a focal area of international business research. Within this research stream, studies building on the upper echelons theory have investigated the influence of the demographic characteristics of the top management team (TMT) on firms' international expansion. However, the literature to date has overlooked the TMT's overall degree of internationalization as a key driver of firm-level internationalization. In our paper, we argue that by having self-selected into careers abroad, foreign TMT members by definition have a higher cognitive tolerance of foreignness than domestic TMT members do. We theorize that foreign TMT members' higher cognitive tolerance for foreignness enhances the overall TMT's level of international attention and international trust, thereby facilitating strategic decisions that favor firm-level internationalization. Additionally, we propose two key contingencies that attenuate this relationship: the institutional diversity of the firm's home region and the firm's global focus. Analysis of Fortune Global 500 firms supports the hypothesized relationship between TMT internationalization and firm-level internationalization, as well as the two moderation effects.     

The Determinants of Foreign Multinational Enterprise Firms' Board Governance in Caribbean Offshore Island Economies

Using a unique sample of 171 listed firms in the Caribbean region, this paper explores the influence of post-entry ownership of foreign MNEs on the board composition of subsidiaries. Our findings reveal higher ownership is a means of enhancing the security of property rights while simultaneously creating a liability of foreignness. This causes subsidiaries to externally contract for resources, leading to the hiring of more lawyers and fewer accountants. The opposite is true for progressively lower levels of foreign MNE ownership. Firms' adoption of shareholder rights governance amplifies these findings, while state formal institutional quality reverses them.     

Do exits proxy a liability of foreignness?: The case of Japanese exits from the US

Progress in understanding the liability of foreignness requires accurate measurement of this concept. This paper investigates whether exits of foreign affiliates from a given host market provide a reliable measure. We tackle this question by investigating 32 exits of Japanese manufacturing affiliates from the US. Our goal is to assess the extent to which exits are driven by a liability of foreignness and thus whether exits can serve as a reliable measurement of this liability. We find that less than half of our exits are attributable to a liability of foreignness. We conclude that while the data confirm a liability of foreignness for Japanese early entrants into the US, the presence of many other motives for exit suggests caution when inferring such a liability from exits, especially when exit costs are low.     

The multinationalization of developing country MNEs: The case of multilatinas

I study the multinationalization — the decision to establish foreign direct investment (FDI) — of developing country firms, in particular Latin American ones or “Multilatinas”. Despite a long exporting tradition, many firms in Latin America have only recently become multinational enterprises (MNEs). The analysis of case studies reveals three insights. First, Multilatinas take a long time to become MNEs, reflecting the additional challenges and need for sophisticated advantages for establishing FDI. Second, Multilatinas are induced to become MNEs after changes in the home country that follow structural reform induce them to upgrade their competitiveness to international levels. As a result, they can overcome the difficulties of establishing FDI and become MNEs. Third, Multilatinas follow four strategies in their selection of the country where to establish FDI first depending on the interplay between difficulties and advantages of operating abroad. These three arguments build on and link the notion of advantages of internationalization put forward by the eclectic paradigm of international production and the idea of difficulties in internationalization presented by the incremental internationalization model. The strategies are explained by the balancing of the ease of overcoming difficulties and the advantages derived from foreign operations.     

Liability of ecosystem integration and internationalisation of digital firms

The widespread emergence of digital firms has important implications for international business theory. In this paper, we argue that because of systematic cross-industry differences in the local ecosystems digital firms need to develop in foreign markets, they will face differential costs and challenges of what we term liability of ecosystem integration (LoEI). The nature of the LoEI differs from both traditional concepts of the liability of foreignness (LoF) and the liability of outsidership (LoO). Rather than reflecting the need to overcome economic or psychic distance by learning about the host country (as with LoF) or investing in relationship-specific knowledge (as with LoO), overcoming LoEI requires investments in catalysing the co-development of a local ecosystem involving users, complementors and institutional actors specific to each business. We show how the level of LoEI a firm faces depends on the characteristics of its industry and its business model along three dimensions: the level of integration with local users, complementors, and institutions. These characteristics impact both firm's success in internationalisation and the level of concentration in the global market.     

How to identify liabilities of foreignness and assess their effects on multinational corporations

This article examines the liabilities of foreignness construct and discusses key methodological and research design issues facing liability of foreignness researchers. After reviewing past studies and more recent liabilities of foreignness research, I discuss definitional issues related to this construct. I then present a two-part research framework designed to first help identify a specific liability of foreignness in a focal country, and then help identify factors that minimize the effects of that specific liabilities of foreignness. I also discuss multinational management issues at the corporation level that likely affect liabilities of foreignness experienced at the foreign subsidiary level.     

Psychological capital and the intent to pursue employment with developed and emerging market multinational corporations

The entrance of emerging market multinational corporations (EMNCs) into developed markets and their subsequent demand for western talent is an important new research topic in the field of human resource development (HRD). Upon entering developed markets, EMNCs will find themselves competing with a host of well-established western firms for the same limited pool of talent. Due to possible liability of origin issues, EMNCs may be perceived as less attractive employers. Human resource development professionals tasked with helping these newly arrived firms to recruit necessary talent will find the ability to identify those individuals most likely to pursue employment with an EMNC highly beneficial. In pursuit of this goal, five hypotheses were tested on 703 American and European respondents. Specifically, we examined the interaction between the level of psychological capital of western job seekers and their intent to pursue employment in order to identify possible predispositions for finding EMNCs as attractive employers.     

Syndication and Foreignness: Venture Capital Investments in Emerging and Developed Markets

This paper aims to understand when foreign and domestic firms have different likelihoods of syndication in venture capital investments. Although current theory may imply that foreign firms face the liability of foreignness that constrain their syndication opportunities, empirical studies provide quite mixed evidence. To address this issue, this study emphasizes the contingency roles of settings, experience, and reputation. In particular, I argue that foreign firms are more likely to syndicate, compared with domestic ones, when focal investments are less mature, or when local markets are colder and less capitalized. However, the difference in syndication between foreign and domestic firms decreases when they accumulate more experience or when they acquire higher reputation. I find empirical evidence from a sample of venture capital investments in China, UK, and the Netherlands. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed at the end.     

Internationalization and Performance of Firms in China: Moderating Effects of Governance Structure and the Degree of Centralized Control

This study proposes necessary modifications to the existing internationalization–performance relationship to meet the idiosyncrasies of China-specific contexts. We first hypothesize an S-shaped internationalization–performance relationship as the baseline and then investigate the moderating effects of a firm's governance structure and the degree of centralized government control on the relationship between its internationalization and performance. The results, based on a longitudinal sample of manufacturing firms in China for the 2001–2007 period, indicate that (1) the S-shaped internationalization–performance relationship holds for firms in China; (2) the governance structure moderates the internationalization–performance relationship such that increased profitability through internationalization is more likely for modernized firms than for their conventional local counterparts; and (3) the degree of centralized control moderates the internationalization–performance relationship such that increased profitability through internationalization is more likely for firms affiliated with higher level governments than for those affiliated with lower-level governments.     

来源国劣势与合法化战略——新兴经济企业跨国并购的案例研究

新兴经济体企业在跨国并购中如何根据不同类型来源国劣势来做出合法化战略选择?通过对吉利和万向六次跨国并购的多案例分析,本文打破现有文献关于"来自相同国家的企业面临相似来源国劣势"这一"同质化假定",把来源国劣势构念化为制度维和产品维。通过归纳式案例研究,本文发现,对于产品维的来源国劣势,新兴经济体企业倾向于通过组织制度设计、资源协同和声誉重构等合法性修复战略进行应对。对于制度维的来源国劣势,新兴经济体企业倾向于采用制度遵从、组织制度设计、资源协同等合法性获取战略来应对。当面临产品维和制度维双重劣势时,新兴经济体企业综合运用制度遵从、组织制度设计、资源协同、声誉重构等合法性获取和合法性修复战略,重点强调沟通协调这一合法性维持战略来应对。这些发现贡献于新兴经济体企业在跨国并购,乃至于更广意义国际化的文献,并对中国企业跨国并购过程有一定的启示意义。