Comparative strategic management: An emergent field in international management

In this article we present an important yet understudied field in international management—comparative strategic management across nations. Although the strategic management discipline traditionally uses the firm as a unit of analysis, and indeed firms within the same nation or industry are often heterogeneous, as argued by the resource-based view, we observe something more. We note a sustained and systematic pattern of strategic management issues at the national-level. We explicate that a unique bundle of national-level institutional, competitive and socio-cultural conditions function together with a repertoire of distinctive capabilities or weaknesses for most firms, incubating certain national-level patterns of corporate-, business-, and international-level strategies adopted by most firms within the nation. To further illustrate we use BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China) to showcase why and how we advance the study of comparative strategic management (CSM). In our quest to guide future research on CSM, we present a rudimentary yet overarching framework of comparative environments, comparative capabilities, and comparative strategies among firms operating in BRIC countries.     

Venture Capital Syndication: Synthesis and future directions

This paper reviews and synthesizes the extant literature on venture capital syndication. By considering the questions of how, why and when syndication affects the performance of venture capitalist (VC) firms and their portfolio ventures, a schematic structure of the syndication literature is formed and areas for further research are identified. The results of the review show that, while the venture‐level aspects are relatively well understood, the current literature lacks an understanding of how and why syndication affects the performance of VC firms. This suggests that more attention should be directed towards syndication as a component of the overall strategy of VC firms.     

Diversification strategies of developing country firms

Large diversified firms have been a dominant factor in the economies of many developing countries. Nonetheless, they have received only limited research attention, and consequently our knowledge of the nature and extent of their behaviour is limited. This research sought to contribute to filling this gap. Analysis of 163 diversification moves undertaken by 44 firms in various developing countries shows a considerable variation across developing regions and over time in terms of the objectives that drive the diversification activities and the strategies pursued to implement them. This variation can largely be attributed to specific characteristics of countries and regions that affect the behaviour of firms.     

International Evidence on the Determinants of Organizational Ethical Vulnerability

This paper proposes a model to explain what makes organizations ethically vulnerable. Drawing upon legitimacy, institutional, agency and individual moral reasoning theories we consider three sets of explanatory factors and examine their association with organizational ethical vulnerability. The three sets comprise external institutional context, internal corporate governance mechanisms and organizational ethical infrastructure. We combine these three sets of factors and develop an analytical framework for classifying ethical issues and propose a new model of organizational ethical vulnerability. We test our model on a sample of 253 firms that were involved in ethical misconduct and compare them with a matched sample of the same number of firms from 28 different countries. The results suggest that weak regulatory environment and internal corporate governance, combined with profitability warnings or losses in the preceding year, increase organizational ethical vulnerability. We find counterintuitive evidence suggesting that firms’ involvement in bribery and corruption prevention training programmes is positively associated with the likelihood of ethical vulnerability. By synthesizing insights about individual and corporate behaviour from multiple theories, this study extends existing analytical literature on business ethics. Our findings have implications for firms’ external regulatory settings, corporate governance mechanisms and organizational ethical infrastructure.     

Additive Manufacturing and Production Internationalization: An Internalization Perspective

Additive manufacturing (AM) has been touted as a transformative technology that alters the way production is organized across geographical and organizational boundaries, yet little is known what this means for firms' internationalization of production. In this paper, we take an internalization theory perspective to hypothesize how the adoption of AM technology influences a firm's propensity to have an international production subsidiary, the number of foreign production subsidiaries that it operates, and the number of countries in which it has foreign production subsidiaries. To test our hypotheses, we rely on European Patent Office data to identify firms with AM-related patents and match this information to firm-level data of international production subsidiary networks from Bureau Van Dijk. Using both propensity score matching and zero-inflated negative binomial regressions, we find that AM firms are more likely to have a foreign production subsidiary than non-AM firms and operate them in more countries. We find partial evidence that AM firms have more foreign production subsidiaries than non-AM firms, in particular as compared to comparable innovative firms.     

Internationalization from Central and Eastern Europe: A systematic literature review

Economic transition in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) has led to a dramatic increase in CEE firms' participation in international markets. This applies to different types of firms – from large emerging market multinationals to small international new ventures. In this paper, we systematically review the research on CEE outward internationalization, which we define as internationalization of CEE-based firms in the form of exporting or FDI, and contribute to literature by providing a complete picture of the state of the art and outlining potential avenues for future research. We find that while the CEE region has been described as a fruitful ground for developing new and testing existing theories, it heavily loads on the latter. We suggest that greater reliance on theories and concepts from the field of entrepreneurship and a stronger focus on internationalization decision processes might further enrich our understanding of internationalization from CEE.     

Employee performance management across borders: A review of relevant academic literature

The purpose of this paper is to survey the emerging academic literature on employee performance management (PM) from an international perspective. The primary information source was a search of electronic databases. Two criteria were used to determine which studies to include in the literature survey: (1) those published in an English-language blind refereed academic journal, and (2) those focused on employee PM or performance appraisal (PA) from an international/global perspective. Sixty-four articles, published between 1985 and 2005, met the criteria. A preliminary scheme was developed for classifying the existing academic research into conceptual and empirical articles. The empirical articles were further classified by their foci and themes. In addition to classifying the articles, the paper presents a summary of what can be learned from the major findings of the empirical studies. The major conclusion is that the academic literature on cross-border PM is relatively atheoretical and exploratory in nature and that the design and substance of the research studies are weak. With regard to themes, there are a number of foci in the literature with only scant attention paid to the central concern with the PM of expatriates as expressed by firms. The empirical articles look at the disparate components of PA and are interested mainly in cultural differences as an intervening variable. Several recommendations are presented for researchers to help focus future research on cross-border PM.     

The Internationalization of Chinese Firms: A Critical Review and Future Research*

The important phenomenon that the internationalization of Chinese firms (ICF) represents has attracted increasing interest from scholars from multiple fields over the past 20 years (1991–2010). Although this proliferation of research has the potential to significantly improve understanding of Chinese multinational enterprises (MNEs), the necessary step of consolidating and integrating extant knowledge is absent. This paper reviews the scholarship on the ICF and offers insights into the specific areas in critical need of further development. By focusing on articles published in major scholarly journals during the period 1991–2010, the authors develop a coherent framework to organize and review conceptual and empirical findings from disciplines as far ranging as management, international business, cross‐culture and area studies. Within the reviewed literature, three primary streams of enquiry are identified which focus on the antecedents, processes and outcomes of the ICF. Achievements within each of the three research streams are carefully reviewed using content analysis, whereby a number of important issues are identified which have remained consistently untouched, and recommendations are provided for future research, aimed at developing a more integrated research agenda on the ICF for management and international business scholars.     

Investigating Institutional,Economic and Social Determinants of European Regions for Firm Growth Through Employment Generation

This paper examines the influence of the institutional, economic and social characteristics of a region on firm growth through employment generation across 14 European countries for the time period 2010–2013. Theoretically, we utilize the resource‐based view alongside insights from institutional theory to develop a conceptual framework that captures the influence of regional characteristics on firm employment growth. Based on this framework, our empirical results indicate that not only does firm growth depend on the firm‐specific characteristics found in the literature, but regional attributes also significantly impact firm growth in a heterogeneous way for different firm types. In line with the heterogeneous nature of firm growth, our results point to significant differences in the influence of institutional, economic and social characteristics on firm growth in different‐sized groups and across different rates of growth distribution. The implications of our study suggest the importance of managers and policy‐makers realizing which firms are mostly expected to benefit from the external environment, and which in turn can be planned via tailored policy reform by regional governments and firm‐level strategy‐making by managers.     

Unravelling Learning within Multinational Corporations*

This article explores the impact of institutional variation on the extent to which subsidiary firms learn from multinational corporations. Learning is conceptualized here as consisting of two aspects: knowledge flow and reinforcement of or change in routines to incorporate the behaviourist assumptions of learning into the international business field. The research is based on in‐depth case studies that systematically compare the ways in which parent company knowledge diffuses to Polish, Turkish, Italian and German subsidiary firms in the chemical industry. The findings show that even though firms face the same global pressure to integrate and pursue the same international strategy, their learning outcomes are not the same. There is heterogeneous learning as a result of differences in the institutional context of home countries. Where institutional structures are not favourable to learning, the proactive or reactive orientation of actors to identifying future needs and modifying existing schemata – which highlight the importance of human agency – is significant in explaining learning.     

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.     

Imprinting: Toward a Multilevel Theory

The concept of imprinting has attracted considerable interest in numerous fields—including organizational ecology, institutional theory, network analysis, and career research—and has been applied at several levels of analysis, from the industry to the individual. This article offers a critical review of this rich yet disparate literature and guides research toward a multilevel theory of imprinting. We start with a definition that captures the general features of imprinting across levels of analysis but is precise enough to remain distinct from seemingly similar concepts, such as path dependence and cohort effects. We then provide a framework to order and unite the splintered field of imprinting research at different levels of analysis. In doing so, we identify economic, technological, institutional, and individual influences that lead to imprints at the level of (a) organizational collectives, (b) single organizations, (c) organizational building blocks, and (d) individuals. Building on this framework, we develop a general model that points to major avenues for future research and charts new directions toward a multilevel theory of imprinting. This theory provides a distinct lens for organizational research that takes history seriously.     

Institutional voids and firms' resource commitment in emerging markets: A review and future research agenda

The impact of institutional environments on firms' strategic decisions has been examined in strategy and international business literature. Yet, the current state of knowledge about how institutional voids affect firms' resource commitment in emerging markets is equivocal. This paper reviews and develops an integrative framework that maps the key conceptualizations, theoretical frames, mechanisms, contingencies and outcomes in the institutional voids – resource commitment literature. Altogether, this paper structures institutional voids and resource commitment research into salient themes to help scholars scope the field and explore value-adding avenues to further our understanding of internationalization and resource commitment decisions in emerging markets.     

Heterogeneous firm response to organized crime: Evidence from FDI in Mexico

We thank Editor Massaki Kotabe and two anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions. In addition, we appreciate helpful feedback on earlier versions of this paper from Myles Shaver, Jennifer Oetzel, Adam Fremeth, anonymous reviewers for the 2011 31st Strategic Management Society Annual International Conference and conference participants. Jorge Delgado and Avilia Bueno provided valuable assistance with data collection.This paper examines the impact of organized crime on Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) considering the role of foreign investor home-country experience. Extant research shows a negative impact of organized crime on FDI. We expect investor home-country experience with organized crime to ameliorate this deterrent effect. We do not find support for this prediction analyzing FDI net flows into Mexican states from 2001 to 2010. Our analysis does, however, reveal a heterogeneous investor response to organized crime. Our results suggest, surprisingly, that crime in host locations is actually positively associated with investment from high-crime countries. This research makes several contributions. Our evidence suggests that firms seek to leverage home experience with high levels of local organized crime, involving seemingly localized routines and practices, as they expand abroad. In addition, our work draws attention to the effect of institutional variation within host countries in foreign entry. It also expands the literature by focusing on organized crime, a largely unexplored source of country risk in international management research. Finally, it brings attention to the role of powerful international criminal organizations, drug cartels, in shaping cross-border business activity.     

The influence of national culture and institutional voids on family ownership of large firms: A country level empirical study

There is considerable variation across countries in both the extent to which large publicly listed firms are family-owned and the dominance of such family-owned firms in stock markets. The literature presents competing theoretical viewpoints on what influences such country-level variation. On one hand, institutional economists suggest that institutional voids can have a strong influence. On the other hand, cultural sociologists suggest that a country's culture can have a strong influence. One type of institutional void is a lack of institutional norms and regulations needed for monitoring contracts (which can discourage owners from hiring professional agents for top management positions in their firms) and another type of institutional void is a lack of financial credit availability in the country. Cultural dimensions include collectivism (i.e. cohesion within in-groups/families) and power distance (i.e. inequalities in society). This country-level empirical study suggests that both national culture and institutional voids influence family ownership patterns around the world, and that institutional voids moderate the influence of national culture. National culture has a stronger influence when a country has institutional voids; however, the influence of national culture weakens when institutional voids are overcome.     

Institutional changes and organizational transformation in developing economies

An important component of globalization during the last two decades is the increased participation of developing economies in the global economy both as markets for goods and services as well as production sites. Institutional changes emanating from evolving political landscapes within individual countries and pressures from supra-national bodies have been instrumental in the liberalization of developing countries' economies and their integration into the global economy. A growing body of research has focused on the transformation of state-owned enterprises as they are privatized, with particular focus on the role of organizational and national heritages that enhance or constrain the evolution of these firms within a market-based institutional environment. In this introduction, we review this literature stream, introduce the papers in this special issue, and highlight the theoretical approaches that help explain how organizations in distinct national contexts overcome the pressure emanating from institutional changes in developing economies.     

Portfolio Interrelationships and Financial Performance in the Context of European Firms

The linkage between the interrelationships of a firm’s lines of business and corporate financial performance has been the subject of extensive research in the strategy field. Yet very little research has examined this key relationship within firms operating in Continental Europe. This study investigates firm relatedness and its further relationship to accounting and market-based performance measures within a sample of European firms. The results confirm a positive and significant relationship between resource-based relatedness and firm performance for German, Swiss and Austrian multi-business firms. Thus, this study provides further evidence that resource-based relatedness of large diversified manufacturing companies can help explain variability in corporate financial performance across different institutional environments.     

It’s all about culture! Institutional context and ownership concentration across Europe

It is widely recognised that the formal institutional context affects firm ownership concentration. However, the impact of the informal institutional context has received less research attention. Drawing from institutional theory, we tested our hypothesis that both the formal and informal (cultural) institutional contexts simultaneously influence firm ownership concentration. Based on a firm-level database of the largest 600 listed companies in 19 European countries for the period 2009–2015, we found that both formal and informal institutional contexts, considered independently from each other, affect the level of firm ownership concentration. However, when these institutional contexts are considered together, the significance of the formal institutional context's effect on ownership concentration disappears while the informal (cultural) institutional context remains significant. Specifically, our findings indicate that high power distance, collectivism, uncertainty avoidance, restraint, and short-term orientation favour firm ownership concentration. Overall, our findings demonstrate that the diversity in European cultures explains firms' different levels of ownership concentration across European firms, signalling that the European Union's efforts towards a common regulatory frame may not necessarily lead to a convergence of European firms' ownership structures and, consequently, of corporate governance practices.     

Contingencies versus External Pressure: Professionalization in Boards of Firms Affiliated to Family Business Groups in Late‐Industrializing Countries

We examine the antecedents of professionalization in boards of firms affiliated to family business groups, increasingly recognized in the literature as the dominant form of big business organization in many late‐industrializing countries. Dimensions of board professionalization that we include in our study are board size, ratio of salaried executives and outsider presence. We compare predictions on board composition derived from contingency, institutional and power perspectives. Turkish family business groups, considered as an archetypal example of this form of organization, provide the empirical setting for the study, with data on 299 firms affiliated to ten different family business groups. Our results provide greater support for institutional and power perspectives, showing that, relative to internal and external complexity facing affiliate firms, institutional pressures and the presence of joint venture partners better predict board professionalization.     

Revisiting Institutional Voids: Advancing the International Business Literature by Leveraging Social Sciences

Institutions are vital for solving collective action problems and enabling functioning markets. Based on this notion, the institutional voids literature has offered a dynamic research agenda for international business scholarship. In this perspective article, we leverage work from political science, development economics, legal studies, and anthropology to: (a) expose hidden assumptions about institutional voids in the management literature; (b) propose new directions for research based on our revised assumptions; and (c) provide direction-specific theoretical constructs from other social sciences to stimulate theory-building and empirical inquiry into institutional voids. We develop a framework that identifies four revised assumptions about institutional voids research that we derive from current studies and elaborate on eight theoretical constructs from other social sciences that exemplify the revised assumptions and generate future research questions for international business scholars.