Abstract
International business scholars have recognized the importance of the contextual embeddedness of firms. However, how they matter remains a contested question. Although recent efforts have been made to review the field, it remains unclear how institutions affect firms’ performance. We aim at answering the following research question: How is the intellectual and the conceptual structure of the institutions and firms’ performance field defined? We searched in the WoS and Scopus databases with pre-determined keywords, and we obtained a sample of 1063 articles that we analyzed by conducting the citation and co-citation analyses, keyword co-occurrence analysis, and thematic map analysis. Our bibliometric results portrayed how the intellectual and conceptual structure of the field has evolved. We contribute to the international business literature by providing a one-stop overview of the field, thus identifying current accomplishments and future research avenues on the relationship between institutions and firms’ performance. By analyzing the articles included on the Emerging and Niche clusters, we discuss future research avenues on the topics of sustainability, entrepreneurship, political ties, and institutional quality.
Highlights
The role of institutions guiding firms’ behavior and success is one of the core issues in the international business literature [1]
By analyzing the articles included on the Emerging and Niche clusters, we discussed future research avenues on the topics of sustainability, entrepreneurship, political ties, and institutional quality
Our results have shown Mike W Peng, Yuan Li, En Xie, and Garry Bruton as the most prolific authors in the topic of institutions and firms’ performance
Summary
The role of institutions guiding firms’ behavior and success is one of the core issues in the international business literature [1]. A few consider the performance aspect of firms, such as internationalization performance [10], MNEs’ multinationality performance [11], and family firms’ performance [12] These studies either consider institutions as a moderator or ignore the effect of institutions on a firm’s performance, thereby leaving a gap in our understanding of how institutions affect firms’ performance. Recent research [2,3,4] conceptualized institutions under the following institutional strands: Under the sociology-based approach, institutions are defined as social structures including regulative, cultural-cognitive, and normative elements [16] that provide stability and meaning to social life [2,3]. Under the politics-based approach, institutions are defined as the formal and informal procedures and norms embedded in the organizational structure of the political economy [3]
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