International Business Journals Research Articles

Corporate Social Responsibility of Chinese Multinational Enterprises: A Review and Future Research Agenda

This study analyzes papers on the corporate social responsibility (CSR) of Chinese multinational enterprises (CMNEs) published in top-tier management and international business journals. We extracted six key constructs from these studies, examined their interconnections, and identified five themes. These themes are (1) the relationship between corporate governance and CSR practice, (2) the relationship between institutional environments and CSR practice, (3) the relationship between resources and capabilities and CSR practice, (4) the relationship between strategy/activity and CSR practice, and (5) the relationship between corporate performance and CSR practice. Our study aim is to reveal research gaps that have not been identified in other previous review articles. Thus, based on the research gaps identified through a review of previous studies, we identified that there is a strong relationship between CSR and national cultural contexts; however, most current research on CSR has focused on Western cultural contexts. Thus, to further explore how CSR of CMNEs may differ from other countries (e.g., Western countries) that is our review aim, we provide five directions for future CSR research on CMNEs. Finally, we theoretically and conceptually analyze recent studies on the impacts of corporate governance, resources, and capabilities on CMNEs’ CSR practices in relation to corporate performance through a theoretical framework and identify future research directions on Chinese MNEs’ CSR by reviewing various theories and perspectives over the last 13 years.

Fusing International Business and Marketing: A Bibliometric Study

This study aimed to provide an assessment of marketing on international business and to organize and classify the literature on marketing in order to clarify the importance of this tool and encourage future research in the projection of international business marketing (IBM) and the power of the ubiquity of this tool in the hands of the users. It is a bibliometric study, and this work focused on international business and marketing articles published in major international marketing, expansion, strategies, and business journals from 2000 to 2020; this topic is scattered across various journals and second data in many disciplines. The investigation reviewed and collected data on the specific paradigm of research that discusses, investigates, and evaluates the topic of IBM. The results showed a new paradigm applied to the topic of IBM and classified it into four first-order research streams: academic research, international business, international development strategies, and customers. The contribution of this study is important in order to identify new challenges and opportunities for marketers, researchers and international companies and in terms of disentangling existing contradictions, applying a new theoretical framework to make better future decisions by large companies, and providing a higher quality to new research in the context of IBM.

Alternative ways of studying time in qualitative international business research: A review and future agenda

Our study provides a systematic theoretical review of 304 qualitative-based articles published in seven international business journals from 2010 to 2020. We constructed a typology that provides alternative ways of studying time and is constituted by two dimensions: ontological conceptions of time (objective vs subjective) and theorising style of research (variance vs process). Our analysis and findings illustrate that time is mostly treated as objective and linear, and they highlight some concerning trends: lack of conceptual clarity; lack of diversity within and between paradigms; and lack of methodological clarity. We propose three pathways for advancing future research on time.

Routines in International Business: A semi-systematic review of the concept

Routines are a crucial element in different streams of International Business (IB) research. This semi-systematic review examines articles published in top-ranked IB journals to analyze how the concept routines is used, in order to provide orientations for future research in the field. A systematic search process in three databases, followed by inductive text analysis and a cluster analysis, identifies three distinct research streams on routines in International Business: Global strategy, international organizational learning, and internationalization processes. A comprehensive analysis of the use of the concept in IB is presented by documenting qualities, types, dimensions, antecedents, and consequences of routines in the extant research. We integrate the fragmented and often implicit aspects ascribed to routines in IB research, so that future research can draw upon a defragmented, synthesized, and clarified concept. Opportunities for future contributions are highlighted in five broad areas: hierarchy and order in the MNE; agents, context, and time; distributing routines; distributed routines; and the non-routine.

Revisiting the concepts of liability of foreignness and liability of outsidership from foreign subsidiary management perspective

The concepts of liability of foreignness and liability of outsidership have been central in international business research. The Uppsala model explains that firms often face obstacles and opportunities in management practices in a host market when internationalizing abroad. International business scholars discussed these concepts redundantly but vaguely in the literature. Only a few literature sources defined and utilized the concepts clearly over the last decade, however, it has not been demonstrated how the key constructs help to explain firms’ foreign subsidiary management. Therefore, the study reconsiders the concepts and identifies a proper utilization of the concepts in the texts drawing on an intensive systematic literature review in the leading international business and strategy journals from 2011 to 2021. The study also analyzes the articles in which the authors find ambiguous and overlapping use of the concepts by clarifying key constructs as identifiers. The study integrates defensive and offensive options for overcoming liability of foreignness and liability of outsidership into our conceptual model of operational structures from the foreign subsidiary management perspectives. The study contributes by providing a novel intensive literature review of the concepts over the last decade; by clarifying the key identifiers to distinguish the concepts in the leading international business and strategy journals; by proposing newly integrated conceptual models of defensive and offensive options from foreign subsidiary management perspectives with the focus on intra-organizational structures for operational aspects.

Mapping research on competitive strategy in international business journals: a co-citation analysis

Mapping research on competitive strategy in international business journals: a co-citation analysis

An analysis of international business journals by bibliometric indicators

We examine the international business journals included in the database of the Scopus. We investigate the citation of 1411 journals for the period 2017-2021, their bibliometric indicators such as CiteScore, SNIP and SJR and correlations between different metrics. No obvious linear dependences between any of the main indicators and the number of citations has been found. One of the biggest publishers is Elsevier that owns Scopus and issues around 100 different journals. It is worth noting that journals that have the most citations do not have the highest indicators.

Digital tools and smart technologies in marketing: a thematic evolution

PurposeThis paper aims to analyze the evolution of digital and smart technologies and their relationship with different themes within marketing journals. In addition, this study has included the evolution of digital and smart technologies in relevant International Marketing (IM)/International Business (IB) journals to describe the impact of technology on this specific area to draw some interesting conclusions.Design/methodology/approachA bibliometric approach is applied in this research using science mapping analysis to visualize and reveal the evolution of smart and digital technologies in this specific academic area.FindingsBy combining science maps with performance indicators, the results of this study suggest that new technologies are related to eight main topics within marketing journals: implementation-completion, perceptions, behavior, market competition, adoption-diffusion model, social media, competitive advantage and disruptive technology. Additionally, this work provides new avenues for future research. When analyzing IM and IB journals, the findings highlight six thematic areas: perceptions-eWOM relationship, innovative foreign markets, performance determinants, Japan, industrial research and China.Originality/valueThis study contributes theoretically to developing and describing a framework for research in smart and digital technologies in the general marketing and international marketing/business fields. It adds a coherent perspective on the points of contact in marketing evolution, where smart technology has a meaningful role. This study outlines the changing questions surrounding the touchpoints as well as emerging research topics.

Research Published in Management International Review from 2006 to 2020: A Bibliometric Analysis and Future Directions.

The Management International Review (MIR) celebrated its 60th anniversary in 2020. In commemoration of this event, we use a bibliometric analysis to present a retrospective on the journal by analyzing its content for the years between 2006 and 2020. We find that the collaboration culture in MIR has risen over time with the increase in the median size of author teams. Moreover, the collaboration network has become more global over time. The methodology used in the journal is predominantly empirical and quantitative with archival data sources most commonly used. The bibliographic coupling of the MIR corpus reveals that the major themes in the journal revolve around “culture,” “emerging economies,” “innovation, knowledge transfer, and absorptive capacity,” “internationalization process,” “culture and entry modes,” and “internationalization and performance.” A comparison with other leading international business journals provides distinct pathways in which MIR may continue to grow. Finally, it is important to note that while the share of conceptual studies has decreased significantly in the last 15 years, the MIR editors want to see more novel and theoretically grounded conceptual articles in the journal.

Interview-based research in management and organisation studies: making sense of the plurality of methodological practices and presentational styles

PurposeThe aim of this review paper is to identify the methodological practices and presentational styles used to report interview-based research in “leading” management and organisation journals.Design/methodology/approachThis paper reviews a sample of 225 articles using qualitative interviews that were published in management, human resource management, organisational behaviour and international business journals listed in the Financial Times 50 list between 2009 and 2019.FindingsThe review found diversity and plurality in the methodological practices used in these studies and the presentational styles used to report interview research.Practical implicationsThe findings are expected to help doctoral students, early career scholars and those new to using qualitative interviews to make decisions about the appropriateness of different methodological practices and presentational styles. The findings are also expected to support editors, reviewers, doctoral examiners and conference organisers in making sense of the dissensus that exists amongst qualitative interview researchers (Johnson et al., 2007). These insights will also enable greater “paradigmatic awareness” (Plakoyiannaki and Budhwar, 2021, p. 5) in the evaluation of the quality of interview-based research that is not restricted to standardised criteria derived from positivism (Cassell and Symon, 2015).Originality/valueTo make sense of this plurality, the authors map these practices and styles against the onto-epistemological paradigms identified by Alvesson (2003, 2011). The paper contributes to calls for philosophical diversity in the evaluation of qualitative research. The authors specifically articulate concerns about the use of practices in interview-based studies that derive from the positivistic logic associated with quantitative research.

The declining share of primary data and the neglect of the individual level in international business research

Complementing Nielsen and colleagues’ (2020) analysis of methodological trends in the Journal of International Business Studies over the past 50 years, we examine similar data on methods published in a wider range of leading international business (IB) journals. Our analysis shows a clear decline of studies based on primary data relative to secondary data, and a persistently low level of individual-level studies among the growing body of research using secondary data across all IB journals considered. We discuss the main mechanisms driving these trends and identify the problems of IB’s increasing exposure to the risks inherent in secondary data. We also discuss the implications related to neglecting individual-level data for theory advancement in IB, such as a disregard for novel secondary data opportunities at the individual level and the risk of reduced theoretical pluralism. In doing so, we substantially extend the debate initiated by Nielsen and colleagues (2020).

A review of methodological diversity within the domain of international entrepreneurship

Based on a review of articles published from 1990 to 2017, we provide insight into the overall positioning of the international entrepreneurship (IE) literature in terms of methodological issues and diversity. We also explore the impact of recommendations in earlier literature on methodology in subsequent research published after 2011. Finally, we evaluate methodological issues and diversity in studies undertaken to date in the context of emerging and developing countries. The research undertaken involved the review and analysis of one hundred and fifty eight studies. Methodologies were systematically analysed under different categories. We found that IE studies are to a great extent confined to mainstream international business and marketing journals. Our findings also demonstrate that IE studies focused on developed countries dominate those from emerging and developing countries, and remain highly skewed towards the European region. The preponderance of high-tech and knowledge-intensive firms as study samples is evident from our analysis. The subjective and objective ontological underpinnings remain the dominant philosophical stance among IE researchers. We also found that IE studies are almost equally dominated by both qualitative and quantitative research approaches. The increasing popularity of case study over other data collection strategies is evident. Although our analysis demonstrates that the domain of IE is still fragmented with knowledge gaps remaining that stem from country context, industry or sector context, ontological diversity, research approach and data collection and interpretation techniques, some progress has been made to the development of IE as a distinct body of knowledge. The findings of our study provide important implications for improving methodological rigor in future IE scholarship.

Unravelling the role of guanxi in the formation and management of international joint ventures – a systematic review of the literature

PurposeThe formation of international joint ventures (IJVs) is one of the prevalent approaches for Western companies to conduct business in China. Yet, doing business in China is difficult for many firms, partially because of the institutional voids that are created by weak formal institutions. The paper aims to focus on the role of guanxi (an informal institution and a company capability that fills such institutional void) in the formation and management of IJVs.Design/methodology/approachA systematic literature review on the role of guanxi in IJV formation and management is conducted based on papers published in top international business journals between 2005 and 2020 – in total, 47 papers are included in the review.FindingsThe findings of the study are presented in four themes, namely, the role of guanxi as social capital in IJV formation, the role of trust in guanxi-based IJVs, the role of control mechanisms in balancing high reliance on trust in guanxi-based IJVs and the role of guanxi in managing inconsistencies in the regulatory environment. The analysis also reveals that guanxi has a positive effect on the development of IJVs if control between the parent firms is well balanced; otherwise, guanxi can trigger opportunism and leads to failures.Practical implicationsThe study unravels how guanxi leads to successful outcomes in IJV formation and management, which assist managers who operate IJVs with their decision-making.Originality/valueTo the best of the authors’ knowledge, no previous paper has critically analysed the literature on IJVs using a guanxi perspective at micro (personal), meso (business) and (macro) governmental levels. This approach allows for providing more nuanced view of the role of guanxi in the formation and management of IJVs and aligns more closely with managerial decision-making.

Artificial intelligence, robotics, advanced technologies and human resource management: a systematic review

Although academic production in intelligent automation (e.g. artificial intelligence, robotics) has grown rapidly, we still lack a comprehensive understanding of the impacts of the utilization of these technologies in human resource management (HRM) at an organizational (firms) and individual (employees) level. This study therefore aims to systematize the academic inputs on intelligent automation so far and to clarify what are its main contributions to and challenges for HRM. In a systematic search of 13,136 potentially relevant studies published in the top HRM, international business (IB), general management (GM) and information management (IM) journals, we found 45 articles studying artificial intelligence, robotics and other advanced technologies within HRM settings. Results show that intelligent automation technologies constitute a new approach to managing employees and enhancing firm performance, thus offering several opportunities for HRM but also considerable challenges at a technological and ethical level. The impact of these technologies has been identified to concentrate on HRM strategies, namely, job replacement, human-robot/AI collaboration, decision-making and learning opportunities, and HRM activities, namely, recruiting, training and job performance. This study discusses these shifts in detail, along with the main contributions to theory and practice and directions for future research.

Assesing the Financial Performance: in Perspective Environmental Performance, CSR, GCG, and Leverage

The company has a goal to generate maximum profit. However, the dry season in 2019 used by them to carried out "land clearing" of the forest to make profits in a bad way. This is conseptual research and qualitative research that aims to analyze the influence between variables. This research analyzes the effect of Environmental Performance, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), Good Corporate Governance (GCG) as a non-financial aspect and Leverage as financial aspect on Financial Performance. This research is designed by qualitative research with theoretical reviews as the main method. The authors conducted a systematic review of the articles that were identified from international and national business journals published between 2014 and 2019. There is three basic theory about agency theory, stakeholder theory, and trade-off theory as the foundation for reviewing some previous research. By the classifying the result found some propositions: 1) The good of environmental performance affect positive financial performance, 2) The higher disclosure of Corporate Social Responsibility affects the financial performance to be good, 3) The good implementation of Good Corporate Governance can make the financial performance to be good and, 4) The good ratio of Leverage will affect positively the financial performance

Agility and flexibility in international business research: A comprehensive review and future research directions

This study explores 134 articles on agility and flexibility research published in the top-nine international business (IB) journals. Accordingly, we critically analyze, map and structure flexibility and agility research in IB, and synthesize the findings into an integrative framework. The paper identifies a wide range of definitions of the concept and a lot of work on its conceptualization. However, studies at the individual and institutional levels of analyses are scarce, and the concept is under-theorized, as there is a dearth of real theoretical underpinnings in this research stream. Thus, in addressing this gap, more qualitative and interdisciplinary research is needed.

Determinants of Equity Ownership Stake in Foreign Entry Decisions: A Systematic Review and Research Agenda

AbstractIn international business (IB), the level of equity ownership adopted by a firm is an important decision. In this study, we review and synthesize the findings of 105 empirical studies published in prominent IB and management journals on the determinants of equity ownership stake in foreign investment decisions, published between 1991 and 2020. Three primary theoretical lenses ‒ organizational learning perspective, transaction cost economics and institutional perspective – are adopted to catalogue and synthesize the existing literature. We find that, despite the proliferation of IB studies on antecedents of level of equity ownership decisions, many unanswered questions remain. We also find that theoretical fault lines impede progress in this research stream. Based on the literature review, we suggest a research programme that includes accounting for the behavioural view of decision‐making in the organization, shifting from an atomistic perspective to a network perspective of the firm, having a better understanding of the process of internationalization and considering industry heterogeneity as well as the host country's characteristics.

FACTORS INFLUENCING THE INTERNATIONALIZATION PROCESS OF BRAZILIAN BORN GLOBAL COMPANIES

This study aimed to identify factors that influence the internationalization of Brazilian born global companies (BGs). The studies on the theme of internationalization have been developed in a specific area and have continuously refined themselves as a theoretical field of high relevance and prominence. These researches seek to follow the speed and changes of international business, especially the studies that focus on the phenomenon of accelerated internationalization or as called, Born Global. A search was carried out – in the annals of events (EnAnpad and Semead), Brazilian international business journals, and at Google ScholarTM – to identify empirical studies on the theme "internationalization of Brazilian born global companies." The results found point to a diversity of factors that can influence BG companies' internationalization process, such as networks, geographic location, product differentiation, intensive use of technologies, and product innovation. However, the most relevant issue (and that demands new specific studies) is the "profile of the entrepreneur" as a factor of significant influence in the internationalization of the Brazilian BGs.

Market entry into Africa: Acquisitions and international joint ventures. Studies of foreign firms' market entry strategies, challenges, and performance in Africa

AbstractWhile the interest in investing in Africa is rising, the know‐how of business on the continent is very limited. There have been only recently few special issues focusing on sub‐Saharan Africa in the top international business journals: “Sub‐Saharan Africa at a key inflection point” (Thunderbird International Business Review 2009); “Contemporary developments in the management of human resources in Africa” (Journal of World Business 2011); “Contemporary challenges and opportunities of doing business in Africa” (Journal of Technological Forecasting and Social Change 2016); “Critical perspectives on international business in Africa (Critical Perspectives on International Business 2016); “Strategic Management in Africa (Global Strategy Journal, 2017); and “The internationalization of African firms (Thunderbird International Business Review 2016). The aim of this special issue is to advance understanding of international business in Africa and specifically focus on how foreign firms enter African markets via acquisitions and international joint ventures and extend knowledge of these market entry strategies and performance in Africa for research and for foreign firms intending to, or currently doing business in Africa. This guest editorial provides a summary of the five articles and one book review in this special issue categorized into three broad thematic issues: International joint ventures and acquisitions as market entry strategies in Africa; cross‐border investments of African firms; and theoretical underpinnings.

Cultural distance and cross-border diffusion of innovation: a literature review

PurposeThe objective of this study is to advance the understanding of the connection between cultural distance and the cross-border diffusion of innovations by conducting a systematic review and analysis of previous literature.Design/methodology/approachThis study involved a literature review. A total of 35 articles published in ABS journals were identified from key management, international business and marketing journals. The articles were analyzed by the methodologies and findings presented.FindingsThe literature review shows that the adoption and diffusion of innovation and new products are bound to be deeply influenced by cultural distance. Specifically, national cultures influence the willingness of consumers to buy new products at both the individual and organizational levels; organizational culture plays a key role in the process of launching new products and diffusing innovations to the market. However, existing studies and their findings are fragmented and inconsistent. Controversial views remain regarding the impact of national cultural dimensions on the diffusion of innovation at the individual and organizational levels.Originality/valueThis is the first systematic review of the literature specifically focusing on the impact of cultural distance on the cross-border diffusion of innovation. In identifying the research gaps and limitations of extant studies, the authors point to avenues for future research to develop a more integrated research agenda for marketing, management and international business research.