International Business Phenomena Research Articles

Apocalypse unleashed: a critical perspective on complexity science, catastrophes, and black swan events in international business

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to propose a methodological approach for modeling catastrophic consequences caused by black swan events, based on complexity science, and framed on Feyerabend’s anarchistic theory of knowledge. An empirical application is presented to illustrate the proposed approach.Design/methodology/approachThom’s nonlinear differential equations of morphogenesis are used to develop a theoretical model of the impact of catastrophes on international business (IB). The model is then estimated using real-world data on the performance of multinational airlines during the SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) pandemic.FindingsThe catastrophe model exhibits a remarkable capability to simultaneously capture complex linear and nonlinear relationships. Through empirical estimations and simulations, this approach enables the analysis of IB phenomena under normal conditions, as well as during black swan events.Originality/valueTo the best of the author’s knowledge, this study is the first attempt to estimate the impact of black swan events in IB using a catastrophe model grounded in complexity theory. The proposed model successfully integrates the abrupt and profound effects of catastrophes on multinational corporations, offering a critical perspective on the theoretical and practical use of complexity science in IB.

The knowledge-based view in international business: A systematic review of the literature and future research directions

The knowledge-based view (KBV) has been particularly influential for developing and shaping the international business (IB) field. IB scholars have used the KBV to explain a wide range of IB phenomena. However, to date, there has been no systematic review of the literature on the KBV in IB. This study aims to fill this gap. To this purpose, we identified and analyzed 124 articles published at the intersection of the KBV and the IB field in 40 academic journals from 1999 to 2021. Drawing on our findings, we reveal the current state of the KBV in IB and identify the knowledge types and processes required for firms to navigate the global environment, as portrayed by the studies included in our review. We then highlight promising future research directions to advance the KBV and the IB field.

COVID and challenges in the context of family firms internationalisation: a review and emerging research pathways

PurposeThis study aims to fulfil a twofold purpose: first, to discuss the changes and unique challenges that family firms (FFs) face during the COVID-19 pandemic and/or they will face in the post-COVID era, and second, to reflect on emerging research directions and contextual factors that should be taken into account in future explorations for the benefit of FF scholars who will study post-COVID FF internationalisation.Design/methodology/approachTo address the twofold purpose of the study, we conduct an integrative review of 31 peer-reviewed journal articles in the international business (IB) and FF literature on COVID-19, FFs and internationalisation.FindingsCOVID-19 brought changes in IB strategies, IB relationships and human resource management. In responding and/or adapting to those changes, during and post-COVID, FFs face and are expected to face challenges that mainly refer to FFs’ transition to digitalisation and the simultaneous preservation of socio-emotional wealth dimensions while maintaining their international presence. The authors suggest that future research explores the role of digitalisation in achieving FFs’ internationalisation, IB relationship building activities and training and leading international employees. Further contextual factors (e.g. succession issues, family structures) should also be accounted for when exploring such post-COVID IB phenomena.Originality/valueThis study comprises an initial attempt to encompass the interface of FF internationalisation and COVID-19. It also proposes research directions that are likely to set the stage in FFs’ post-COVID internationalisation research.

Something borrowed, something new: Challenges in using qualitative methods to study under-researched international business phenomena

This article responds to calls for IB researchers to study a greater diversity of international business (IB) phenomena in order to generate theoretical insights about empirical settings that are under-represented in the scholarly IB literature. While this objective is consistent with the strengths of qualitative research methods, novel empirical settings are not always well aligned with methods that have been developed in better-researched and thus more familiar settings. In this article, we explore three methods-related challenges of studying under-researched empirical settings, in terms of gathering and analyzing qualitative data. The challenges are: managing researcher identities, navigating unfamiliar data gathering conditions, and theorizing the uniqueness of novel empirical settings. These challenges are integral to the process of contextualization, which involves linking observations from an empirical setting to the categories of the theoretical research context. We provide a toolkit of recommended practices to manage them, by drawing on published accounts of research by others, and on our own experiences in the field.

Crossing borders and boundaries: Translation ecosystems in international business

The field of International Business (IB) has traditionally focused on the crossing of national boundaries. In this Perspective, we argue that organizational, knowledge domain, and language boundaries are equally important for understanding translation activities in cross-border business. We integrate three kinds of translation (organizational translation and knowledge translation from Organization Studies and interlingual translation from Translation Studies) to deepen our understanding of core IB phenomena and pose new research questions. We introduce the framework of a translation ecosystem for integrating the micro perspective of translating agents, the meso perspective of organizational units, and the macro perspective of the larger social and linguistic contexts that influence translation. This framework allows IB scholars to identify important but invisible boundaries in cross-border business. The translation ecosystem requires the kind of multi-level research that has been recognized as crucial for taking the field forward and offers the potential for making contributions both to IB and to translation research beyond the disciplinary boundaries of IB.

A Social Media Analytics Approach to Researching Corruption in International Business

Corruption is an important international business phenomenon, yet empirical research – especially at the firm level – remains rare, in part due to data limitations. I argue that the combination of modern data analytics tools and social media data has great potential for advancing empirical research on corruption. Using web scraping tools and the Twitter API through a combination of Python and R, I compile a sample of 168 firms involved in bribery schemes in 83 countries and collect nearly 1 million tweets related to these firms’ corrupt activities. I illustrate how such data can help scholars examine previously under-researched aspects of corruption, such as the role of country-level institutions in moderating public reactions to revelations of corruption.

Putting qualitative international business research in context(s)

The Welch et al. (J Int Bus Stud 42(5):740–762, 2011) JIBS Decade Award-winning article highlights the importance of the contextualization of international business research that is based on qualitative research methods. In this commentary, we build on their foundation and develop further the role of contextualization, in terms of the international business phenomena under study, contemporaneous conversations about qualitative research methods, and the situatedness of individual papers within the broader research process. Our remarks are largely targeted to authors submitting international business papers based on qualitative research, and to the gatekeepers – editors and reviewers – assessing them, and we provide some guidance with respect to these three dimensions of context.

Time: Three Temporal Lenses on International Business Research

In this paper, we address the importance of giving a more explicit focus to time in studying international business (IB) phenomena. We develop three distinct time lenses: Time-as-measure, time-as-evolution and time-as-emergence, which differ not only ontologically, but also in terms of the features of IB and multinationals that they shed light on. We apply these lenses to two substantive IB phenomena, subsidiary initiative taking and global value chains. We finally discuss how the three lenses best can advance the incorporation of time into future IB research, and provide implications for IB theories, methods, and research questions.

Letter from the Editors: Special Forum on “Research Methods in International Business”

This issue, developed in cooperation with the Academy of International Business Research Methods Shared Interest Group, explores the importance of utilizing sound research methods when studying international business phenomena. In addition to featuring two research methods-focused articles, it also presents articles on social identity theory in the age of identity politics, Tik-tok and the splinternet, and the different value chain requirements for medical devises in the COVID-19 era.

Bringing Research Closer to Reality: Configurational Analysis and Practical International Business Research

International business (IB) research focused on practical insights requires analytical techniques that come closer to reality by embracing complexity. In this article, we discuss Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA), a configurational technique researchers can leverage to study complex causal patterns in IB phenomena. We briefly review the basics of QCA, provide an example of how it can be applied to study practical IB issues, and outline the first steps for researchers situated at the intersection of IB practice and scholarship. Employing such techniques may make applied IB research even better positioned to make impactful contributions to practice and society.

Chinese Multinational Enterprises Operating in Western Economies: Huawei in the US and the UK

ABSTRACT Huawei serves as a vehicle for presenting the multiple barriers faced by Multinational Enterprises (MNEs) that happen to be born in China, a non-democratic and non-Western country who now challenges the world’s No.1 superpower, thus requires a multi-disciplinary analytical framework by taking much broader contexts into considerations. This comparative case study of its operations in the US and UK aims to develop the old model of examining Chinese MNEs that is heavily economic factor focused by including more variables, such as ‘bilateral relations’, ‘law’, ‘media influence’ and ‘cultural proximity’ under host country factors, and ‘governance structure’ under home country factors. The new model will show the increasing complexity in the global competitive landscape and inspire more research to further advance understanding of this new international business phenomenon.

The contributions of qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) to international business research

International business (IB) researchers have been slow to embrace a configurational approach in hypothesis formulation and empirical analysis. Yet, much of what IB scholars study is inherently configurational: various explanatory factors and their interplay simultaneously determine the outcome(s) studied, such as governance choice or firm-level performance. The mismatch between the nature of the empirical phenomena studied on the one hand, and hypothesis formulation and empirical methods deployed on the other, explains why many quantitative empirical studies in IB are overly reductionist, relying on hypotheses that assume linear (or simple, curvilinear), unifinal, and symmetrical effects. In this Editorial, we introduce IB scholars to contemporary configurational thinking and its analytical tool, fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA). We discuss this tool’s main tenets, advantages, and disadvantages. We review the limited prior IB research using this approach and present a wide range of IB phenomena where it could be usefully applied. We propose that contemporary configurational thinking and fsQCA can help scholars produce insights more closely aligned with the complex realities of international business than conventional research approaches.

Social network analysis in international business research: An assessment of the current state of play and future research directions

The theory of networks has attracted increasing attention in international business (IB) research. However, despite its growing theoretical utilization, the systematic description, modelling and analysis of network relationships has been scarce in IB. The field has taken a stand in favour of conventional methodological approaches, which hinders the close interaction between theoretical development and empirical reality in network-based IB research. This study seeks to contribute to IB research by incorporating social network analysis (SNA) as an innovative and promising research tool and aims to shed light on the richness of SNA in fostering IB research, through adding more nuanced network understanding. In particular, it calls attention to its potential applications through exemplifying around two fundamental IB phenomena: firm internationalization and multinational enterprises (MNEs). It concludes by suggesting future directions for utilising SNA in the IB field.

Cultural entrepreneurship and legitimate distinctiveness in international prosocial crowdfunding

Prosocial crowdfunding is a recent international business phenomenon which allows entrepreneurs from emerging nations to post microloan requests online for fundraising. While the crowdfunding topic has attracted much academic interest in recent years, little is known about the effect of cultural differences on crowdfunding dynamics. This study draws on the cultural entrepreneurship literature to assess whether a borrower’s cultural alignment with his or her own country increases or decreases funding speed. We investigate whether prosocial lenders reward borrower profiles that cue cultural distinctiveness through a Computer-Aided-Text-Analysis (CATA) of 127,597 profile loan descriptions and observations nested within 37 countries. It is found that cultural alignment on two dimensions—temporal awareness and commonality—is positively related to funding time, thus suggesting that a cultural misalignment is preferred by lenders. Our discussion highlights why nonconformity to local culture may be interpreted as legitimate distinctiveness in the prosocial crowdfunding context.

Real options theory in international business

The last quarter century has witnessed substantial growth in applications of real options theory (ROT) to international business (IB) research. In this review, we explicate the core ROT concepts in the IB context and discuss the contributions of ROT-based research to three core IB issues: timing and scale of market entry or exit, entry mode and governance form, and the role of multinational networks. Based on our review, we propose a holistic ROT view of the multinational enterprise that synthesizes the insights of existing studies. Finally, to move the field forward, we highlight key questions and challenges in current ROT-based work, provide a more precise definition of exogenous and endogenous uncertainty, suggest empirical designs to test unique ROT predictions, and explore areas where ROT can be combined with other theoretical perspectives to better understand IB phenomena.

Rewarding Cultural Misalignment in International Crowdfunding: A case of Legitimate Distinctiveness?

Prosocial crowdfunding is a new international business phenomenon which allows entrepreneurs from emerging nations to post microloan requests online for fundraising. Drawing on institutional theory, we investigate whether lenders reward borrower profiles that are distinctive or similar to other profiles from same country. In an analysis of 127,597 profiles nested within 37 countries, we find that cultural alignment on two dimensions–temporal awareness and commonality–is positively related to funding time, thus suggesting that a cultural misalignment is preferred by lenders. Our discussion highlights why nonconformity to local culture is likely to be interpreted as legitimate distinctiveness in this context.

Footnotes on JIBS 1970–2016

These footnotes on the Journal of International Business Studies (JIBS) 1970–2016 are intended to introduce the journal to scholars outside the international business (IB) discipline. The footnotes include a brief citation and keywords analysis. The citation analysis in the first part highlights the key players and key references in the IB field, and it celebrates the rich history of JIBS itself. The second part discusses the main subject matter addressed in refereed JIBS articles, through an analysis of keywords. These footnotes are timely as the journal nears 50 years of publication excellence, and an increasing interest in IB phenomena can be witnessed in a variety of management disciplines. We describe the intellectual shoulders upon which authors of future publications in JIBS, as well as designers of new IB curricula can stand.

Advancing interdisciplinary research: Insights from the JIBS special issue

Twenty-five years ago, Dunning articulated a vision for greater interdisciplinary grounding in international business (IB) research. Motivated by his foresight, this special issue aims to encourage research that explicitly combines ideas from different disciplines, with a view to creating new integrative theories with greater explanatory power than those based on a single discipline. Five articles selected from a pool of 60 submissions are presented in the special issue, each with its own distinctive interdisciplinary contribution to expanding our knowledge about an important IB phenomenon. In editing the special issue, the editors developed a new understanding of the opportunities and challenges in conducting interdisciplinary research. These insights are reported in the current editorial essay. We conclude by discussing four approaches to interdisciplinary inquiry observed across the five accepted papers: (1) addressing a new phenomenon, (2) asking a fresh question, (3) finding a better answer and (4) contributing to a base discipline.

Ten Chinese going global models: emerging patterns and analysis

For the past 10 years, since joining the World Trade Organization, China's global investment has increased 60-fold. Yet this increasingly emerged international business phenomenon has been under-studied. This paper examines the strategies of Chinese companies going global. It initially proposes and describes 10 models most frequently used by Chinese firms going global, and subsequently outlines and analyses the emerging trends and patterns of Chinese companies going global.

Studying resource and capability effects on export venture performance

While extant research has welcomed the resource and capability perspectives as valuable lenses to study international business phenomena, there have been scant attempts to study the role of comprehensive sets of firm resources and capabilities on different aspects of export venture performance and even less the role of their interactions. This study examines the impact of experience, scale of operation and financial resources as well as informational, customer relationship and product development capabilities on dimensions of export venture performance. The results suggest an interesting role of knowledge factors. Each one of experience and informational capabilities has a U-shaped effect on export venture performance, while their interaction negatively impacts the same, denoting that the two factors are antagonistic. Scale of operation and financial resources have a U-shaped and a negative effect respectively on adaptability only, while neither customer relationship nor product development capabilities directly influence export venture performance. Finally, the interaction of product development with informational capabilities has a positive impact only on efficiency. Practitioners are offered specific suggestions as to where they should place emphasis when pursuing particular performance objectives.