International Management Literature Research Articles

The Paradox of Foreignness: Reconciling Liabilities and Advantages of MNE Subsidiaries

This paper addresses a gap in the international management literature by developing a dynamic framework of foreignness that encompasses both advantages and disadvantages. Drawing on findings from a comparative case study of foreign and domestic banks in Japan, I identify three unique attributes of foreignness and show how these attributes help explain both the unique advantages and the liabilities of foreignness. The papers contributes to extant research by offering a dynamic view of foreignness . In so doing, the paper also adds to our understanding of how foreignness influences the MNE's position in host country institutional environments, as well as the source of its innovative capabilities. [Note: This paper is 43 pages long and thus exceeds the 40 page limit of the AOM submission guidelines. Like many qualitative case studies, the paper runs longer than standard quantitative manuscripts. I have already reduced the length from 53 to 43 pages and thus humbly ask for your understanding in a slightly longer submission.]

Effectiveness and Efficiency – Diverse Aspects of Interpretation

The measurement and evaluation of business performance have for a long time been among the key subjects of management research. The purpose of the thesis is to present the development and ambiguities of interpretation of the basic categories connected with the evaluation of effectiveness and efficiency. In the opinion of the author, the above ambiguities were a result of various interpretations of the above categories (effectiveness and efficiency) attempted in Polish and international management literature. The thesis discusses the main obstacles to an unambiguous interpretation of effectiveness and efficiency and aims to systematize it.

The Complexities of Implementing Global HRM Systems: A Case Study on the Subsidiary Perspective

In this paper, we provide a qualitative analysis of the complexities involved during global e-HRM (Electronic Human Resource Management) implementation. While many studies rely on theory embedded in the Change and International Management literatures, we add relevant Strategic Information Systems literature to enrich the localization- standardization debate. We present findings from a case study in which we zoom in on the particular challenge of global integration versus local responsiveness of e-HRM systems. We consciously eschew the most common, headquarters’ perspective, and take a local site lens, analyzing the experiences of a local IT department in charge of implementing a global e-HRM strategy. We find that although this implementation was staged as a success by the organization, there were many unexpected and negative outcomes at the local level. These appeared to arise from a non-participative approach by global IT, with inadequate consideration of changes in the role, relationships and relative power of the local IT and HR teams. We suggest that desired corporate IT outcomes such as consolidation, cost reduction, improved data sharing and business intelligence should not be pushed on the local units at the expense of flexibility in equally important local HR initiatives. However, balancing the requirements of flexibility and standardization in a large-size, multinational firm is non-trivial, and cannot be achieved without seriously enabling the engagement of the multiple stakeholder perspectives involved.

Global Strategy: The Case of Nissan Motor Company

Abstract The concept of global strategy has become prominent in the international business and management literature in the 1980s. The aims of our paper are to render in brief the concept of global strategy and to highlight some of the main features of Nissan's strategy. Our paper contributes to a better understanding of the global strategy concept, and its designing and implementation in the business corporate world. Further studies can be carried on in emphasizing the role played by global strategies in achieving high performance in a changing environment.

Co‐production: Option or Obligation?

Co‐production is an idea being discussed in the international public management literature but less so in New Zealand and Australia. Co‐production rejects the idea of service delivery to passive users, proposing instead they be treated as active participants in the production of outcomes. As partners in delivery, users bring resources, skills and capabilities to their interactions with providers. Co‐production requires providers to share power and negotiate the interaction. There are strong managerial reasons for adopting co‐production to improve effectiveness and efficiency. But the political reasons for adopting co‐production are even stronger because of trends of many decades towards greater citizen participation. These reasons oblige public managers in Australasia to adopt co‐production in many fields of policy as part of the future.

An international ambidexterity model to understand new venture internationalization and growth

Research in the international management literature has traditionally studied internationalization processes from an exploitation perspective. This exploitation-focused argument demonstrates an inc...

Amy Who? Transnational Entrepreneurs as Mobile Subjectivities

Transnational entrepreneurs (TEs) are typically portrayed in mainstream international management literatures as rational subjects with unitary identities. This paper problematizes this notion by re...

Corporate Social Responsibility of Dutch Entrepreneurs in the Twentieth Century

On the basis of articles in contemporary periodicals, literature, and company archives, this article explores the views of entrepreneurs and society about what constitutes the responsibility of entrepreneurs. From the mid-nineteenth century, we can trace discussions about how entrepreneurs should behave in their own company and toward society, but these ideas were far from constant over time. The changing views on the social responsibilities of entrepreneurs give us therefore important information about changes in the national business system. Though focused on the Dutch entrepreneurs in their relationship to Dutch society, the article includes the influence of ideas from abroad. International management literature abounded in the Netherlands, and multinational companies often picked up ideas from other countries. How companies and entrepreneurs defined their responsibilities depended to a large extent on the criticisms launched by the outside world. Entrepreneurs and company managers responded to concerns in the society of which they formed part, and the progressive ones among them, the true leaders, searched for ways of reconciling the requirements of their business with the demands of the society.

Corporate Social Responsibility of Dutch Entrepreneurs in the Twentieth Century

On the basis of articles in contemporary periodicals, literature, and company archives, this article explores the views of entrepreneurs and society about what constitutes the responsibility of entrepreneurs. From the mid-nineteenth century, we can trace discussions about how entrepreneurs should behave in their own company and toward society, but these ideas were far from constant over time. The changing views on the social responsibilities of entrepreneurs give us therefore important information about changes in the national business system. Though focused on the Dutch entrepreneurs in their relationship to Dutch society, the article includes the influence of ideas from abroad. International management literature abounded in the Netherlands, and multinational companies often picked up ideas from other countries. How companies and entrepreneurs defined their responsibilities depended to a large extent on the criticisms launched by the outside world. Entrepreneurs and company managers responded to concerns in the society of which they formed part, and the progressive ones among them, the true leaders, searched for ways of reconciling the requirements of their business with the demands of the society.

Making Location Decision Based on Regional Industrial Capabilities: A Case of a Distributor

This article presents a structured process to make facility location decisions based on regional industrial capabilities. It presents a framework for collecting business intelligence on major cities of the region of interest. In the next step, the collected business intelligence is incorporated into a quantitative decision analysis model for facility location. While the proposed framework is generic and builds on the existing international business and supply chain management literature, the article mainly focuses on the facility location problem of a distribution firm that is not well represented in the literature. Two cases—one each for new and established distributors who are trying to sell to the Mexican market—are presented in the article.

Building Local Responses to Disaster

While there has been much discussion in international disaster management literature in recent years of the need to give affected communities much more ‘ownership’ of recovery and rehabilitation pro-jects and programs, there is little real understanding of what this might mean in practice. There are many calls for post-disaster recovery programs to reduce vulnerability to future risks, or to ‘build back better’. Drawing from an intense study of social recovery and community rebuilding across five tsunami-affected local areas in Sri Lanka and southern India, this article affirms the need for greater community ‘guidance’ of disaster recovery but it argues that different forms of community engagement are required for different stages in the long process from relief to recovery. It argues that ‘build back better’ is possible, but only if aid and other related agencies work more closely with existing capacities for resilience within the affected communities and contribute towards their legitimacy.

Exploitation, exploration, and how learning affects strategic intent in multinational enterprises' foreign direct investment decisions: A commentary essay

Research on foreign direct investment is a rich vein of inquiry in international business and management literature. Scholars explore various aspects of FDI including the reasons for location selection. Chen and Yeh's research is in that tradition. Under the title of “Re-examining location antecedents and pace of foreign direct investment: Evidence from Taiwanese investment in China”, they explore Taiwanese investment in China and re-affirmed previous findings of other scholars that organizational learning alters the trajectory of investment. The essay here comments on their contributions, impact on practice and policy, and limitations. Finally, the essay discusses implications for future research and recommends relevant readings on the topic

‘Expatriates’: Gender, Race and Class Distinctions in International Management

In the international management (IM) literature, ‘expatriate’ is used as a verb in reference to the transnational movement of employees by multinational corporations (MNCs) and as a noun in reference to the people who are so moved across borders to work. IM's resulting expatriate analyses apply only to a specific minority of relatively privileged people. However, as is clear in other bodies of literature, many others (‘migrants’) in less privileged class positions move themselves across national boundaries for work. In this majority are often women and men — people of diverse races, ethnicities, economic and social means — who have less education and who work in lower level jobs, also often in or for MNCs. Their invisibility in the IM literature sustains and reinforces gender, race and class‐based disparities in globalization processes and work to the detriment of poor women of colour around the world. We call for gendering change that would make visible the invisible in IM scholarship related to expatriation.

Expatriate performance management and firm internationalization: Australian multinationals in China

This paper presents the results of an empirical study exploring the expatriate performance management systems of 16 Australian multinational firms operating in China. The results show that highly internationalized firms tend to be better at deploying the ‘hard’ components of performance management (goal-setting and performance appraisals), and yet most firms, and in particular highly internationalized ones, are poor at managing ‘soft’ control mechanisms like training and mentoring. The results give some support for the notion that expatriate performance management takes on increased importance as a firm's international operations become more dispersed; however, it also suggests a lack of appreciation of the value of soft control mechanisms in achieving this. The study contributes to international human resource management literature by identifying the relationship between the degree of internationalization of firms and the nature of expatriate performance management.

Theory building trends in international management research: an archival review of preferred methods

A number of distinguished scholars believe that for theory development to occur within a field, qualitative research must precede quantitative research in order for the field to progress toward maturity. The purpose of this study was to investigate the international management literature from 1991-2007 to ascertain current levels of use of qualitative, quantitative, conceptual and joint (quantitative and qualitative) research methods in the field. Results indicate scholars employ quantitative methods more than qualitative methods. The implications of these findings for future theory development and the generation of context relevant international management knowledge are discussed.

Knowledge transfer between Russian and Western firms

PurposeThis paper seeks to challenge some assumptions that have long existed in the international business and knowledge management literature about knowledge transfer between Western and Russian firms. It aims to open a debate among scholars and practitioners in these fields on issues related to knowledge transfer in this context.Design/methodology/approachThe paper offers a critical analysis of issues regarding knowledge transfer and absorptive capacity in the context of business interactions between Russian and Western firms.FindingsThe paper argues that in the later stages of post‐Socialist transition it is no longer valid to attach rigidly the roles, respectively, of sole receiver to Russian and sole transmitter to Western firms. Further, the paper questions the view that problems in the knowledge transfer process are mainly attributable to the lack of absorptive capacity in Russian firms. As post‐Socialist transition has advanced, this is no longer the typical case. While Russian firms have taken the learning race seriously and have substantially enriched their knowledge stock, Western firms operating in the Russian market have primarily “learned by doing” and have not intentionally invested in improving their own absorptive capacity.Research limitations/implicationsThe paper invites scholars to examine knowledge transfer between Russian and Western firms in a more nuanced manner that takes into account the changes evident in the latest stage of post‐socialist transition. It advocates against subscribing to well‐established assumptions that were valid in the beginning of post‐Socialist transition, but are not aligned with changed economic realities.Practical implicationsWestern managers are advised to invest more effort into enhancing their understanding of the local knowledge and specific requirements and needs for knowledge transfer to local Russian firms. They should intentionally invest in enhancing their own internal absorptive capacity. Russian managers need to pay attention to the dynamics of the absorptive capacity‐learning feedback loop, as well as to the distinction between potential and realised absorptive capacity.Originality/valueUnlike the mainstream literature that has examined knowledge transfer between Western and Russian firms, this paper provides a fairer, more balanced view, aligned with changed realities, of the issues associated with knowledge transfer between Russian and Western firms.

An investigation into international assignment directions of R&D MNE employees: evidence from Greece

In this study, we explore the effects of the roles of research and development (R&D) laboratories, roles of subsidiaries and level of technological intensity of the sector in which multinational enterprise (MNE) subsidiaries operate on international assignment directions of R&D employees. International assignments are an underinvestigated issue in the international human resource management literature despite its significant research and managerial importance. In particular, to the best of our knowledge, no prior research on international assignments of R&D employees has been undertaken and so the current study aims at filling this void in the literature. Based on a large quantitative research on MNE subsidiaries operating in Greece, the findings suggest that variables of the aforementioned categories of factors influence different international assignment directions, with roles of the R&D subsidiary exerting the most crucial effect. Researchers may examine the unexplored issue of R&D employee international assignments to a larger extent, while MNE management can particularly take into account the micro (laboratory) context of R&D international assignees when developing effective international human resource management programmes.

The Cultures Of International Management

In this paper I present an approach based on Cultural Studies to conceive of and pursue cultural inquiry in international management. For this purpose, I first develop a genealogical framework for understanding how the international management literature has engaged with culture over the past forty years. This framework focuses on decisions that international management scholars have made as they attempt to address culture in their research. It also focuses on the consequences of these decisions, which have skewed the field towards certain intellectual positions and have maintained culture as a problematic concept. In the last section I present an alternative approach situated within Cultural Studies to address the problem of culture in international management scholarship.

Coordinating decentralized research and development laboratories: A survey analysis

Abstract The growing internationalization and strategic diversity of research and development (R&D) activities create important managerial challenges for the globally competing multinational enterprise (MNE). Driven by recent theoretical considerations and empirical studies, we provide complementary insights to the international management literature by investigating the impact of strategic variables (roles of decentralized R&D units) and some commonly studied FDI characteristics (industry, size and country of origin) on the coordination patterns used in the context of international R&D. As a conceptual background, five categories of coordination mechanisms are generated (structural, formal hierarchical, people-based, social and information technology platform infrastructures). Our findings, based on a quantitative inductive analysis, reveal that laboratory-related characteristics (roles, age and size) stand out as the most influential determinants of coordination mechanisms and instruments. The study also highlights that MNEs are moving towards a more complicated and multifaceted integration pattern of their decentralized technology strategies. Implications for international managers, academic researches and decision makers are discussed.

Distribution system choice in a service industry: An analysis of international insurance firms operating in the United States

Abstract Service firms play an increasingly important role in the global economy. However, the internationalization strategies of such firms, and especially their distribution system choices, have been underexplored in the international management literature. One specific service industry that has internationalized rapidly in recent years is the insurance industry. This paper examines the determinants and performance implications of the choice by international insurance firms between two rival distribution systems: direct writing and independent sales agents. Drawing on the transaction cost theory-based literature on resource commitment, control, and risk, we develop hypotheses on the determinants of the choice between these two distribution systems and on the performance implications of this choice for insurance firms. Analyzing a sample of 168 distribution entries into the United States by insurance firms from six foreign countries over the 1992–2000 period, we find that cultural distance has a U-shaped effect on the probability of direct writing, and that an insurer's intangible assets have a positive effect on this probability. We also find that the direct writing system performs better in terms of profitability, but that the independent agency system performs better in terms of market share growth.