International Business Research Research Articles

Do Transnational Rating Agencies “Regulate” National Political Budget Cycles?

Regulatory theory assumes governments constrain undesirable behavior by firms, but the opposite could be true internationally. We show how with credit rating agencies (CRAs) and election-year government borrowing. Political business cycle theory implies that governments sometimes borrow excessively to retain office. Transnational regime theory implies that CRAs regulating global credit allocation can threaten borrowing governments with rating downgrades signaling poor economic stewardship to voters. Analyses of CRA ratings and government borrowing for 63 countries holding 109 elections from 2001-2011 indicate support for both implications: 1) governments increase election-year borrowing; 2) CRA rating downgrades increase government electoral defeat likelihoods; and 3) governments diminish excessive election-year borrowing when CRAs signal higher downgrade likelihoods. Such reverse “regulation” raises new issues for international business research, practice, and public policy.

Ethics, Economics, Institutions - The Three Logics of Multinational Corporations’ Moral Dilemmas

In this article, we argue that multinational corporations are subject to multiple moral dilemmas that result from three different imperatives - institutional pressures, economic rationality, and internal principles. Grounding our work in institutional theory and moral philosophy, we develop a conceptual model of moral dilemmas in multinational corporations and offer eight subsequent resolution strategies. We contribute to international business research by conceptualizing internationalization decisions as moral reasoning and integrating approaches from international business and ethics. Our model allows multinational corporations to evaluate internationalization decisions under institutional friction based on economic and moral reasoning and to draw conclusions on the implications of these resolution strategies.

And the subsidiary lives on: Harnessing complex realities in the contemporary MNE

Managing multinational enterprise subsidiaries is a core facet of international business research. A shifting reality on the ground has triggered concerns around the waning relevance of the subsidiary because the MNE and its structure and processes have become increasingly complex. Consequently, more decentralized, responsive, and fluid organizational designs are now at the core of IB research. Juxtaposing recent arguments questioning subsidiary research altogether, we argue that IB scholars can explore and explain complex realities in the contemporary MNE without unnecessarily restricting the breadth of the field and giving up links to established research and theory. We reframe conversations around inward- and outward-looking perspectives, providing a path forward that emphasizes the importance of embracing the subsidiary concept in research reflecting today’s complex business environment.

Introducing the eventful temporality of historical research into international business

Historical research represents an alternative understanding of temporality that can contribute to greater methodological and theoretical plurality in international business (IB) research. Historians focus on the importance of events within their historical context and structure their accounts through periodisation, assume that the temporal distance between the past and present determines the temporal positionality of researchers, and seek to reconstruct past events through historical sources, which require critical interpretation. Historical research provides an alternative methodological approach to temporality, context, and distance with relevance to a range of IB theories.

Reviewer Acknowledgements for International Business Research, Vol. 15, No. 8

Reviewer Acknowledgements for International Business Research, Vol. 15, No. 8, 2022

Capitalizing on the uniqueness of international business: Towards a theory of place, space, and organization

The field of international business (IB) has been successful in developing a unique body of knowledge on the multinational corporation and on country-level contexts. A recurring debate concerns its claim to uniqueness, and to associated scholarly characteristics that distinguish IB from other fields of research. I discuss what makes IB research unique by looking at what IB theory can explain and predict. To that end, I leverage key theoretical arguments and empirical insights to advance an understanding of IB centered around a firm’s ability to create added value in more than one location. I introduce a stylized model of the multi-locational firm embedded in multiple business systems characterized by equifinality. As a result of the qualitative disjunctures that separate one place from another, multi-locational firms are confronted with additional managerial and organizational challenges. These challenges are rooted in the process of “othering”. Theorizing on the critical constructs of place, space, and organization, I argue that IB offers the most generalizable approach to understanding firms doing business in more than one location. IB’s ultimate uniqueness lies in the potential of advancing a general theory of the firm in space.

Beyond addressing multicollinearity: Robust quantitative analysis and machine learning in international business research

We reconcile the recommendations made by Kalnins (J Int Bus Stud, 2022) on the one hand and by Lindner, Puck and Verbeke (J Int Bus Stud 51(3):283–298, 2020) on the other, on how international business (IB) quantitative researchers should treat multicollinearity. We explain that, in principle, treatment depends on the underlying data generation process, but note that datasets based on any single generation process are rare. In doing so, we broaden the discussion to include how research methods should be selected and robust statistical models built. In addition, we highlight the importance of a comprehensive literature review in selecting appropriate control variables. We also make suggestions on addressing cross-level dependencies and selecting robustness checks to avoid bias in statistical results. Finally, we go beyond regression and include a broader palette of research methodologies building on machine-learning approaches.

Time to call time on emerging markets: a critique and a new agenda

Purpose First developed in the 1980s, one of the most essential ideas in international business research has the been the concept of emerging markets. Since the start of the twenty-first century, empirical research has shown that there is no clear correlation between long-term real growth in gross domestic product and real equity returns in firms active in emerging markets. The purpose of this paper is to develop an explanation for both the pervasiveness and endurance of the emerging market discourse despite empirical evidence that substantially questions its very robustness. Design/methodology/approach The author offers a “weak form” critique of the emerging market discourse that identifies weaknesses and gaps in the emerging market concept and offers suggestions on how to modify it without fundamentally rejecting its conceptual and ideological core. This paper also offers a “strong form” critique of emerging markets as a discourse arguing that the discourse itself is actually propagated to maintain and reinforce global economic inequality and should, therefore, be fundamentally transformed. Findings Based on the strong form critique of emerging markets discourse, this paper shows how a three-phase process allows emerging market discourse to engender strategic and public policy practice. Scholars and educators play a pivotal role through their writing and discursive interactions with students and executives in their classroom. The centrality of scholars and educators is supported by the broader media ecosystem as well as being reinforced by interactions between executives and policymakers. Practical implications This paper makes the case that international business scholars and educators should play a leading role in fundamentally transforming the emerging market discourse and to launch a renewed critical, inter-subjective discussion of dependency and global inequality through three mechanisms: peer-review research; course syllabi and programs; and public intellectualism. Originality/value Through critical discourse analysis, this paper addresses for the first time how emerging markets as a concept has prospered in academic and managerial circles despite credible empirical evidence of its lack of robustness.

The Use of Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling and Complementary Methods in International Management Research

Research in international business and management (IM) is highly complex, contextual, and spans various subfields and related theoretical lenses. These characteristics pose research challenges that require utilizing sophisticated research designs and methodologies. This paper and our focused issue on ‘The use of partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) and complementary methods in IM research’ further clarify whether and how researchers using PLS-SEM can address (some of) the challenges in IM research. We explain how researchers can benefit from the (advanced) capabilities that PLS-SEM offers; either as a stand-alone method or in triangulation efforts that leverage complementary approaches. In addition, we review the IM literature for PLS-SEM applications and evaluate whether and how researchers are already using these approaches. We identify some room for improvement when it comes to the application of both more advanced PLS-SEM capabilities and the triangulation of PLS-SEM with qualitative data analyses, and techniques such as fuzzy set qualitative comparative analyses and necessary condition analyses. For better guidance, we refer to PLS-SEM application examples in which the methodological advances are used.

Understanding time in qualitative international business research: Towards four styles of temporal theorizing

Time plays an integral role in understanding International Business (IB) phenomena, and so does qualitative inquiry. Despite this, time has received little attention in qualitative IB research. To rectify this, we engage in a qualitative content analysis of qualitative articles published from 1999 until 2020 in the Journal of World Business, Journal of International Business Studies, as well as the Academy of Management Journal, and Journal of Management Studies. Our findings suggest four temporal theorizing styles, namely temporal variation, temporal accumulation, temporal evolution, and temporal story. We add further granularity by distinguishing for each how time (i.e., snapshots, incremental, evolutionary, discursive), and context (detached context, descriptive context, contextual specificity, intertwined context), generate different theorizing outputs (variation, staged process, evolutionary process, (process) story). Our paper contributes by offering researchers a rich vocabulary and conceptual building blocks to engage with different temporal theorizing styles in qualitative IB research.

What merits greater scholarly attention in international business?

Scholarly efforts to propose future directions for international business (IB) research have generated a timely and extensive inventory of potentially interesting areas of research. We supplement this line of inquiry by suggesting that an additional layer of scrutiny could be beneficial when advocating in favor of giving more attention to particular research realms. Specifically, we advance several guiding principles that will help IB scholars assess which research areas merit greater scholarly attention, based on their potential importance and impact. We distinguish between (1) research in new or underdeveloped research domains, where salience, urgency, and actionability are critical elements, and (2) new research in relatively well-established domains, where scholars may contribute to changing the theoretical conversations taking place in IB.

A Review of Language-Sensitive Research in International Business: A Multi-Paradigmatic Reading

This paper reviews language-sensitive research in International Business (IB) by asking how paradigmatic positions affect knowledge production in this field of study. Paradigms refer to the researchers’ assumptions about how research should be conducted and reported. Because they affect the theoretical aim and framing of a study, the data sources, and analysis techniques used, paradigms ultimately shape the kind of knowledge produced. To study how paradigmatic choices influence the knowledge produced, we compared 299 publications in the field of language-sensitive research with 229 publications in mainstream IB by determining the paradigmatic position from which each study had been conducted. Our analysis shows that the paradigmatic diversity of language-sensitive research exceeds that of mainstream IB. Although positivism still dominates language-sensitive research in IB, interpretivist and critical studies have accounted for a growing proportion of research over the years and exceed those in mainstream IB research. We suggest that the norms of the specific research field and of academia in general strongly influence paradigmatic choices, and thus the kind of knowledge researchers produce. The review opens up a novel perspective on knowledge production within language-sensitive IB research.

Beyond the nation-state: Anchoring supranational institutions in international business research

In this paper, we broaden the conceptualization of institutions beyond the nation-state and develop the concept of an institutional triality that represents two national institutional environments and the supranational level. While much of international business (IB) research has focused on national institutions and the differences between them, little attention and theorizing has been dedicated to the supranational institutions that form an integral part of the global institutional ecosystem. First, we conduct an interdisciplinary bibliometric survey on supranational institutions and a qualitative review of the central publications. Second, we initiate theory building and conceptualize supranational institutions from an IB point of view, distinguish them from related IB concepts, and discuss the conceptual properties of supranational institutions that are most relevant for MNCs. Building on these distinctions and properties, we provide a conceptual framework for understanding supranational institutions in the institutional triality. Third, we provide avenues for IB research building on the delineations, the conceptual properties, and the conceptual framework.

Customer reference marketing in internationalizing SMEs: a service perspective

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to create a model that compares the effects of product content differentiation and service content differentiation on small- and medium-sized enterprises’ (SMEs) perceived importance of customer reference marketing in foreign markets. Design/methodology/approach A theoretical model is developed and tested through multiple regression and mediation analysis, on an effective sample of 188 Swedish SMEs. Findings The results show that foreign market business assignments characterized by differentiated services make companies relatively more dependent on relationship learning and customer reference marketing. By contrast, situations of differentiated product content correlate negatively with customer reference marketing. Practical implications Reference customers can function as vehicles for international expansion when marketing offerings are complex. The findings imply that in service settings, SMEs need to maintain learning regimes with foreign market customers to effectively use them as references to win new business. Originality/value The study applies a service perspective to explain the contingencies of customer reference marketing, particularly in international business settings. The study contributes to international small business literature and research focusing on service–firm internationalization by explaining the marketing mechanisms at play in the internationalization of SMEs. In so doing, the findings can enrich relationship and network perspectives of internationalization and add a missing link to studies on networking and internationalization.

Reviewer Acknowledgements for International Business Research, Vol. 15, No. 7

Reviewer Acknowledgements for International Business Research, Vol. 15, No. 7, 2022

What Motivates Emerging Economy Firms to Internationalize? A Replication and Extension of Ahsan et al. (2020) in the Context of China

ABSTRACTAhsan, Sinha, and Srinivasan (2020) studied the motives of knowledge-intensive Indian firms’ international expansion based on resource-based considerations and the locational advantages offered by host countries. They identified firm characteristics associated with strategic asset-seeking, opportunity-seeking, and market-seeking motives. In this replication study, we examine Ahsan et al.'s (2020) model in the Chinese context. Based on our improved empirical model, our findings reveal some similarities but more importantly some key differences in the antecedents of internationalization motives between Indian and Chinese firms. Drawing on insights from prior studies, we propose that these differences can be attributed to differences in absorptive capacity, international expansion scales and patterns, ownership type, and the home institutional contexts in which Indian and Chinese firms operate. Overall, this replication study demonstrates the importance of contextualizing international business research.

Advancing societal grand challenge research at the interface of entrepreneurship and international business: A review and research agenda

Societal grand challenges are increasingly attracting the attention of both entrepreneurship and international business scholars. While entrepreneurship focuses on the opportunities that emerge and need for bold and innovative solutions, international business research emphasizes the global reach of the challenges and role of multinational enterprises. Although both conversations are insightful, we argue that examining one without the other gives an incomplete picture on how to address grand challenges. In this paper, we conduct a systematic review of the conversation on grand challenges in the international business and entrepreneurship literature. Upon synthesizing the results, we create an integrated framework and research agenda for viewing grand challenges through an international entrepreneurial lens.

Marketing learning by exporting – how export-induced marketing expenditures improve firm performance

The learning opportunities from exporting are a core theme of International Business research. Learning by exporting research has primarily discussed the technological learning outcomes associated with exports. We integrate theoretical mechanisms from this literature into a model of learning in the marketing function. We hypothesize that firms that are confronted with novel pricing, packaging, distribution or design strategies on export markets will be able to exploit them productively, as evidence of learning by exporting in marketing. We test our predictions using panel data of Spanish manufacturing firms for 1990–2009 and find suggestive evidence for the positive effect of export-induced marketing expenditures on firm productivity. These learning effects are however lower compared with technological learning via R&D.

Working toward the sustainable development goals in earnest – critical international business perspectives on designing and implementing better interventions

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to reflect on the importance of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) framework as a milestone for concerted efforts to tackle the underlying grand challenges.Design/methodology/approachThis viewpoint is predominantly conceptual in nature. However, this study adapts the University of Auckland's SDG key words to broadly map existing international business research in each SDG category across nine journals.FindingsThe SDG framework offers a positive and inclusive way forward to integrate social and environmental with economic aspects in the field of international business.Originality/valueThe inclusive nature of the SDG framework may achieve what previous labels such as social value creation and corporate social responsibility could not. It offers a path where integrating social and environmental with economic perspectives does not need to threaten the identity of the field. The SDG mapping exercise across nine selected journals clearly demonstrates that mainstream, economically focused research can continue to make valuable contributions to the SDGs as long as the discipline allows more room for integrators.

A comparative analysis of Indian and Chinese FDI into Africa: The role of governance and alliances

This paper adopts and extends the theoretical lens of institutional imprinting to international business research. It analyses a secondary data set on Indian and Chinese foreign direct investment (FDI) flows to Africa, compiled for the period ranging from 2008 to 2018, to highlight the distinctiveness of Indian FDI. It argues that Indian FDI streams into better governed host countries with controlled corruption and high standards of accountability. This is in striking contrast with Chinese FDI, which is impervious to host country governance standards in its geopolitical quest for gaining economic supremacy in the region. India’s membership of the Commonwealth (CW) plays a vital role in the location and volume of its investments to Africa, whereas the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) wields no influence on the location of its investment.