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This study aims to analyse how multinational corporations (MNCs) organise value chain activities to penetrate new market segments. It contributes by expanding traditional decisions regarding the vertical fine-slicing of value chain activities (whether performed internally or externally) and the consideration of resource-sharing decisions (integration or separation) for each value chain function.

The authors draw on primary data collected from two case study firms operating in the large emerging Chinese market: Volvo Construction Equipment AB and Epiroc AB. In-depth cases illustrate how foreign MNCs expand into new market segments and simultaneously target both the lower-priced mid-market and the premium segments in the Chinese mining and construction industry.

The results reveal that product diversification creates challenges for managers who must oversee new (vertical) value chains, often simultaneously. Beyond geography and modes of governance, managers must decide whether to integrate or separate value chain activities for the new product lines. The study identifies four main strategic choices for firms to address this complexity, focusing on the decision to internalise or externalise (i.e. within or across organisational boundaries) and integrate or separate value chain activities between different product lines.

This study builds upon the internalisation theory and recent international business contributions that focus on value chain configurations to explain MNCs’ product diversification as a growth strategy in a host emerging market. It also sheds light on the choice of conducting new activities in-house or externally and elucidates firms’ managerial decisions to operationally integrate or separate individual value chain activities. The study provides insights into the drivers explaining managerial decisions to configure value chain activities across product lines and contributes to the growing body of literature on MNC activities in emerging economies by highlighting that product diversification impacts entry mode diversity and resource sharing across units.

The purpose of this paper is to use stakeholder theory as the theoretical reference framework to study the influence of internationalization (geographic international diversification) and social performance on multinational companies’ (MNCs) reputation.

The authors confirm the research hypotheses using a sample of 113 US MNCs in the chemical, energy and industrial machinery sectors during the period 2005-2010.

This study contributes to the literature in three ways. First, it incorporates literature on internationalization to study the possible connection between geographic international diversification and social performance in MNCs. Second, it sheds light on the debate between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and the reputation of MNCs in a very diverse transnational context in which MNCs must meet the needs of stakeholders at both local and global levels. Third, it incorporates the mediating role of social performance in the relationship between geographic international diversification and the firm’s reputation.

Prior studies have hardly analyzed this relationship, which becomes especially relevant for MNCs, since their implementation of advanced CSR practices in the different markets in which they operate will gain them a good reputation, not only in specific local contexts but also globally, benefitting the organization as a whole and enabling it to gain internal consistency (improvement in internal efficiency), transparency and legitimacy.

The purpose of this paper is to generate insights into how multinational companies (MNCs) promote global mobility in their Employer Branding (EB) messages on Facebook.

The authors analyzed 13.340 EB messages found on the Facebook career pages of 30 major MNCs (10 of each in the US, UK and Germany) drawing on a methodological approach combining Grounded Theory and text-mining.

Building on the perspective of psychological contracts as sensitizing concept, the analysis of the overall sample reveals a range of core themes in EB messages across all MNCs studied. With regards to global mobility, MNCs emphasize relational, i.e. socio-emotional, contents, particularly, highlighting opportunities of experience and personal development. While global mobility is an overall marginal theme, German MNCs extensively promote global mobility, whereas US- and UK-based MNCs do not explicitly make it a subject of their messages. The findings are discussed in the light of institutional theory.

Despite mega-trend, little is known about social media EB, especially when it comes to the contents that MNCs communicate to (potential) employees. Applying an innovative methodological approach, the authors offer insights into these contents. Discussing the findings in the light of institutional theory, it is concluded that promoting global mobility in socio-emotional terms seems of high importance to reduce uncertainties associated with living and working abroad. This might help firms to hire internationally mobile employees, especially in countries where job mobility is generally low.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the effect of financial derivatives use on different exposures by comparing domestic firms, domestic multinational corporations (MNCs) and affiliates of foreign MNCs using a unique hand-collected data set of derivatives activities from 881 non-financial firms in eight East Asian countries over the period of 2003-2013.

In this paper, the authors apply a two-stage approach. In the first stage, exposures to country risks, exchange rate and interest rate risks are estimated by using the market model. In the second stage, potential effects of firms’ derivatives use on multifaceted exposures are investigated by carrying out pooled regression model, and panel data regressions with random effect specifications.

The authors provide novel evidence that financial hedging of domestic firms and domestic MNCs reduces exposure to home country risks by 10.91 and 14.42 percent per 1 percent increase in notional derivative holdings, respectively, while affiliates of foreign MNCs fail to mitigate exposure to host country risks. The use of foreign currency and interest rate derivatives by domestic firms and domestic MNCs is effective in alleviating such firms’ exposures to varied degrees, while foreign affiliates’ use of derivatives can only lower interest rate exposures.

The primary theoretical contribution of this study is applying the market model to estimate exposures to home and host country risks. Regarding empirical contributions, the authors provide strong evidence that the use of financial derivatives by domestic firms and domestic MNCs significantly contributes to a decline in exposure to home country risks, and evidence the outperformance of domestic MNCs vis-à-vis domestic firms and foreign affiliates.

The purpose of this study is to conduct a systematic literature review that illuminates the current state of knowledge regarding the specific approaches by which multinational corporations (MNCs) implement corporate social responsibility (CSR) on the subsidiary level in developing countries.

Even though substantial scholarly work has been made to outline MNCs' activities in developing countries, this literature remains fragmented. To support the field in its theoretical as well as empirical advancements, this study conducts a systematic review of this body of literature and content analysis of relevant articles using insights from strategic marketing literature (market driving/proactive and market-driven/reactive approaches).

The authors synthesize our findings by presenting a taxonomy of proactive/reactive CSR approaches in developing markets along with propositions that can guide future research in this area.

Among the key contributions of this study's literature review is the development of a taxonomy of proactive/reactive CSR, bringing together different and fragmented streams of research and viewing them from strategic marketing (“proactive/reactive”) perspective. The taxonomy and the two ensuing propositions can advance future CSR-related studies with MNCs in focus by providing both theoretical and empirical guidance.

For corporate communications, it is crucial to know how news media outlets report and frame the sociopolitical activities of multinational corporations (MNCs), including their corporate diplomacy, that affect perceptions of their legitimacy. Therefore, this study aims to identify how local news media frame corporate diplomacy in a host country and, in turn, benefit the media legitimacy of MNCs.

To identify media frames in the host country, a quantitative content analysis involving factor and cluster analyses of 385 articles published in newspapers in the United Arab Emirates from 2014 to 2019 addressing the corporate diplomacy of large European MNCs operating in the country was conducted.

This study identified three media frames, two of which establish moral and pragmatic media legitimacy. Results suggest that media legitimacy grows when news media emphasise institutional relationships between MNCs and local, established organisations and corporate diplomacy's benefits for society.

Findings provide insights into how corporate communications can contribute to legitimacy building by emphasising corporations' relationships with institutional actors in host countries and the benefits of corporate activities for local communities.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study was the first in corporate communications to empirically investigate news media's role in corporate diplomacy and how media frames contribute to the media legitimacy of MNCs at the moral, pragmatic, regulative and cognitive levels.

This study introduces a comprehensive bibliometric analysis of the foreign direct investment (FDI) literature by multinational corporations (MNCs) focusing on emerging economies to identify the most influential authors, journals and articles in FDI research and reveals the fields' conceptual and intellectual structures. The purpose of this paper is to address these issues.

The study analyzed 533 articles published between 1974 and 2020 in 226 academic journals indexed in the Web of Science (WoS) and Scopus databases. We used the R language for statistical computing to map author collaboration, co-word and develop a conceptual and intellectual map of the field.

The results show that, although the FDI literature has many authors, few dominate the field. The International Business Review (IBR) and International Journal of Emerging Markets (IJoEM) are the main sources of the publications. Moreover, bibliometric laws show that our dataset follows the Lotka law of scientific productivity and Bradford law of scattering, identifying the core journals. Finally, FDI by MNCs in emerging economies research is divided into four sub-research themes related to (1) FDI determinants, (2) entry mode, (3) MNCs and FDI performance and (4) the internationalization process.

The current article provides several starting points for practitioners and researchers investigating FDI. It contributes to broadening the vision of the field and offers recommendations for future studies.

For many global firms and corporate oligopolies, transfer pricing is essential. The transfer pricing literature as it is currently written is succinctly summarized in this study. The authors offer a thorough analysis of transfer pricing research in this study. This review sheds light on the top researchers, approaches, conclusions, theoretical and empirical gaps, and upcoming issues of transfer pricing research over the previous nine years through a methodical analysis of 29 research publications from the Scopus database (2014–2022). To help graduate students pursue further degrees in this area, such as a master's, thesis or PhD, this study will highlight five research issues.

This essay looks at five significant areas of tax avoidance and transfer pricing research. Some of these issues include determining the impact of transfer pricing regulations on various types of multinational corporations, assessing the effectiveness of transfer pricing regulations in preventing tax evasion, examining various policy options and determining the impact of transfer pricing on other economic outcomes using a systematic literature review.

The findings of this review demonstrate the need for transfer pricing research to look more closely at transfer pricing as a tool for business in addition to compliance and tax management.

This analysis concludes with future directions for transfer pricing research.

In the mainstream international business literature on multinational corporations (MNCs), an authoritative central headquarter (HQ) that transfers standardised practices to its subsidiaries remains the norm. This study aims to explore how MNCs coordinate their management practices through principles.

The paper draws on empirical findings from a qualitative in-depth single case study based on evidence-rich qualitative data including observations from how a high-tech MNC headquartered in Sweden coordinates its development practices.

An alternative informal coordination approach (i.e. coordination by principles) is identified. Additionally, antecedents and implications of the approach are presented.

Coordination by Principles may facilitate the internalisation of practices and be a feasible compromise between context adaptation and traditional standardisation, particularly for MNCs with highly heterogeneous research and development operations.

This paper highlights the importance of acknowledging that firm practices often are based on management ideas that HQs adopt to prevent loss of legitimacy. As such, this study contributes to the scarce literature that critically questions the assumption that HQs solely transfer practices to subsidiaries to improve subsidiary efficiency and performance.

This study examines the internationalization effects of corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting, specifically aiming to identify and compare the CSR reporting practices of large US multi-national corporations (MNCs) and their Polish subsidiaries.

Based on content analysis and using a disclosure index, the authors examined the CSR information posted on, or linked to, the corporate websites of a sample of 60 US-based MNCs and their subsidiaries operating in Poland.

The findings indicate that US companies, despite operating in a less regulated environment, had more extensive disclosure than their Polish subsidiaries and covered more CSR-related topics. CSR disclosures within the US subsample were analogous in volume and detail. By contrast, only about half of Polish companies provided CSR disclosures, which were more diverse in volume and in the types of activities disclosed. The authors did not find a significant positive correlation between the CSR disclosures of the two subsamples.

The study contributes to the literature on internationalization processes and sustainability practices. It provides insights into the CSR reporting of companies located in Central and Eastern European countries. The findings also have implications for policymakers in incentivizing the enhancement of the reporting disclosure practices of companies.