Search results

Based on fifteen years of data on the annual Academy of International Business (AIB) best dissertation Farmer Award finalists, we find that these dissertations were done at a range of North American universities. Interestingly, dissertation topics differed from the topics covered in the three top IB journals with five‐sixths of the topics in management, organization, economics, or finance and two‐thirds set in a single country or region (U.S., Japan, North America, and Western Europe). Survey research is the most common methodology but analysis of secondary data is growing. As expected, the finalists are on average an extraordinarily prolific group.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of an industry’s connectedness to foreign countries on knowledge sourcing.

The authors examine the research model through probit regression techniques to the 472,303-patent data across 16 industries derived from the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

The results suggest that international connectedness increases the accessibility of foreign knowledge and helps the accumulation of technological capability. Thus, this paper provides a better understanding that international connectedness can be critical for exploiting knowledge dispersed worldwide and influencing intra- and interindustry knowledge-sourcing behavior in the home country.

While prior studies have mainly paid attention to the relationship between parents and subsidiaries in foreign countries for international knowledge sourcing, the authors attempt to analyze international and local knowledge sourcing with a broader set of knowledge sourcing channels at an aggregate level. By considering an industry’s export intensity and inward foreign direct investment, this study reveals specifically how the extent of an industry’s international connectedness influences knowledge sourcing from both abroad and locally.

This paper aims to determine the essential “collective goods” which a foreign multinational enterprise (MNE) must have before production can start in a remote area of an emerging economy, and to consider the alternative governance modes available to procure or create these goods.

This purpose is examined conceptually and theoretically. First, the concept of “collective goods” is presented, followed by a consideration of the traditional “buy, ally or make” contractual approaches available to obtain goods and services. These approaches are repositioned in the context of an “emerging economy” so that alternative “ordering systems” as well as “non-contractual” means of obtaining things have to be considered in the context of internalization and reciprocity theories.

It is difficult to obtain collective goods in remote areas of emerging economies where private ordering prevails and even succeeds but at high transaction costs and with substantial government intervention. However, the use of non-contractual modes of exchange such as reciprocity is available to facilitate exchanges between market MNEs and nonmarket state offices and civil-society associations such as non-governmental organizations with which collaboration is necessary but which cannot be acquired or controlled by MNEs. However, market firms can use philanthropy and lobbying to obtain the help of these nonmarket actors who know how to operate under private and state-ordering systems.

Theoretical implications: Internalization theory explains why MNEs are able to obtain collective goods by providing them “in-house”, while reciprocity theory exemplifies how non-contractual modes of exchange can substitute for the traditional but contractual “buy, ally and/or make”.

Managerial implications: In terms of the organizational structure of the subsidiary of an MNE operating in an emerging economy, it appears that the line functions of procurement, engineering and production may rely more on contractual exchanges with foreign suppliers, while the staff functions of public affairs, government relations and human resources may be more adept at using reciprocal exchange with local suppliers.

The provisioning of the collective goods when a firm builds its facilities in a remote and underdeveloped part of an emerging economy has hardly received any research attention nor have the non-contractual ways – such as reciprocity – available in the context of private ordering to obtain these goods.

The purpose of this study is to use the rise of emerging-market multinationals as a vehicle to explore how a firm’s country of origin influences its internationalization.

This paper is a conceptual paper.

We argue that the home country’s institutional and economic underdevelopment can influence the internationalization of firms in two ways. First, emerging-market firms may leverage innovations made at home to cope with underdeveloped institutions or economic backwardness to gain a competitive advantage abroad, especially in other emerging markets; We call this innovation-based internationalization. Second, they may expand into countries that are more developed or have better institutions to escape weaknesses on these fronts at home; we call this escape-based internationalization.

Comparative disadvantages influence the internationalization of the firm differently from comparative advantage, as it forces the firm to actively upgrade its firm-specific advantage and internationalize.

We explain two drivers of internationalization that managers operating in emerging markets can consider when facing disadvantages in their home countries and follow several strategies, namely, trickle-up innovation, self-reliant innovation, improvisation management, self-reliance management, technological escape, marketing escape, institutional escape and discriminatory escape.

We explain how a firm’s home country’s comparative disadvantage, not just its comparative advantage, can spur firms its internationalization.

The purpose of this article is to present a biographical sketch of Lee C. Nehrt, who, in 1962, became the first person to obtain a PhD in International Business.

This study is mainly based on an in‐depth interview of Lee Nehrt followed up by several telephone and e‐mail interviews as well as e‐mail interviews of a number of Nehrt's former colleagues and students. In addition, Nehrt's published works were extensively reviewed and utilized.

The findings are reported in the form of a biography. In particular, the paper documents Nehrt's contribution to the emergence of international business as an important field of study, his role in internationalizing business curricula within the USA and in popularizing the American model of business education across the world. The paper also reflects on Nehrt's contribution to the Academy of International Business and his efforts in forging closer ties between international business academics and practitioners.

The dearth of biographical research in the international business discipline points to a need that has yet to be fulfilled. This is the first published article on Nehrt's life and career as a pioneering international business scholar.

This study aims to investigate the importance of relational and conditional knowledge by assessing how service and signaling competences affect manufacturing firms’ productivity. These relationships are explored in the context of Africa, where, paradoxically, firms selling abroad must satisfy different market demands than firms that serve only domestic markets.

The authors draw on the World Bank Enterprise Survey to perform a cross-sectional analysis of 4,683 manufacturing firms. These surveys cover the period 2009-2017 and 35 different African countries. The authors define service competence development as co-location with knowledge-intensive business service (KIBS) firms, measured through KIBS density at city level. Signaling is measured through outward-looking competences.

This paper shows that African exporters differ significantly from their non-exporting counterparts in terms of productivity and competences. External service competence generates productivity gains for exporters but has the opposite effect for non-exporters. Results consistent with previous research also show that signaling competences generate productivity gains, but the effect for firms serving domestic markets is stronger than the effect for exporting firms. The authors use paradoxes of learning to interpret these results.

This study detects nuances of the African context that increase the understanding of knowledge management in emerging markets. The findings would benefit from confirmation in a longitudinal and causal setting.

African exporting firms should establish mechanisms to develop joint knowledge with external partners (know-with) to enhance their competitiveness, whereas African non-exporters should prioritize building knowledge credibility.

The study develops a novel empirical approach to analyzing firm competences in Africa. It also shows that contextualization of existing knowledge management theories matters, opening a research avenue to test further existing theories in emerging economies.

The aim of the paper is to identify the determinants of the marketing and managerial knowledge transfer from a foreign subsidiary located in a post-transition country to its headquarters established in a developed country.

The authors combined the critical literature studies and empirical research, where the method of Computer-assisted Telephone Interview (CATI) was applied. The empirical data was gathered from 231 manufacturing foreign subsidiaries established in Poland (as one of the post-transition economy). To test the hypotheses logistic regression was applied.

The knowledge accumulated in the foreign subsidiary, the amount and level of novelty of innovation in the foreign subsidiary and its strategic autonomy is crucial for the occurrence of the reverse knowledge transfer. However, the more powerful the foreign subsidiary is, the less eager it is to transfer marketing and managerial knowledge to the headquarters.

The study is concentrated just on the manufacturing sector in the Polish economy. The results are based on the opinions and perception of managers, but they represent the corporate perspective (not their individual ones).

The study provokes asking the question about the proper level of strategic autonomy of a foreign subsidiary. The implication related to the autonomy is much about the proper strategy for human resources management. The obtained results indicate that the intensity of innovation in a foreign subsidiary “translates” to the outflow of knowledge from a foreign subsidiary to its headquarters. Thus, encourages headquarters to let their subsidiaries innovate still monitoring their power.

FSs are entities more or less embedded in the host markets, thus their strength and sustainable existence is important for their stakeholders, in particular – internal entities such as employees and external entities such as suppliers, and other cooperating organisations and institutions in the host market. The contribution of FSs to the innovation performance and knowledge pool of external partners is determined much by their absorptive capacity. Thus, the results obtained indirectly point to the importance of external agents ability to absorb and exploit the knowledge.

The originality of the paper concerns three issues. Firstly, the previous studies are mainly focused on either developed or emerging markets and as a result, the peculiarity of post-transition economies, like Poland has been neglected. Secondly, the determinants of reverse knowledge transfer are presented from the corporate perspective. Thirdly, authors focus on marketing and management knowledge distributed from a foreign subsidiary to its headquarter.

Anti-globalization and protectionism movements have transformed strategic internationalization, international business (IB) student engagement and enrollment growth into very complex endeavors. Whereas the literature is rather scarce on solutions, this paper aims to offer some best practices at a highly ranked IB program that can be very useful to business school leaders.

Descriptive case study of the Fox IB program (Temple University, USA) is based on an inductive approach and the Quality Function Deployment framework to design and internationalize the curriculum.

Listening to the voice of the customers through student and employer testimonials, the author found the elements that make an IB program and curriculum successful. Even senior students who are “between opportunities” feel that the new IB curriculum have prepared them well for their career.

While the case study methodology is well-suited to understand strategies and processes, this research has natural limitations in terms of generalizability.

Academic Directors and business school leaders can use these best practices to innovate, engage their stakeholders and grow enrollments. By increasing job placement opportunities and enrollments, they create a virtuous cycle of success and can obtain additional resources for their program.

The value of management education to society is almost incalculable. IB is an integrative management discipline that is instrumental to the success of the global economy and society.

The best practices of the highly ranked Fox IB program and the 21 student and employer testimonials in this case study have never been shared before.

The eclectic paradigm of Dunning (1980) (with its OLI and four motives for FDI framework) can be reconciled with the firm and country matrix of Rugman (1981). However, the fit is not perfect. The main reason for misalignment is that Dunning is focused upon outward FDI into host economies, whereas Rugman’s matrix is for firm‐level strategy covering MNE activity in both home and host countries