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This study tests for the relationship between internationalization and performance in the emerging market context using a sample of 719 firms from 12 emerging markets. This study also incorporates the quality of governance in the emerging market studied to test for the interactive influence of the environmental context on the internationalization performance relationship. Findings indicate support for an inverted U‐shaped relationship between internationalization and performance for manufacturing firms and a positive linear relationship for service firms. In explaining the relationship between internationalization and performance, the quality of governance of the home country of the firm was found to interact with internationalization.

The previous decade has been characterized by emerging market firms expanding into international markets. This trend has led to scholars in the IB arena to grapple with the new phenomenon of emerging multinational enterprises (EMNEs), specifically the relationship between internationalization and performance of the EMNEs. This paper seeks to add to the literature by capturing the impact of firm resources on the internationalization‐performance relationship. Empirical analysis on a sample of 787 Indian manufacturing firms indicates that there is a non‐linear relationship between internationalization and performance. Findings also indicate that a firm’s capabilities in cost efficiency and marketing have a moderating impact on this relationship.

The purpose of this paper is to link country factors which impact the selection of women as CEOs of firms in emerging markets.

Using a multilevel model, this study investigates the factors driving the selection of a woman as CEO using a sample of 30,015 firms from 20 emerging markets during the years 2008 to 2016.

Based on analysis of nested multilevel logistic models, study findings indicate that country wealth, gender egalitarianism and humane orientation increase the likelihood that a firm would be led by a female CEO. Findings also indicate a greater opportunity for women to secure the top role in service industries relative to manufacturing industries.

In spite of the magnitude of emerging markets and their varied social, economic and cultural contexts, there is scant research focusing on female CEOs in these countries. This topic is of considerable importance to gender empowerment, equity, fairness and social welfare and this paper contributes to the knowledge in this area by incorporating a multilevel model focusing on the factors driving the choice of female CEOs. Study findings serve as an important starting point on the opportunity for managerial women from emerging nations.

This study uses the notions of institutional harshness and uncertainty avoidance in the home country to explain the choice between direct and indirect exporting strategies by emerging market firms.

This study is based on a dataset of 23,256 observations on firms from 32 countries spread over 11 years (2006–2016). Since only some firms undertake exports, the Heckman procedure is used to control for sample self-selection. In the first stage, we predict which firms will choose to export, and, in the second stage, we examine the factors driving the choice made by firms involved in exports between direct and indirect exports strategies.

The analyses reveal that firms are more likely to choose direct exports when institutional harshness is high and when they are from countries with low uncertainty avoidance. We also find that the strength of the relationship between institutional harshness and the choice of direct exports is moderated at high levels of uncertainty avoidance.

While this study's empirical models account for many firm-level factors as well as home country differences discussed in the literature, we acknowledge there could be other temporal, firm or country idiosyncratic factors not included in our analysis driving the key choices examined in the paper.

This study makes three contributions to exporting literature. First, it highlights the drivers of the choice between direct and indirect exports. This choice is an important facet of exporting strategy and has received scant attention in prior IB research. Second, it demonstrates how the choice between direct and indirect exports is impacted by the degree of the home country's institutional harshness and uncertainty avoidance. Third, it offers insights on how the interaction of formal and informal home market institutional factors influences export strategy.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the factors associated with franchisors going public using signaling theory. Listing on the stock market is a sign that the business concept has reached a threshold level of acceptance and success. To increase the relevance of this study to practitioners, the authors focus on franchising-specific controllable variables.

This study uses a sample of 2,134 franchisors from US drawn from a survey by Entrepreneur magazine during the years 2015–2016. Binominal logistic regression models are used for analysis of the data.

Findings indicate that time to franchise, international operations, franchise association affiliation, disclosure and extent of top management commitment are factors positively related to the likelihood of a franchisor being publicly listed.

Study findings are based on a sample of franchisors from North America, where financial markets are well developed, and due caution should be exercised before generalizations are made to other contexts. A major implication of this study is that signaling theory may provide an important supplement to the already well-entrenched resource-scarcity and agency theoretic explanations in franchising research.

While signaling theory is growing in importance in the franchising literature, this study is the first to uncover the relationship between company signals and initial public offering.

This study seeks to explicate how institutional disruptions impact multinational corporation (MNC) subsidiary control choices. It uses institutional theory to understand the influence of formal and informal institutions across countries on the type of control system employed in an MNC manufacturing subsidiary.

This study’s sample is based on a unique dataset from five trustworthy sources. We use multi-level models to account for the hierarchical nature of the sample of 1,630 multinational subsidiaries spread across 26 host countries by firms from 21 home countries.

The institutional distance between the host and the home country has a negative relationship with strategic control. In contrast, the home country’s power distance has a positive relationship with strategic control.

Study findings indicate the need to incorporate formal and informal institutional elements in the control system’s conceptual framing and design. This notion complements existing visualizations of optimizing MNC controls through extant articulations of minimizing governance costs through organizational design choices or strategic needs.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the notion of social responsibility skepticism (SRS) and demonstrate its importance to the existing social responsibility literature. Stakeholder-emphasizing perspective (STEP) and shareholder-emphasizing perspective (SHEP) are tested as independent constructs that both serve to reduce skepticism. SHEP, STEP and SRS are shown to be interrelated but independent ideas.

The study is based on a primary questionnaire survey of managers. Multivariate regression analysis is used for analysis, level of management is a moderating variable and age and gender are control variables.

Managers who accept either the shareholder emphasis or the stakeholder emphasis have lower social responsibility skepticism. STEP and SHEP appear to be two independent constructs that both serve to reduce skepticism, although STEP is slightly more effective. The relationship is stronger for STEP managers and for higher level managers.

Findings may be influenced by the existing political or business milieu. Findings on the moderating effect of level of management and age may reflect generational differences. Changes in gender roles may also affect findings.

Acceptance of management theories oriented either toward a stakeholder perspective or a shareholder perspective is associated with less skepticism. The legitimacy and value of each perspective should be acknowledged.

Managers require support for decisions taking social responsibility into account. This study demonstrates that grounding in stakeholder theory or shareholder theory can reduce SRS.

This study introduces the new concept of SRS and provides a scale to measure this new variable. New scales are also provided for SHEP and STEP. Both perspectives negate tendencies toward SRS.

Understanding the impact of country effect on financial performance is important for service firms as they continue to grow and operate across national borders. The purpose of this paper is to empirically quantify the impact of country and several country-specific variables on firm performance in the service sector by estimating the portion of variation in firm performance attributed to these factors.

Using hierarchical linear models, the authors estimate the proportion of variation driven by country effects. These estimates are obtained from a data panel of 16,051 units from 3,345 service firms across 32 countries over a seven-year time frame (2001-2007).

In the analysis, home country explains approximately 11 percent of the variance in performance. Additionally, the authors find that six country-specific variables, namely, quality of governance, openness to trade, wealth, growth rate, uncertainty avoidance and individualism collectively explain 10 percent of variation in performance or 26.8 percent relative variation of performance.

This study extends the literature on country effect by quantifying the impact of country-specific dimensions on performance. It focusses on a single industry within the service sector. This allows for a more reliable estimate of the country effect, as it will not be confounded by cross-industry effects – thus alleviating some of the concerns with earlier research. Understanding the impact of the six specific country variables investigated in this work will allow service firms to better predict and improve the performance of subsidiaries.

The purpose of this study is to examine whether the usage of informal finance helps exports of emerging market firms.

The study analyzes a large dataset of observations on emerging market firms. To address the issue of a non-random sample and correct for self-selection in the regression analyzes, this paper uses the two-stage Heckman procedure. In the first stage, this study uses a sample of 74,148 firms from 135 countries over an 11-year time period (2006 to 2016). In the second stage, which includes only firms involved in exports, the analyses are based on 13,608 observations on firms from 135 countries over the same time period.

The study finds that the usage of informal finance helps exports of emerging market firms. Furthermore, the interactive effect between informal finance and home country affluence also influences exports.

The analyses do not account for destination market characteristics such as size and growth.

The study suggests that emerging market firms should not shy away from using informal finance which can often be more convenient, and sometimes cheaper, than formal finance. Informal finance’s timeliness might be particularly useful for pursuing strategies such as exporting.

Studies in international business implicitly assume that finance is available for pursuing strategies such as exports or foreign direct investment. However, formal finance is scarce in emerging markets. By drawing a linkage between informal finance and exports in emerging markets, the study adds to the international business literature. The study also examines joint and interactive effects of home country characteristics and deployment of informal finance on exporting.

The Indian power distribution companies are increasingly recognizing franchising for reviving their high loss-making rural pockets. The motivation for franchising has been a reduction of the franchisor's resource scarcity by bringing in operational efficiency and improved service quality to end consumers. However, there is a dearth of evidence on the influence of the franchisee's operations in addressing the resource scarcity of franchisors in predominantly rural areas. This study contributes towards filling the research gap.

A qualitative embedded multiple case study was conducted. The cases comprised two rural franchisees operating towards attaining the common goal. The study was built on archival analysis, personal observations and semi-structured interviews with the franchisors and franchisee officials across the organization's hierarchical levels. A conceptual model based on the review of prior literature formed the initial set of coding for the study. The data were presented based on within-case and across-case analysis.

The analysis revealed that the contract design impacts the requisite operational efficiency achievement. This variation could be elaborated by factors, such as system adaptation across organizational hierarchy, autonomy and independence, review and feedback systems, monitoring, a professional's attitude, bureaucracy, adaption with the local areas, risk sharing, incentives and compensation structure.

The study findings could be generalized to the extent of similar socio-economic conditions, prevailing governance mechanisms and law and orders. Additionally, since the law does not mandate the regulatory commissions to scrutinize the performance of the franchisees, the study was built on data shared by the franchisees and the discom. Further, this study considered the performance of only two performing franchisees. Matching these actualities with the discoveries of this study remains a continuing project as participation of private players is increasingly being recognized. Therefore, the insights drawn from this study could be used to improve the franchise model and can be scaled up across the nation, regions and sectors.

There is a dearth of literature on franchising in electricity distribution. This study is one of the first studies on studying the franchise system in the electricity distribution sector through the application of a well-accepted management theory.