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Outward foreign direct investment (FDI) from emerging economies, in particular from China and India, is on the rise. As a result, the international expansion of emerging-market multinational enterprises (MNEs) is attracting growing attention among scholars. However, existing research comparing the location patterns of Chinese and Indian MNEs is still scant. In order to fill this gap, we aim to analyze the impact of political risk and cultural distance on the location choice of Chinese and Indian MNEs. Drawing on an institutional approach, we propose several hypotheses regarding the influence of political risk and cultural distance on location decisions. We test our hypotheses using a sample of FDIs carried out by Chinese and Indian MNEs. Our findings suggest that the behavior of Chinese MNEs is less conventional than that of their Indian counterparts when facing institutional obstacles in host countries. Previous papers dealing with location decisions of China’s and India’s outward FDI did not specifically address the impact of political risk and cultural distance. This comparative study provides new empirical evidence on the influence of these traditional host country institutional factors.

To understand the rationale for foreign direct investment of Chinese electronic companies, their location decisions and entry mode choices

Secondary data on foreign direct investment of the top 100 companies in China’s electronics industry are analysed. The first part covers an exploratory analysis of the industry and the second part presents a comparative longitudinal analysis of three case studies of representative companies: Haier, Huawei, and Lenovo.

The three key findings are: (1) market-seeking is the primary motivation for foreign direct investment of Chinese companies in the electronics industry, yet the strategic-asset-seeking gains importance as the internationalization of the company advances; (2) foreign investment path normally starts at adjacent foreign markets, but more distant markets are gradually targeted and become more important for the company; (3) wholly owned investments are the preferred market entry modes in the international expansion.

This research is based on secondary data, and more in-depth, interview-based studies are needed to explore the perceptions of decision-makers, and a plethora of contextual factors, which result in specific market entry decisions. As only the 100 largest companies were studied, future research should put under scrutiny also internationalization of smaller firms.

Implications of such findings are discussed in the light of classic internationalization theories as well as the current research on internationalization of companies from emerging/developing countries.

Provides an account of foreign direct investment in a context of a substantial and growing importance for the practice of international business, and identifies an agenda for promising future scholarly inquiries.

In this paper, we conduct a conceptual and bibliographic analysis of the literature that deals with the international strategy of state-owned enterprises (SOEs), with particular attention to SOEs from emerging economies (EEs). We first review the state of the art in defining the concepts of EEs and SOEs. We then conduct a detailed bibliographic analysis of the literature pertaining to SOEs’ involvement in international activities, whether as outward foreign investors or as potential local partners of inward-investing multinational enterprises. The analysis covers general trends in the literature, prominent research questions and outcome variables, use of theories, and choices pertaining to methodology (type of research and effects, empirical contexts). We document a literature that is fast-growing and well balanced in some respects. In other respects, we advance recommendations pertaining to (a) consistency and precision in the use of the concepts of “state-owned enterprise” and “emerging economy”; (b) search for specific evidence on the outward activities of EE SOEs in less-developed economies and even in other EEs, and on their performance; (c) understanding of relative propensities of local SOEs and inward investors to collaborate, and what happens when SOEs encounter each other across borders; (d) opportunities to strengthen the theoretical foundations and contributions of this research; and (e) minding the mix of home and host countries in studies and avoiding undue generalization from what has become a predominantly China-centric literature.

The purpose of this chapter is to demonstrate that, despite the extensive literature on firm-specific advantages (FSAs) and country-specific advantages (CSAs) produced since Rugman’s classic matrix (1981), little progress has been made in empirically operationalizing the second concept.

Through a review of the international business (IB) literature that refers to the CSA concept, we identify the “vagueness” in the usage of this concept. First, we present a concise literature review of the CSA construct, with a link to the “double diamond” theoretical model of Rugman and D’Cruz (1993) and Rugman and Verbeke (1993). Second, we present the results of the bibliographic analysis on the use of the construct by a variety of authors.

We demonstrate the weak conceptual grounding of the CSA concept by reviewing the literature on host-CSAs attracting Chinese overseas foreign direct investment (OFDI). Apart from the fact that various authors use different sources of data, an important reason for contradictory results is the fact that each author tests host-CSA through different indicators. Here, we propose a list of variables and indicators based on the “double diamond” model and test these empirically.

IB researchers should start conducting serious studies on home-CSAs and host-CSAs instrumental to attracting investments, defining clear indicators and using replicable data based on publicly available information. This chapter is the first to show that the concepts developed by Rugman (1981) and expanded by Rugman, A. M. and Verbeke, A. (2008) (Internalization theory and its impact on the field of international business. Research in Global Strategic Management, 14, 155–174) are relevant to advance in the quantitative operationalization of concepts within IB theory.

Since the beginning of the 21st century, China’s outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) is growing steadily and Chinese multinationals (MNCs) are playing an increasingly important role in the global economy. Thus, the number of papers focusing on China’s OFDI and Chinese MNCs has been increasing during the last years. The aim of this chapter is to carry out a review of the empirical papers dealing with Chinese MNCs published between 2002 and 2012 in high-impact international business and management journals.

This chapter reviews 43 empirical papers focusing on Chinese MNCs that were published in nine major scholarly journals between 2002 and 2012.

We report individual and institutional contributions, the theories and methods used, the research topics, and the main findings. We also discuss implications for future research.

Some previous literature reviews have dealt with research on China’s OFDI and Chinese MNCs. Nevertheless, none of the earlier reviews dealt specifically with empirical papers; neither did they provide an analysis of both individual and institutional contributions.

The research question is how home country corruption and nationalism may affect operations of BRIC multinational enterprises. BRIC composition permits a comparison of two authoritarian regimes and two constitutional democracies. Each BRIC features a different combination of corruption and nationalism. The chapter adds South Africa information for two limited reasons. First, from 2010 South Africa is a member of the BRIC summit process. South Africa is an important entry point to Africa, for BRIC multinationals and particularly for China. Second, concerning corruption and nationalism South Africa is analytically useful as a control context that helps illustrate but does not appear to change highly exploratory BRIC findings.

The chapter draws on limited literature and information concerning corruption and nationalism in BRICs to suggest tentative possibilities. Transparency International provides bribe payers index estimates for 28 large economies, with important multinational enterprises, and corruption perceptions index estimates including those 28 countries. These estimates include the four BRICs and South Africa. The available sources suggest some suggested findings about varying impacts of home country corruption and nationalism on operations of BRIC multinationals.

China and Russia are authoritarian regimes in transition from central planning-oriented communist regimes. They are global military powers, expanding influence in their respective regions. Brazil, India, and South Africa are constitutional democracies. India, a nuclear-armed military power, seeks a regional leadership role in South Asia. Brazil and South Africa are key countries economically in their regions. BRIC multinationals are positioned between home country and host country conditions. Chinese and Russian multinationals may reflect a stronger nationalistic tendency due to home country regimes and ownership structure.

The chapter is an original but highly exploratory inquiry into impacts of corruption and nationalism on BRIC multinationals. Extant BRIC literature tends to understudy effects of home country corruption and nationalism on managerial mindset and incentives in either commercial or state-owned enterprises.

South Korean multinational enterprises (MNEs) have developed rapidly since the late 1950s. This chapter investigates South Korean MNEs’ talent management, more specifically international recruitment and selection policies and practices in their Chinese operations.

Using the snowball method through Chinese and Korean networks we recruited ten Korean MNEs to participate in this research. We conducted semi-structured interviews with key individuals within the organisations.

It reveals that South Korean MNEs tend to adopt the polycentric approach or a mixed approach of being polycentric and ethnocentric to international staffing, with the number of expatriates reducing gradually over time. South Korean MNEs adopt ‘one-way selection’ in recruiting and selecting expatriates and localise recruitment procedures and selection criteria for host-country nationals.

South Korean MNEs have paid inadequate attention to: firstly, expatriates’ career development; and secondly, personal and family issues emerging from expatriation and repatriation. This study highlights these issues.

To investigate the impact of knowledge-intensive FDI in the Chinese pharmaceutical industry, this study analyzes the activity of foreign MNEs operating in this context by exploring their innovative background, the organizational arrangements they use for local knowledge creation and the performance of their local innovative processes. Based on the analysis of the universe of USPTO pharmaceutical patents applied for between 1975 and 2010 and granted to foreign assignees utilizing the work of Chinese inventors, our results show that, while the presence of foreign MNEs in the Chinese pharmaceutical industry entails a strong potential for positive externalities that could enhance the performance of the local innovation system, such externalities do not completely materialize yet, likely because of local actors’ limited absorptive capacity.

This study investigates the impact of multinational enterprises (MNEs) on economic and human development in Africa. Specific focus is placed on the local managerial capability building. Capability building is an important part of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) framework and is considered a necessary prerequisite for achieving poverty alleviation targets. The low level of local capabilities is a well-recognized issue in Africa. The study also addresses the emerging stream of research devoted to MNEs from developing countries. Such MNEs have a different level of managerial capabilities, a different corporate culture, and different operation models compared to MNEs from developed countries. This study analyzes the industrial development of Ghana and compares cases of Chinese and European MNEs operating in this country. On the basis of multimethod analysis, we provide extensive policy implications.

The extant literature on emerging market multinationals (EMNEs) suggest that they derive their advantages from factors such as economies of scale, and that they internationalise, in large measure, to access technology. However, support for this framework typically comes from analysis of static data, comparing EMNEs and OECD MNEs at a point in time. Little attention is paid to their development paths in a dynamic setting. We examine these propositions directly using an approach that enables us to decompose productivity growth of firms into its components, namely, changes in scale economies, technological progress and technical efficiency. We compare Chinese MNEs with their non-MNE domestic counterparts and developed country MNEs that have operations in China. We demonstrate that Chinese MNEs continue to derive much of their productivity growth from changes in scale economies, while developed country MNEs continue to have an advantage with respect to technical progress. Both these types of MNEs have a significant advantage over Chinese non-MNE domestic firms.