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The purpose of this paper is to analyze corporate scope decisions in acquisitions with a focus on the relationship between target country unfamiliarity and acquirer-to-target relatedness and on the moderating effects played by product diversification and international experience.

Using a dataset of 689 acquisitions completed in the period 2007-2013 by acquirers located in 60 countries, this paper utilizes an ordered logistic regression analysis.

With greater target country unfamiliarity, acquirers are encouraged to pursue greater acquirer-to-target relatedness. This finding suggests that acquirers tend to seek a balance between product and international diversification to reduce the sources of uncertainty in their acquisition moves. While past international experience strengthens this relationship, diversification experience has a negative moderating effect and hence encourages acquirers to reduce relatedness at increasing market unfamiliarity.

The originality of this paper is twofold. First, the authors extend the traditional internationalization-diversification framework to an unfamiliarity-relatedness relationship in the context of acquisitions. Second, the authors propose a construct of target country unfamiliarity in acquisitions that goes beyond the traditional domestic vs cross-border dichotomy by including previous experience in the target country.

This study aims to examine the multidimensional nature of institutional distance as a driver of acquisition decisions in emerging markets. Then, this study aims to offer a nuanced perspective on the role of its various formal and informal dimensions by taking into account the potential contingency role played by a firm’s context experience.

Building on institutional economics and organizational institutionalism, this study explores the heterogeneity of institutional distance and its effects on the decision to enter emerging versus advanced markets through cross-border acquisitions. Thus, institutional distance is disentangled into its formal and informal dimensions, the former being captured by regulatory efficiency, country governance and financial development. Furthermore, our framework examines the moderating effect of an acquiring firm’s experience in institutionally similar environments, defined as context experience. The hypotheses are analyzed on a sample of 496 cross-border acquisitions by Italian companies in 41 countries from 2008 to 2018.

Findings indicate that at an increasing distance in terms of regulatory efficiency and financial development, acquiring firms are less likely to enter emerging markets, while informal institutional distance is positively associated with such acquisitions. Context experience mitigates the negative effect of formal distance and enhances the positive effect of informal distance.

This study contributes to institutional distance literature in multiple ways. First, by bridging institutional economics and organizational institutionalism and second, by examining the heterogeneity of formal and informal dimensions of distance, this study offers a finer-grained perspective on how institutional distance affects acquisition decisions. Finally, it offers a contingency perspective on the role of context experience.

Given that several publicly announced international merger and acquisition deals have been abandoned in recent years, the purpose of this paper is to present a synthesis of influential articles that examine organizational characteristics of cross-border acquisition transactions. The synthesis is framed through general traits and resources, learning and prior acquisition experience, and top-level management and governance attributes. Specifically, the paper conceptualizes key organizational attributes influencing the propensity of cross-border negotiations, and the most common characteristics and post-deal effects by illustrating several case examples from around the world.

Owing to fairness and integrity principles of the literature survey studies, the paper adopts an exploratory review design to present a synthesis of several influential articles published in strategy, international business and corporate finance journals. Since case method and storytelling are the best qualitative approaches to conceptualizing extant theoretical contributions, a number of case examples—successful, delayed and abandoned—from around the world have been discussed by leveraging the case information from archival sources.

Drawing on resource-based view, organizational learning, upper echelons and agency theory perspectives, the paper underscores three observations. First, organizational characteristics such as firm age, firm size, ownership structure, slack resources, marketing resources, technological intensity, export intensity and business group affiliation have different impacts on the propensity of publicly announced cross-border deals. Second, firm’s prior acquisition experience and firm’s acquisition experience in the target country have positive or moderating effects on the success of a cross-border merger. Third, top-level management characteristics such as CEO foreign nationality and CEO international career experience, and governance characteristics such as board size, the number of independent directors and directors with overseas experience, have mixed effects on the incidence of cross-border acquisitions.

The paper puts forth several recommendations for top-level managers participating in cross-border acquisition negotiations, such as learning from peers in the same industry, learning from predecessors in the target country and learning from failure negotiations in the same industry and other industries.

Nested within the organizational, international business strategy and corporate finance literature, the paper presents a synthesis of influential publications that study organizational characteristics affecting the propensity of cross-border acquisitions. The cases discussed in this paper are unique examples from around the world.

This paper aims to explore whether brand corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives increase consumers’ happiness via a mediating mechanism of emotional brand attachment and to examine how brand CSR’s effect may be moderated by CSR fit (e.g. CSR-brand fit vs misfit) and sense of relatedness (e.g. low vs high).

A series of six studies (including the one that is available online), combining field and experimental data, were conducted to test the hypothesized relationships.

Results support the hypothesis that brand CSR initiatives make consumers happy by increasing their attachment to the brand (Studies 1 and 2). This effect is strengthened both directly and indirectly through emotional attachment when brands engage in CSR fit activities (Study 3), but it is weakened when brands engage in CSR misfit activities (Study 4). Furthermore, the effect is more pronounced when brands choose CSR activities that have a high sense of relatedness, and it is eliminated when brands use CSR activities with a low sense of relatedness (Study 5). Finally, the results indicate that when brand CSR programs make consumers happy, they become more likely to purchase, spread positive word of mouth and pay a premium (Study 6).

This research has several major implications for business-to-consumer companies that are unsure about the value of brand CSR initiatives, want to make consumers happy but are unsure which CSR strategies to focus on and/or have decided to launch CSR initiatives but lack guidance on the specific strategies relevant to their desired performance outcomes.

Post-acquisition control is a crucial factor affecting acquisition performance. We investigate how post-acquisition control strategy affects cross-border acquisition performance of Chinese multinational enterprises (MNEs) through a configurational perspective.

Based on 70 cross-border acquisition cases by Chinese MNEs, we adopt fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to study the combined effects of strategic control, operational control, institutional distance, cultural distance, relative capacity and business relatedness on the cross-border acquisition performance.

On the basis of fuzzy set analysis of multiple interdependent factors, we identify six configurations that are conductive to achieving high cross-border acquisition performance and two configurations that relate to the absence of high performance, thus shedding light on the casually complex nature of performance drivers of acquisitions.

This study provides a holistic, configurational approach to investigating cross-border acquisition performance by emerging market firms. Our results provide some compelling evidence that accounts for the causal complexity of post-acquisition control strategies and acquisition outcomes in the context of emerging economies.

Business relatedness is important in international diversification because it enables a firm’s transfer of resources to business units operating in foreign markets. The purpose of this paper is to develop a conceptual model based on a review of the major contributions of studies regarding the relatedness of subsidiaries, joint ventures or any other foreign unit.

The paper examines theory bases, the relatedness construct, data issues and the key achievements of previous studies. Drawing on organizational learning, transaction costs economics and industrial organization, a conceptual model and propositions are developed that intend to close important research gaps.

The model includes competitive strategy as a mediator of the effects of relatedness on foreign unit performance, type of foreign unit – that is, a wholly owned unit or joint venture – as a moderator; and competition barriers as a moderator.

In future research, the propositions need to be transformed into testable hypotheses. It is recommended to treat relatedness as a multidimensional concept.

A firm is primarily advised to evaluate how its relatedness with foreign units enables knowledge transfer. A foreign cost leadership strategy benefits from product relatedness, while a differentiation strategy calls for resource relatedness.

The proposed model is unique as it includes an actionable component that mediates the effects of relatedness on international performance, i.e. competitive strategy, and concerns both wholly owned foreign units and international joint ventures.

This study aims to systematically review the economic complexity literature to advance the knowledge on its contribution to building regional competitiveness.

In this study, we did a systematic review of 111 relevant papers. In this regard, we did a thematic analysis on all the collected papers, which led to a two-level processed approach. In the first level, the contributions of the reviewed articles have been classified into three main streams. In the second level, the findings under each contribution category are analyzed and explained. This approach led to a thematic network demonstrating economic complexity and the dynamics of regional competitiveness and a set of managerial and policy implications. We followed a multiple processed approach for the systematic review of 95 papers that reveals considerable contributions in three categories, including measurement techniques, criticisms and exploratory studies.

Despite some critiques and the undertaken evolution in measurement techniques of complexity, economic complexity has become a well-known method mainly for regions' competitiveness dynamics. Our review demonstrates a nested network of economic complexity dynamics that drives policy advice concerning countries' status in their development path. The provided set of policies includes guidelines for underdeveloped and developing countries and general policy implications, applicable for all regional contexts for building competitiveness dynamics.

This research contributes to the literature on competitiveness from the window of economic complexity. The study allows a deep understanding of regions' productive structure role in their development and competitiveness. A set of policies for building regional competitiveness is provided concerning the study's findings. The literature gaps are identified, and future research ideas are provided for using economic complexity methodologically and logically to boost regional competitiveness.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the mechanisms of partner selection from the transaction cost economics’ viewpoint. This paper reveals that a firm’s choice to initiate a new alliance with a new partner or form a repeated alliance with an existing partner depends on contract terms and the relative characteristics of partners.

The authors examine 555 alliances in high-tech industries from 2001 to 2009, which the authors collected from secondary sources, including the Securities Data Company Platinum and Compustat databases. The authors use a logit model to reveal the effect of contract terms and relative partner characteristics on repeated partnership.

The results show that repeated partnership is less likely to be combined with equity sharing. Repeated partnership is also negatively associated with the functional scope of a new alliance. Finally, a firm is more likely to enter a repeated partnership when its partner is from a different country.

This research provides new insights into how the choice of an alliance partner depends on contract terms and the relative characteristics of partners. Identifying factors associated with partner selection helps us understand the fundamental mechanisms of initiating a new alliance. It allows focal firms to foresee the behavior of their peers or competitors in certain circumstances and thus provides important insights for developing corresponding strategies more effectively.

The purpose of this paper is to verify the moderating effects of school category based on the self-determination theory (SDT) in cloud-based virtual learning environment (VLE) acceptance.

Two phases of national surveys were conducted using a random sampling technique. The research model was tested empirically using 608 samples of primary and secondary school teachers.

The full model supports significant effects of autonomy, competence, and relatedness on trust, knowledge sharing attitude and behavioral intention except the autonomy-attitude and relatedness-behavioral intention relationships. In primary school, 61, 24.1, 52.1, and 41.1 percent of variances whereas, in secondary school, 57.4, 31.5, 48.6, and 37.5 percent of variances in instructional effectiveness, behavioral intention, knowledge sharing attitude, and trust in VLE website were explained. There are significant moderating effects of category of school in all causal relationships except the autonomy-knowledge sharing attitude relationship.

There are several useful theoretical and practical implications for scholars and practitioners including Ministry of Education, FrogAsia, etc.

The findings may enhance education quality for societal change.

Unlike most studies which focused on TAM, UTAUT, etc., this study investigated the effects of SDT on attitude in sharing knowledge, trust in website and instructional effectiveness. Instead of studying gender differences, this study examined the school category differences.

Drawing upon the eclectic paradigm and the regulative dimension of institutional distance theory, it is posited that to understand a firms’ cross-border merger and acquisition (CBMA) location choices, it is critical to examine the acquirers’ ownership advantages.

Using a sample of CBMAs undertaken by US firms from 1999 to 2015, the paper explores the extent to which acquiring firm ownership advantages – financial and innovation capabilities – influence target firm country selection in relation to regulative distance.

It is shown that acquiring firms with greater innovative capabilities are likely to choose target firms in nations with less regulative distance from their home market; whereas firms with greater financial capabilities target firms in more distant nations.

This paper builds on the important research on CBMA activity, focusing on the largely neglected pre-acquisition resources in relation to the regulative distance between target firms and the acquirer.