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The growth in popularity of the regional innovation system approach has, in part, been driven by the need for economies to respond to the after shocks of the global financial crisis. At the same time, the author sees the term anchor institutions are used increasingly to describe organisations that have an important presence in the local community and make some strategic contribution to the local economy. The purpose of this paper is to consider the needs of the micro and small business (MSB) ecosystem through the lens of the entrepreneurial university as a regional anchor institution.

Asheim et al. (2011) refers to regional innovation systems as, an emphasis on economic and social interaction between agents, spanning the public and private sectors to engender and diffuse innovation within regions embedded in wider national and global systems. According to Doloreux and Parto (2005) three dimensions underpin the use of the regional innovation systems concept, namely: the interactions between different actors in the innovation process, the role of institutions and the use of regional systems analysis to inform policy decisions. The author has drawn on contemporary literature on the entrepreneurial university, regional systems of innovation and institutions to explore some key qualities and problems around anchor Institutions, networks and national and local policy.

Following the Chancellor’s Comprehensive Spending Review in November 2015 and post the changes in the Department of Business Innovation and Skills remit the author wants to highlight the way universities can take a lead role as an anchor institution within their region. The author argues that this role should include providing a wider range of formal and informal support, knowledge and resource for MSBs, alongside the usual SME suspects (Hart and Anyadike-Danes, 2014; Witty, 2013; Wilson, 2012). Based on my analysis and involvement in the the work of the eight Entrepreneurial Universities of the Year Award winners – during the author’s time as President of ISBE – He suggested four different ways in which collaboration might be enhanced to ensure MSBs make maximum use of the advice and support on offer from universities playing this anchor role.

The results emerging from this work suggest a need for regional policy makers to embrace a innovation-supportive culture, which actually enables firms and systems to evolve over time would be far more effective than those proposed in the latest Comprehensive Spending Review. The outcomes of which will see some of the most robustly evaluated programmes, designed to support small firm growth, closed down and replaced by a commitment (by government) to secure a strong, growing economy, cutting of more red tape and extending small business rate relief for an extra year (Mole, 2015).

This paper aims to evaluate the past contributions of Multinational Business Review (MBR), identify research gaps and opportunities and provide a research agenda that addresses several sustainability-related and other contemporary challenges.

This study analyzes 400 papers published between 2003 and 2021 to map the MBR’s intellectual and conceptual structure using advanced bibliometric techniques.

The bibliographic coupling technique identifies core clusters in MBR papers, and subsequent content analysis of these clusters reveals the following five research fronts: internalization theory and the future of international business (IB) research; internationalization and firm performance; regionalization versus globalization debate; internationalization by emerging market firms; and global dynamic capabilities and firm internationalization.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first comprehensive analysis of past contributions of MBR to research on IB and suggests a way for MBR to play a seminal role in addressing contemporary challenges in IB.

This paper aims to explore the interlock-performance relationship among mainland Chinese firms listed in Hong Kong by taking advantage of a relationship-intensive context whereby such a link is likely to be especially important. Although strategic networks such as interlocking directorates have been found to affect a number of strategic behaviors, the link connecting board interlocks and corporate performance has remained ambiguous. Considerable light has been shed on the strategic networks of firms whose shares are listed abroad, which have been under-studied despite their rising importance in the global economy.

Data come from a particularly interesting historical period – the early 1990s prior to Hong Kong’s 1997 handover to China. Both quantitative and qualitative research have been used.

Empirically, it was found that good performance in an earlier period helps draw outside directors in a later period, and that network centrality and certain types of interlocks help improve performance, albeit with varying degrees. Overall, our results answer the question whether strategic networks such as interlocks matter for corporate performance with a qualified “yes”.

Taking advantage of a relationship-intensive context, this article explores the interlock-performance relationship among mainland Chinese firms listed in Hong Kong. Focus is specifically on the two years, 1993 and 1995, due to their specific historical importance because these two years represent the beginning of Chinese firms’ listing in Hong Kong.

The Lebanese began their present emigration in the middle of the nineteenth century, heading towards North America, Central and South America, Europe, Africa, and Australia. Today's Lebanese diaspora is made of highly educated and prominent entrepreneurs who have created huge marks in their adopted homelands and the world. In the current study the authors aim to explore this and make suggestions for future research.

The authors use historical literature review and synthesis in order to explore the topic and make suggestions for future research.

The authors find that entrepreneurs from Lebanon have had a significant impact on the economies of many parts of the world.

This paper is original in that it brings together the research on entrepreneurship and Lebanon so that future researchers can have good ideas as to ways to pursue future cross‐cultural research.

Aim of the present monograph is the economic analysis of the role of MNEs regarding globalisation and digital economy and in parallel there is a reference and examination of some legal aspects concerning MNEs, cyberspace and e‐commerce as the means of expression of the digital economy. The whole effort of the author is focused on the examination of various aspects of MNEs and their impact upon globalisation and vice versa and how and if we are moving towards a global digital economy.

This study aims to verify the respective and interactive effects of subnational formal and informal institutions (i.e. legal effectiveness and social trust) on foreign firm performance, and further identify the contingent factor (i.e. institutional experience) that moderates these relationships.

Drawing on the institutional-based view, this study develops several hypotheses that are tested using a comprehensive dataset from four main data sources. The authors’ unit of analysis is foreign firms operating in China. The authors ran ordinary least squares (OLS) regression model to investigate the effects. A series of robustness tests and endogeneity tests were performed.

The results show that both legal effectiveness and social trust at subnational level positively affect foreign firm performance respectively. Legal effectiveness and social trust at subnational level have complementary effect in promoting the performance of foreign firms. Foreign firm's institutional experience in target region of emerging economies host country strengthens the positive impact of subnational legal effectiveness on performance, but weakens the positive impact of subnational social trust on performance.

It is important to fully understand the impact of heterogeneous institutional environments of subnational regions in emerging economies on foreign firm performance, which would help foreign firm make a more suitable secondary choice decision of investment destinations at the subnational regional level.

First, drawing on institutional-based view, the authors incorporate the subnational formal and informal institutional factors to investigate their impacts on foreign firm performance by switching the attention from national level to subnational level in emerging economy host countries. Second, this research furthers existing studies by bridging a missing link between both subnational formal and informal institutional environments and foreign firms' outcomes. Third, the authors prove that the model of subnational formal and informal institutions in influencing foreign firms' performance is contingent on their institutional experience in target subnational region of emerging economy host country.

“It should also be noted that the objective of convergence and equal distribution, including across under-performing areas, can hinder efforts to generate growth. Contrariwise, the objective of competitiveness can exacerbate regional and social inequalities, by targeting efforts on zones of excellence where projects achieve greater returns (dynamic major cities, higher levels of general education, the most advanced projects, infrastructures with the heaviest traffic, and so on). If cohesion policy and the Lisbon Strategy come into conflict, it must be borne in mind that the former, for the moment, is founded on a rather more solid legal foundation than the latter” European Commission (2005, p. 9)Adaptation of Cohesion Policy to the Enlarged Europe and the Lisbon and Gothenburg Objectives.

The purpose of this paper is to develop and apply a framework that examines the dynamics of internationalization strategies employed by export companies in the agricultural sector of emerging economies over time, with a focus on the locus of destination markets of the Chilean fruit sector. Thus, the objective is to identify conceptual and empirical deviations from existing research on export firms participating in non-agricultural sectors of industrialized countries.

The matrix of multi-nationality developed by Aggarwal et al. (2011) is extended by incorporating the firm category of “host region” and the dimensions scale and time. This framework is utilized to classify 233 Chilean fresh fruit exporters according to their internationalization strategies based on a geographical distribution of their exports. A uni- and bivariate longitudinal analysis is conducted over a seven-year period (2009–2015) to explore the dynamics of this internationalization process.

A significant number (12.75 percent) of firms classified as “host regional” are identified, and thus a clear difference in internationalization strategies when compared to non-agricultural sectors in industrialized countries. Simultaneously, similarities in these sectors can be found. Most firms are “transregionally” (65.12 percent) or “globally” oriented (16.06 percent), mainly following a linear internationalization path when considering the number of export markets. But there is also evidence of “born-global” firms, which mainly follow non-linear internationalization paths in more geographically and psychically distant markets.

The extended framework developed in this research can be applied to future studies, particularly in the case of economies where a significant proportion of firms are predominantly focusing their export strategies on one single international market. Since this study focuses on one national sector as a prime example, further studies on other countries and sectors may provide additional evidence of its generalizability.

Based on the findings, concrete measures have been suggested to aid Chilean policy makers in implementing evidence-based economic policies, as well as Chilean public trade organizations and private export associations in the fruit sector, in relation to services such as training, strategy consulting and trade network development that they provide to export firms.

The study contributes to the existing literature by introducing the firm category “host regional” into the matrix of multi-nationality, and empirically verifies its existence among agricultural export firms in emerging economies. Furthermore, it also shows that even when it might result counterintuitive, firms from the agricultural sector share similarities in internationalization strategies with firms from industrial sectors.

Current research on small to medium enterprise (SME) internationalization has generated valuable insight but continues to overlook the activities of business-to-business (B2B) SMEs located in small emerging economies. This study aims to fill this gap by testing the applicability of the ownership, location and internalization (OLI) framework to understand the internationalization strategies of small B2B firms in Trinidad and Tobago, a small emerging Caribbean economy.

The study used a qualitative research design, which involved in-depth interviews with senior executives of three firms in the B2B sector who were knowledgeable about their firm’s internationalization process. Thematic analysis was then used to understand the motivations and strategies underpinning the internationalization approach adopted by each firm.

Contrary to the stereotype of SMEs in emerging markets as fragile enterprises, there is evidence that firms exploited the development of innovative products and processes to facilitate foreign market entry and expansion. Additionally, firms overcame resource limitations by relying on governmental ties and leveraging networking opportunities. The findings also call attention to the impact of organizational learning and the role of knowledge as a dynamic capability.

Both the context of the study and the application of the OLI framework contributes to the extant literature by yielding substantive insights into the internationalization strategies of B2B firms in a small emerging economy. The findings further highlight how the OLI framework can be supplemented by other theoretical perspectives to better understand internationalization by emerging market SMEs.