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Unlike the traditional growth model of emerging markets after economic liberalization, India’s inward foreign direct investment (FDI) surged paralleling its strong economic growth in the 2000s, despite the failure to establish a strong secondary sector. This creates an opportunity to deepen the conceptual and contextual understanding of the pivotal mechanisms that impel foreign multinational enterprises to invest into India and provides a natural setting to better understand the nature of its institutional, political and economic environment.

The authors develop a theory contextualized to Indian inward FDI patterns for the 2000–2017 period. The theoretical framework expands upon received investment motives, with explicit consideration given to the idiosyncrasies of developments in India’s recent macro and socioeconomic environment. The authors test the hypotheses using panel data from 134 countries that invested in India, using a Hausman–Taylor estimation.

The authors find that India’s transition toward a knowledge economy attracts asset augmenting rather than asset exploiting FDI. Investors appear to target long-term investments by gaining access to India’s digital capabilities, R&D, and growing talent base with a high degree of specialization within analytics, biotechnology, engineering, or pharmaceuticals. Foreign investors do not seem to be notably deterred by infrastructural challenges nor by legal and regulatory restrictions.

By providing a new perspective on India’s atheoretical economic development and FDI environment, this study offers a distinct point of comparison with regard to established hypotheses within the extant literature on FDI into emerging markets. Rethinking contemporary investment motive theory by introducing an adapted conceptual framework provides further opportunity to inform the understanding of firm strategies in similar environments.

The purpose of this paper explains how the framework on motives of foreign direct investment (FDI) needs to be rethought when analyzing emerging market multinational enterprises (EMNEs). It argues that the weak position of emerging market firms and their interdependent relationship with lead firms in global value chains (GVCs) modify the selection of internationalization motives.

The arguments are illustrated through a critical review of the literature on FDI motives and a discussion on how the literature can be extended from looking through the lens of emerging market multinationals, particularly those with early development as suppliers in global value chains.

The weak position of emerging market firms and their interdependent relationship with lead firms in global value chains modify the selection of internationalization motives on two aspects. First, internationalization decisions of EMNEs in GVCs are not undertaken in an independent manner. Rather, decisions are influenced by the initial position along the value chain and the dynamic relationships that these EMNEs have with lead firms. Second, the selection of FDI motives of these EMNEs reflects both their international expansion strategy and the upgrading effort they wish to pursue to undertake higher value-adding activities along the GVCs.

These implications addressed in this paper add more nuances to the interpretation of FDI motives. Previously viewed mainly from the perspective of lead firms, FDI decisions are considered as independent alternatives that multinational enterprises (MNEs) can undertake to fulfill their internationalization strategy. Revisiting the FDI motives from the perspective of EMNEs reveals further insights on the interdependent nature of their internationalization, particularly reflecting the weaker position of EMNEs and their interdependent relationship with lead firms in their industry.

The purpose of this paper is to argue for inclusion of evasive foreign direct investment (FDI) into search-based motivation typologies in international business.

Critically reassessing academic literature and using anecdotal evidence, the authors augment the theory of FDI motivation with the concept of evasion.

Evasive FDI is a firm-level response to denial-of-privilege by a state. Divergence of policy environments between home and host prompts relocation or international expansion of productive assets and often the affectation of ‘foreignness’ by the multinational enterprise (MNE). The role of responsibility evasion via FDI is understood in the research literature, mainly because of an emphasis on search-based motives and a failure to distinguish between escape and evasion. International business research is vulnerable to mis-identification of FDI motive which consequently distorts its strategic and policy implications.

The argument for inclusion of evasive FDI serves to augment the established, yet asymmetrically focussed typology of search FDI, demonstrating that evasion is conceptually and analytically distinguishable from search. Further, an augmented typology lends accuracy and insight to research into the reconfiguration strategies of MNEs and legitimation of the international business discipline itself, providing researchers with a more comprehensive account of FDI causation and offering new research paths.

Purpose – The main aim of this chapter is to identify the factors that motivate outward Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) from Turkey to EU countries, looking into the problem at the firm level with a marketing focus, trying to understand whether or not there are any Turkey-specific prevailing marketing-related drivers.

Design/methodology/approach – With a distinction between developed and emerging/developing countries and their MNCs’ role in world trade and FDI, the literature review focuses on micro-view motives, particularly marketing-related ones, rather than macro-view motives which are mostly studied in the literature. Based on the literature review, the importance of Turkish MNCs and their increasing role in the world trade is briefly summarized.

Looking into the problem at the firm level with a marketing focus, a series of in-depth interviews with top executives were conducted as an exploratory study in order to explore and understand the role of marketing-related motives in Outward Foreign Direct Investment (OFDI) decisions of Turkish MNCs. For this purpose, 10 in-depth interviews with 13 top executives were conducted with tailor-made questionnaires.

Findings – The analysis of interviews revealed some different OFDI drivers and motivations for the Turkish MNCs compared to the factors mentioned in the literature, as well as iterating some common motives with the OFDI literature. Parallel to the FDI literature, it is observed that the Turkish MNCs mainly started their internationalization attempts by taking somewhat less risky and smaller steps.

As a result of qualitative research, the support is provided for the theoretical perspective that micro variables are more important than macro variables for Emerging Multinationals (EMNCs), particularly for Turkish MNCs; therefore, some Turkey-specific motives were also identified.

Originality/value of chapter – Although there is a consensus in recent literature on the most persistent group of motives influencing OFDI activities of EMNCs in developed countries, the underlying marketing-related objectives which are crucial to sustain competitive advantage have not been analysed and investigated sufficiently. This study is an attempt to fill this gap by identifying the most persistent marketing-related motives and give important insights about country-specific ones encouraging Turkish EMNCs to carry out OFDI in EU.

Cities remain an understudied unit of analysis for understanding the motives of multinational enterprises’ (MNE) foreign direct investment (FDI), with subnational locations in International Business (IB) research to date predominantly captured via the phenomenon of agglomeration. As regional integration projects, such as the European Union and to a lesser degree NAFTA, increasingly reduce the importance of national institutional environments, this paper argues regional and subnational levels become more important for studying MNE location choice. This paper aims to evaluate the explanatory contribution of regional and subnational levels of analysis to understanding MNE location choice.

A qualitative deductive bottom-up multiple-case study research design is adopted to study the city location choices and FDI motives of six automotive and six commercial banking companies. These purposefully sampled manufacturing and service MNEs have different home countries and regional orientations. Data on their foreign investments across the extended Triad of Europe, North America and Asia-Pacific were collected for the time period of 2000–2021.

Findings suggest that different classes of city tend to attract specific types of FDI and that these patterns might vary across sectors and be influenced by the regional strategic orientations of MNEs. Industry-specific findings reveal the importance of related and support industries and partners in a city location for the automotive MNEs, while the commercial banks seek investment opportunities in cities that allow acquisition targets that have an attractive customer based and will improve their local market knowledge.

The findings provide evidence in support of MNEs in manufacturing and service industries perceiving the attractiveness of three city types in different ways across the Triad regions.

The purpose of this paper is to shed more light on the concept of “strategic asset-seeking FDI”, which is frequently used in discussion of emerging economy multinational enterprises (MNEs), but it is challenged by some scholars. The author argues that he needs this category because an important type of foreign direct investment (FDI) is not captured by the other motives identified by John Dunning, namely, market-, efficiency- and natural-resource-seeking FDI.

The author illustrates the phenomenon of strategic asset-seeking FDI with case examples that form the starting point for his theoretical arguments.

Some FDI is undertaken explicitly with the aim to use assets acquired abroad to enhance the operations of the investor in other markets, including, notably, the investors’ home market. This contribution to capability-building processes of the MNE, indeed, constitutes an important and distinct type of investment motive.

The author concluded that Dunning’s typology remains a powerful tool to analyze contemporary business strategies, but it suggests refining the definition of the categories.

This paper aims to investigate the host country determinants of Chinese Outward FDI (OFDI) and, given these determinants, examines whether Chinese OFDI in MENA is less than elsewhere.

Data for the top 40 Chinese OFDI recipients including seven MENA countries from 2003 to 2012 were obtained. A pooled ordinary least squares estimation technique on the lagged explanatory variables and the lagged dependent variable – flows and stocks alternatively – with robust standard errors was used.

Chinese OFDI is market, resource and efficiency seeking and is attracted by poor governance. The seven MENA countries seemingly receive significantly less Chinese OFDI flows compared to other countries. However, careful inspection shows that UAE is creating this bias. This maybe because exporting to UAE rather than licensing or FDI seems like the best scenario, or UAE is already satiated with FDI from other countries, or China is waiting for the right time to enter such an FDI-competitive market like that of UAE.

Chinese OFDI is particularly important for MENA because it has a comparative advantage relative to other FDI source countries, and no research so far has investigated if it is less than in other regions, which could provide insights on how to attract it.

Outward foreign direct investment (FDI) of firms from Brazil, Russia, India and China has increased significantly during the last few years. Despite this trend, comprehensive research on the specific determinants and antecedents of outward FDI from BRIC countries is still underrepresented. The purpose of this paper is to give a more comprehensive understanding of outward FDI from BRIC countries.

Based on an exploratory approach, case studies of eight companies were conducted. Both a within‐case and a cross‐case approach were conducted.

The findings reveal the relevance of determinants on the country, industry and firm level. Gaining access to new markets is of utmost importance for all firms. Additionally, most companies seek to obtain access to technological resources and management know‐how, therefore emphasizing the availability of these resources in the target countries. While the internationalization of Brazilian and Indian companies is primarily driven by economic motives, many Chinese and Russian firms also receive substantial political support from their governments to invest abroad, especially in strategically important industries. On the firm‐level, the strength of firm‐specific resources is highlighted. BRIC country firms possess specific strengths that help them to enter both developing as well as developed countries and to pursue their internationalization strategy.

The aim of this study is to systematically analyze the determinants of FDI of firms from BRIC countries. While previous studies in this context are based on internationalization theories which were at least implicitly focused on FDI of firms from developed markets, the authors use a more emic approach and look for specific determinants of outward FDI of firms originating in BRIC countries.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the debate forum on internationalization motives of this special issue of Multinational Business Review.

The authors reflect on the background and evolution of the internationalization motives over the past few decades, and then provide suggestions for how to use the motives for future analyses. The authors also reflect on the contributions to the debate of the accompanying articles of the forum.

There continue to be new developments in the way in which firms organize themselves as multinational enterprises (MNEs), and this implies that the “classic” motives originally introduced by Dunning in 1993 need to be revisited. Dunning’s motives and arguments were deductive and atheoretical, and these were intended to be used as a toolkit, used in conjunction with other theories and frameworks. They are not an alternative to a classification of possible MNE strategies.

This paper and the ones that accompany it, provide a deeper and nuanced understanding on internationalization motives for future research to build on.

Whereas the USA is still the largest investment destination for Japanese companies, Japan also accounts as the second largest source of investment in the country. The purpose of this paper is to, empirically, examine the detailed motives of Japanese affiliates when investing in the Southeastern USA, adding to previous research at the national level.

This paper uses a qualitative approach based on the interviews of long-term Japanese investors in the manufacturing and wholesale trade industries in the Southeastern USA and applies text analysis to identify their motives.

The results show that Japanese firms engage in market- and efficiency-seeking foreign direct investment (FDI), and still apply a classic sequence of gradual and incremental market commitments. Market size and growth rate, reducing transaction or transportation costs, and integration within local value chains are the most important to them, whereas competition, creating an export base, lowering tax and accessing skilled labor are of little concern.

The goal of Japanese FDI in the USA is no longer to bypass tariffs but is still part of a complex industrial network of relations which drives further investment. This result can inform policy makers at the state level about the factors that can drive additional foreign investment, such as the establishment of industrial clusters.

This study offers current insights into the motives of Japanese FDI in two industries.