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This study examines the effect of domestic alliances on firms’ foreign divestment decisions. We argue that foreign subsidiaries face a higher risk of being divested when firms form new alliances with other firms in their home country. Alliances at home involve resources and may divert attention away from international operations. Also, opportunities emerging from entering into new relationships with other firms domestically may lead firms to reconfigure their value chain activities and resources across locations, thereby increasing the probability of foreign divestment. Using data from the electronic and electrical equipment industries in the USA over the period 2001–2008, we empirically investigate the link between domestic alliances and foreign divestment. We find that increases in domestic interfirm collaboration indeed significantly affect firms’ propensity to divest foreign operations.

The chapter examines how distance, integration mechanisms, and atmosphere influence the level of organizing costs and subsidiary initiatives in headquarter–subsidiary relationships. Survey data were collected at the subsidiary level in one major Norwegian multinational company. Empirical analyses were based on regression and partial correlation analyses. Organizing costs are driven by distance to headquarters as well as the integration mechanisms and the atmosphere that exists in subsidiary–headquarter relationships. Another important insight gained by this study is that integration mechanisms influence subsidiary initiatives.

This is the fourth volume in the book series Progress in International Business Research with selected papers from the annual conferences of the European International Business Academy (EIBA). It is with this title that the series was launched by the co-editors Gabriel R. G. Benito and Henrich Greve (BI Norwegian School of Management), based on papers presented during EIBA's annual conference in December 2005 in Oslo. In their preface to the first volume, the previous series editors Torben Pedersen and Ulf Andersson at that time wrote: ‘The aim of the serial is to have an impact on the development of the field of international business by publishing interesting, high quality papers and research ideas that for different reasons might not reach the usual publication outlets.’

For many exporting firms, success in foreign markets hinges to a large extent on the performance of their foreign intermediaries (Albaum, Strandskov, & Duerr, 2002; Ellis, 2000; Root, 1987). In spite of the key role played by intermediaries in foreign markets – i.e. sales agents and independent distributors (Solberg & Nes, 2002) – exporters often regard them as temporary arrangements and second-best alternatives to conducting foreign marketing, sales, and service activities in-house. The typical assumption is that foreign intermediaries are low-control entry modes (Hill, 2003; Root, 1987) that do not have the potential of exploiting the full sales potential of export markets. In other words, foreign intermediary arrangements could have inherent limitations that foster mediocre rather than excellent market performance. Several studies report that exporters generally distrust foreign intermediaries and suspect them of shirking at any given occasion (Beeth, 1990; Nicholas, 1986; Petersen, Benito, & Pedersen, 2000). Poor performance is sometimes expected. On the other hand, foreign intermediaries often find that exporters put in place incentive structures that do not induce them to achieve excellent performance. Hence, it is asserted that foreign intermediaries may deliberately seek mediocrity rather than very poor or outstanding performance.

In this paper, we offer insights that combine a network perspective of the multinational company (MNC) with an analysis of different types of interdependencies. We develop and illustrate our arguments with a company case (LIMO) and argue that types of interdependencies have consequences for the orchestration of MNC activities. The experience from LIMO suggests that extreme organizational designs, where orchestration is either purely local or mostly global, fail to capture the nuances necessary to ensure efficiency and profitability. The main theoretical contribution in this paper is to show that the search for orchestration through an organizational design must involve the combination of several perspectives of activity combinations and their interdependencies. Simply optimizing through a tight network or looking at the firm as a loose federation is too simple to understand the complex trade-off facing modern MNCs.

To what extent, why and where do multinational companies locate divisional headquarters (DHQs) abroad? This study of 30 of the largest listed companies in Norway over the 2000–2006 period shows that foreign-located DHQs have become relatively commonplace. A majority of DHQs located abroad are outcomes of foreign acquisitions, which suggests that obtaining legitimacy from local stakeholders such as customers, employees and investors is an important motivation. We also find that Norwegian companies emphasize efficiency and value creation in their location choices, as they tend to prefer other advanced and competitive countries as hosts for their DHQs. Distance from Norway is not significant. The off-shoring of strategic units such as DHQs is a phenomenon that occurs in advanced phases of companies' internationalization, beyond the point when familiarity and proximity still are key decision-making factors.