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The author invokes the concept of strategic adaptation to first specify the evolutionary as well as the strategic character of the causal mechanism (“intra-industry exit”), and second to explain its effect on the evolution of firms' within-industry geographic scope. The author reconciles the two competing logics for firm behavior – strategic choice and environmental selection – that underpin alternate explanations for the relationship between intra-industry exit and the evolution of geographic scope. This paper contributes to both theory and empirics concerning the dynamics of firms' competitive scope, in general, and within-industry geographic scope, in particular.

The US long-distance telecom services industry during the period 1984–1996, which satisfies the empirical requirements of a geographically fragmented industry characterized by demand-side heterogeneity across the submarkets, provides the research setting and panel data to test the empirical hypotheses.

The author finds that while the firms' overall performance influences their intra-industry exit decisions, it is the firm-in-market performance that influences their decision to exit a specific submarket. The author also finds that intra-industry exit decision, when influenced by firm performance, does lead to reduction in geographic scope.

This context-specific theory, which conceptualizes the dynamics of firms' geographic scope as an evolutionary process, explains the temporal change in the geographic scope of firms during the latter part of the demand growth stage of a geographically fragmented industry.

This analysis of the demand-side dynamics of firms' within-industry geographic scope focuses on the hypothetical causal effect of intra-industry exit, a pervasive business phenomenon. First, the demand-side analysis of the evolution of geographic scope is grounded in a theoretical framework that melds firm dynamics with submarket dynamics and industry dynamics. Second, this analysis explicates the demand-side underpinnings of the strategic adaptive mechanism.

I am honored to receive the Booz Allen Hamilton/strategy+business Eminent Scholar Award in International Management. I am even more honored to follow in the footsteps of such distinguished previous recipients of the AOM-IMD (Academy of Management-International Division) Distinguished Scholar Award as: John Child, Christopher Bartlett, Sumantra Ghoshal, John Dunning, and Yves Doz. Like them, I shall reflect here on my past contributions to scholarship, and then use this work as a building block for the major part of this paper, which is on the need for new and relevant theory in the field of international management.

A multinational firm’s expansion in a foreign market is a key issue of international business. The purpose of this study is to extend the understanding of essential drivers that will facilitate firm’s assessment of alternative modes of sequential expansion.

The study applies the knowledge-based view and explores a multinational firm’s sequential post-entry expansion in a foreign market. Event histories of Swedish industrial firms’ establishments of wholly owned subsidiaries in Germany, the UK and the USA were explored using Cox regression.

Broad market experiences stemming from corporate strategy and deep experiences from the preceding subsidiary increase the likelihood of a sequential investment. Effects of broad experiences are contingent on the context specified by the geographic scope of the firm and its general subsidiary experience.

The study contributes to international expansion theory and integrates sources of knowledge originating from strategy theory and internationalization theory. The study shows that the dual approach is needed to understand international expansion.

In evaluating a further subsidiary investment in a foreign market, the multinational firm is advised to assess whether it possesses enough market experiences to justify the investment. The experiences should be associated with corporate strategy, the previous wholly owned subsidiary and the context specifications identified in the study.

The study is unique, as it addresses the simultaneous impact of broad and deep market experiences. Also, the inclusion of central context specifications makes the study novel.

This study aims to examine how geographic diversification affects firms’ risk by introducing the franchising strategy as a moderator.

The panel regression analysis was conducted with a sample of US restaurant firms. Specifically, a two-way random (or fixed) effects model clustered by firm was used to test hypotheses.

Findings show that geographic diversification does not significantly affect restaurant firms’ risk. However, franchising aggravates the negative effect of geographic diversification on restaurant firms’ risk, which contradicts the traditional theories of franchising.

The results are expected to contribute to the diversification literature in the hospitality management by providing in-depth evidence for the effects of geographic diversification strategies on firms’ risk. Specifically, the study provides relevant theories for explaining the effect of geographic diversification in the restaurant context by examining franchising, a prominent strategy in the restaurant industry.

The results encourage restaurant firms to improve their managerial capability to react to changes in a geographically wider scope of markets and develop franchising contracts specifically to prevent misbehavior and moral hazard on the part of franchisees.

Considering the lack of research on the effect of geographic diversification on restaurant firms’ risk, this study examines not only the link between geographic diversification and firms’ risk but also a contingent factor, franchising.

Investigates the influence of market concentration, market diversification and internationalization strategies on the performance of multinational enterprises (MNEs). Using a sample of 450 large, medium and small MNEs, and three alternative definitions of market concentration and market diversification, results indicate that market diversification strategy produces better performance results for MNEs than market concentration strategy. In addition, MNEs using market concentration‐low internationalization strategy performed better than those using market concentration‐high internationalization strategy, and MNEs using market diversification‐low internationalization strategy performed better than those using market diversification‐high internationalization strategy. Discusses implications of the study′s findings for improved MNE performance.

The paper describes six major approaches within strategic groups research: the industrial organization perspective (the IO-view), the strategic choice perspective, the strategy types perspective, the cognitive perspective, the customer perspective, and the business definition perspective. The two most promising perspectives to make real advances in the strategic management discipline seem to be the cognitive view and the business definition perspective. The purpose of a grouping based on business definitions is to provide an insight, as objective as possible, of the industry’s substructure which also corroborates with the cognitive maps of the industry which the CEOs have in mind. From a practical point of view, the classification of firms in groups based on commonality in business definition (buyer scope, product scope, geographical scope and degree of vertical integration), allows managers to compare their own firms with comparable firms (the firms within the same group). The research concerning strategic groups in the Belgian beer brewing sector and the Belgian electrical wholesale sector is presented. The major problems within the strategic groups research are discussed.

Drawing on the time compression diseconomies perspective and business network theory, this study examines how the international expansion of a business group’s pace, scope and rhythm affects its performance.

Panel data (1999–2013) from the top 100 Taiwanese business groups investing in globalization were collected.

The results show that international pace and rhythm have an inverse U-shaped relationship with business group performance, while the relationship between international scope and business group performance is U-shaped. This study highlights that international expansion is multidimensional and nonlinear and that the factors that shape nonlinear relationships between international processes and performance are different. Furthermore, family group involvement positively moderates the link between international scope and performance and negatively affects the relationship between international pace and performance. However, no significant effect is observed between rhythm and performance. High family business group involvement mitigates the impact of outsiders’ liability and managerial costs; moreover, it enhances the positive effects of location-specific advantages and business network resources.

This study combined the time compression diseconomies perspective and business network theory to explain why and how internationalization may not always lead to good performance by examining the effects of different international expansion processes and the interactive effect of family group involvement.

This paper aims to provide a comprehensive overview of the motives, structure and performance attributes of horizontal cooperations between logistics service providers (LSPs). Based on an analytical classification model, distinctive types of logistics cooperation that characterize the logistics landscape are identified.

Empirical data were collected on horizontal LSP cooperations from managers of German LSPs. Different uni‐ and multi‐variate statistical methods including ANOVA and cluster analysis were applied to the dataset of 226 cooperations for a total of 6,081 involved parties.

Horizontal cooperations with other LSPs are an organizational form used by 57 percent of LSPs. Cooperation decisions are substantially driven by external market objectives. Six distinctive types of cooperation are identified. They reveal the dominance of multi‐lateral and international networks that are mainly based on contractual agreements. There is a clear preference for partners with similar market competencies and for strong functional integration. Despite its inherent complexity, performance of these cooperations is high – its less than 19 percent failure rate makes these cooperations substantially more stable than cooperations within manufacturing industries.

This study is limited to an exploratory, descriptive approach in providing a sound understanding of the cooperation landscape.

The findings contribute transparency to horizontal LSP cooperations and a common understanding of their idiosyncrasies. The conclusions help logistics managers to position themselves better within the cooperation landscape. Further, the analyses offer managers a conceptual classification of horizontal LSP cooperations and some guidance on how to structure their individual LSP cooperations more successfully.

This paper is the first empirical study that defines the types of cooperation that comprise the logistics cooperation landscape. The analysis integrates a holistic perspective of their contractual, organizational, functional, geographical, service and resource scope and matches them with underlying motives and performance attributes.

We suggest that the entire world may not always be the appropriate frame of reference in analyses of Multinational Enterprises (MNEs) location choices. In some industries and activities, more narrowly defined geographic areas, such as regions and cities, are more relevant level of analyses. Employing global cities as the geographic frame of reference, we extend the theory of the location choices of MNEs by challenging the assumption that location attributes have identical values for all MNEs. Rather, we explicitly acknowledge the relative value of such attributes for individual MNEs, and search for the firm-specific characteristics that affect this variation. The empirical testing is based on analysis of 673 financial and professional service MNEs that entered New York and London via mergers and acquisitions (M&As). The findings confirm that it is the interaction between location and firm-specific attributes, rather than each of these independently, which affects location choices.