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The purpose of this paper is to comprehensively examine the influence of formal and informal institutional differences on enterprise investment margin, mode and result.

This paper is based on 2,440 micro samples of large-scale outbound investment from 609 Chinese enterprises from the years 2005 to 2016.

The study has found that formal institutional differences have little impact on investment scale, but significantly affect investment diversification. In order to avoid the management risks brought by formal institutional differences, enterprises tend to a full ownership structure. However, the choice between greenfield investment and cross-border mergers and acquisitions is not affected by formal institutional differences. In contrast, the impact of informal institutional differences is more extensive. Both formal and informal institutional differences significantly increase the probability of investment failure. Further research found that the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) bridges the formal institutional differences.

The study concludes that developing the BRI, especially cultural exchanges with countries alongside the Belt and Road, will help enterprises to “go global” faster and better.

There is consensus among scholars on how political institutional imprinting interprets the unique management and practice phenomenon of Chinese enterprises. However, little scholarly attention has been given to the different political institutional imprints that shape firms’ internationalization. Therefore, this study aims to investigate how communist and market logic political institutional imprintings influence firms’ initial ownership strategies in outward foreign direct investment.

Based on the propensity score matching difference in difference method and a sample of 464 foreign investments from 2009 to 2020 for 310 Chinese private firms.

The results show that private firms with market logic political institutional imprintings tend to adopt higher ownership and vice versa. As institutional differences increase, private firms with market logic imprintings are more risk-taking and adopt higher ownership, whereas private firms with communist imprintings are more conservative and choose lower ownership. When diplomatic relations are friendlier, private firms with market logic imprintings prefer higher ownership to grasp business opportunities and vice versa.

This study not only identifies the net effect of political institutional imprinting on private firms’ initial ownership strategy but also investigates the different moderating effects of current institutional forces to respond to the call for research on bringing history back into international business research and the fit between imprinting and the environment.

The purpose of this paper is to explore whether, how and why ethical investment practices of charities differ between two countries with quite different ideological and institutional frameworks – Norway and the UK.

The paper uses mixed methods and a cross-sectional field study design to explore the ethical investment practices of 300 of the largest charities by investments in the UK and Norway. Practices are theorized using the dual lens of institutional theory and social origins theory.

The paper provides evidence on why charities established the practice of ethical investment. The results show that large charities were more likely to have an ethical policy; that charities with moderate public sector funding were more likely to have an ethical policy. In line with institutional theory some Norwegian charities with public sector funding mimic the policy of the Government Pension Fund, and the ethical investment policy of Norwegian charities was more influenced by donors. Institutional entrepreneurs (charity founders) had a more prominent influence in UK charities.

The paper highlights that more research is needed on sovereign wealth funds, their investment practices and how they affect charities.

The findings of this paper highlight the potential role that the ethical investment practices of sovereign can play a soft regulatory function in changing the behaviour of other investors.

To the extent that ethical investment practices are construed as having a positive social impact, then this study shows how a government sovereign wealth fund can influence the spread of ethical investment practices.

This paper, which sits at the nexus of the charity and corporate social responsibility (CSR) literatures, contributes by responding to calls for more research on charity practices in different countries and CSR practices in different countries. This comparison also contributes to the development of institutional theory by shedding light on the institutional influence of a sovereign wealth fund and its impact on others. The paper will be of value to academics, policy setters and regulators.

The purpose of the paper is to contribute to the understanding of regional entrepreneurial development by constructing an institutional environment index in India, where high heterogeneity is found in the economic development and entrepreneurial activities across its states. It tries to fill the gap of research which hampers the effectiveness of policy efforts to promote job growth through entrepreneurship development in India and contributes in understanding the phenomenon why the relative contribution of entrepreneurship varies across states.

The paper uses a composite index of institutional quality based on the Penalty for Bottleneck (PFB) methodology to capture the institutional environment differences across the states of India. The relationship between the institutional environment and the measures of entrepreneurship is established through various statistical and econometric techniques such as correlation and regression.

The paper finds the regional and contextual institutional environment differences in India starker and more varied than is generally viewed. The empirical evidence suggests that the differences in institutional quality scores can play a significant role in explaining the variations in the extent of entrepreneurial activities across the Indian states. The findings of this paper demonstrate a differential influence of the local institutional environment on the entrepreneurial activities at a regional level in a developing economy like India.

This study is limited by the data sources and index design; therefore, it cannot completely specify all institutional factors and their combined influences on entrepreneurial activities at the regional level. However, it makes a significant contribution to expanding the current body literature of institutional environment reform and entrepreneurship development in developing countries.

The policy implication of the paper highlights the need of policymakers to think outside the individual policy silos and consider the institutional environment as a whole. Priority attention of the policymakers should be on the institutional reform for any type of entrepreneurship development. A corollary implication of the O-ring theory of development and the PFB methodology is that the policy effort is allocated most effectively when it seeks to alleviate bottlenecks.

The main implication of this paper for the policymaking is that it is necessary to focus more on the weak institutional factors (bottlenecks) and on the general environment improvement for any entrepreneurship development.

The study contributes to study the problem of entrepreneurship discrepancy in India through the lens of institutions and institutional environment. This study is an improvement over the previous studies by testing the statistical significance of the institutional environment on the entrepreneurship.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of quality of market supporting institutions (institutional quality) in host country and the similarities and differences of institutional quality between the home and host country (institutional distance) on subsidiary performance.

Based on the conceptualization of new institutional economics, the authors divide quality of host country institutions into factor markets; product, capital, labor market and sociopolitical dimensions. The authors examine the impact of the quality these institutional dimensions in host countries and their difference between home and host country on the performance of 318 subsidiaries of 146 Korean listed manufacturing firms operating in 28 host countries from 2001 to 2006.

The empirical results based on 1,129 observations show that institutional distance explains a significant variance in the subsidiary performance. In particular, the difference in quality of institutions in product, capital and labor market has negative impact on subsidiary performance. However, except for quality of regulation in labor market, host country institutional qualities do not significantly explain the variation in subsidiary performance.

The evidence suggests that host country institutions matter substantially when considered with their relative similarity and difference with home country institutions. The impact of individual dimensions of institutions varies on subsidiary performance.

The purpose of this paper is to bridge the boundaries separating strategic and comparative institutional perspectives on human resource systems and employment relations. Each research tradition has investigated the role and outcomes of corporations as they operate in an increasingly global economy. Researchers in these traditions, however, ask different research questions and draw on distinct social science disciplines, theoretical assumptions, and research methodologies. While they have pursued parallel but separate tracks, we argue that they have important lessons for each other. In this paper, we review the core characteristics and critiques of each research tradition, provide a series of examples of efforts to bridge their differences, and offer suggestions for future integration.

Understanding institutional distance – i.e., the difference in institutional context between countries – is critical for firms whose operations span national boundaries. Institutional distance impacts the relative attractiveness of country markets, trade-offs among foreign market entry strategies, the management of subsidiaries abroad, and ultimately, firm performance. Although scholars in various disciplines have made great advances in defining and measuring the institutional characteristics of nations, we contend that many of these advances have occurred in a parallel fashion. Moreover, extant empirical studies focus disproportionately on the impact of different subsets of the identified institutional characteristics. We suggest that it is time to find common ground across the disparate literatures. Doing so would allow us to view differences in institutional contexts more holistically, and refine our understanding of their implications for multinational corporations.

Institutions underpin the operation of national economies. These differ significantly between countries reflecting varying historical paths, policy choices and national cultures. Moreover, they need to be understood systemically as an ensemble of relations between their component parts: financial systems, corporate governance, industrial relations, patterns of state intervention, etc., have evolved together so that their operation and effects tend to reinforce each other. Different countries faced by common exogenous changes will tend to evolve along different lines rather than converge. National institutions matter: they significantly affect economic performance and distribution.

From the perspective of the institution and internationalization speed, the article discusses the internal mechanism of cross-border e-commerce selection mode, as well as the moderating role of social networks as the intangible resource, and expand the theoretical system of corporate internationalization.

Based on the empirical data of 456 multinational e-commerce companies in five first-tier cities in China from 2016 to 2019, our research explores the selection mode of cross-border e-commerce.

The results show that (1) the institutional distance of the host country leads to the exit from cross-border e-commerce platforms in the international expansion of enterprises. (2) The difference in internationalization speed online and offline has become a mediated mechanism for the exit of cross-border e-commerce platforms due to the institutional distance of the host country. (3) The diversity and scale of offline social networks can weaken the impact of differences in internationalization speed on the exit from cross-border e-commerce platforms. (4) The resistance of companies expanding to countries with a weak institutional environment is greater than that experienced when expanding to countries with a strong one.

This study shows, for the first time, how to select expansion mode for cross-border e-commerce. And the paper also centers on the research of the impact of “social network”, a kind of intangible resource, on cross-border e-commerce platform adoption.

Using an institution-based view, this study aims to conceptualize how sub-national institutional characteristics are likely to explain location choice of multinationals’ research and development (R&D) subsidiaries.

In a conceptual paper, this study explores specific institutional facets of the regional environments within a country that are capable of explaining, at least in part, the location choices of multinational corporations’ R&D subsidiaries.

This study thus explores the more nuanced influences of the institutional environments at a subnational level and develops propositions to explain location choices based on the differences of the institutional environments.

This study contributes to international business theory by incorporating a location-specific analysis that contrasts to the usual country-level observation on the determinants of firms’ location decisions.