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When entering foreign markets, multinationals can acquire part of a foreign firm and can increase or decrease their equity stake over time. However, extant studies have mainly focused on equity stake acquired during initial market entry. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

This study fills this gap by using the Uppsala model to analyze six cases of international acquisitions of Finnish multinationals in global markets.

The authors found that firms change their equity stake in partially acquired foreign subsidiaries: when they have learned about the host country and businesses of the partially acquired firms, when they have gained target-specific experience, when they build trust and ensure relationship commitment and finally, when they jointly develop and exploit opportunities.

This study is one of the first to apply the Uppsala model to empirically analyze international acquisitions, thus paving the way for behavioral and process-oriented approaches. The study contributes to knowledge of post-entry strategies of multinationals.

In this study, we analyze the general effect of acquirers’ ownership strategy on the survival in foreign acquisitions. Furthermore, we attempt to address five potential moderating effects: international, regional, target country experience, cultural distance, as well as host country development. The developed hypotheses are tested on a sample of 1,345 acquisitions made by 174 Finnish firms in 59 countries during 1980–2005. The results indicate that in general WOS increases the probability of survival of foreign acquired units. We further find that the impact of WOS on the survival of foreign acquired units is contingent upon cultural distance and host country development but not on the experience of buying firms.

We investigate the effect of distance – political, economic, cultural and spatial, on developed-economy multinational enterprises’ (MNEs’) ownership decisions in cross-border (CB) acquisitions. We start with the premise that distance discourages full and majority ownership in CB acquisitions, and further investigate the moderating role of distance-reducing factors. We examine how the relationship between distance and acquisition ownership decision is moderated by firm-specific characteristics, such as firm size, general international experience, and specific host country experience. Our data sample consists of 1,041 CB acquisitions under taken by Finnish MNEs in 58 countries during the time period 1990–2010. We find substantial support for all our hypotheses and conclude that the negative effects of distance on CB acquisition equity stake are positively moderated by the three firm-specific resources but their individual importance is conditional on the host country type (developed or emerging).

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.’

This volume of Progress in International Business Research comprises of a selection of 12 competitive papers from the 34th EIBA (European International Business Academy) annual conference, which was held in Tallinn, Estonia in December 2008 with the theme “International Business and the Catching-up Economies: Challenges and Opportunities”. It addresses two main issues – (1) the internationalization process and (2) the role of knowledge and innovation for internationalization – that are important in the current economic slowdown both for catching-up and for other economies, scholars, and practitioners.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse investment strategies and performance of Finnish firms in their international joint ventures (IJVs) established in Baltic States.

The paper analyse performance of IJVs in Baltic States based on the IJV theory, international business literature, and foreign direct investments in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) literature. The analysed factors include firm, investment, and inter-partner relationship-specific factors. To examine the propositions the paper used ten IJVs established by Finnish firms in various Baltic States between the period 1991 and 2005.

The results show that the level of uncertainties in the countries and the differences between partners are not related to firms’ commitments and the entry mode choice. Several Finnish firms preferred cost leadership to compete with other firms in the local markets. In most cases there was a positive relationship between the level of partners’ equity share, commitment to the IJV, and the level of trust between partners. The results indicated differences in the IJV performance depending on parent firms’ objectives, their competitive strategies, mode of entry, age of IJVs, control strategies, level of trust, and commitment between partners, as well as depending on the performance measures used.

This study suggests four observations that managers may need to take into consideration to improve IJV performance in the Baltic States. First, cost leadership strategy help to increase IJV performance in terms of sales. Second, social control mechanisms and narrow control leaded to better performance than formal and wide control. Third, minority ownership by Finnish firms in IJVs leaded to better performance based on sales, productivity and total performance whereas majority ownership had leaded to better performance in terms of total costs. Finally, the results confirmed that commitment to the IJV operation and trust on the other partner are very essential factors to IJV performance.

The study is the first one to analyse in more detail based on several cases the IJV strategies and performance of Finnish firms in the Baltic States. The analysed factors include several such factors which have not been analysed related to IJV operations in Baltic States (some also limitedly in the CEE context).

Purpose – This study analyzes international new ventures (INVs) by means of the classification developed by Oviatt and McDougall (1994): global start-ups (GSUs) are compared with other types of INVs.

Design/methodology/approach – The empirical data for the study were collected via a Web-based survey of Finnish ICT companies. Particular emphasis was placed on the operationalization of the key constructs as well as on the sample formation, in which both the number of international markets served and the coordination of international activities were taken into consideration.

Findings – The findings of this study indicate that GSUs are particularly driven by the international growth orientation of the top management. They also seem to perform better than other types of INVs.

Practical implications – From the managerial point of view, the findings of this study indicate that managers of INVs should be encouraged to internationalize their value chain as a whole, despite the risks. However, those managers making these decisions should also be aware of the capabilities needed for managing the global value networks they create.

Originality/Value – This exploratory study reveals that studying INVs from a holistic perspective – including both inward and outward activities – produces interesting findings and opens new avenues for future research. This theme clearly deserves more attention. Our classification of INVs into smaller subgroups also proved to be fruitful, not least concerning GSUs.