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This study aims to investigate the drivers of political embeddedness and the possible outcome in terms of autonomy and subsidiary unique competences.

This study draws on resource dependence theory and applies structural equation modeling on a sample of 193 subsidiaries.

Political embeddedness is confirmed as a source of potential autonomy and the development of competences and is usually boosted by previous existing networks at the internal and external levels.

The authors investigate and discuss how multinational corporations can leverage political resources in host-country political arenas, extending their understanding of the interplay between political activities and market strategies.

This paper analyzes the available literature on export spillovers from foreign direct investment (FDI) and their effects on domestic firms’ export activities. The purpose of this paper is to advance our knowledge of whether export spillovers from FDI exist, and if so if they differ according to the institutional context of the targeted markets (developed vs emerging markets).

Drawing from the pioneering work of Aitken et al. (1997), the authors develop a meta-analysis using a selection of 73 studies for the period 1997–2018, including a wide range of developed and emerging markets.

The meta-analysis confirms a high probability of finding positive effects when studying the different types of spillovers. The authors also show that the type of export spillover depends on the institutional context. Spillovers drive a complementary effect which generates more direct commercial links between domestic firms and foreign multinationals for advanced economies, whereas for emerging markets the nature of the spillover generates a competition/imitation effect that pressures domestic firms to be better inserted into foreign markets. In emerging markets, local governments play a fundamental role in accompanying the local industry, not only with investments in infrastructure and training of human capital but also in the configuration of an institutional environment that favors this type of indirect linkages. In developed countries, two business strategies are particularly important as catalytic axes of competitive upgrading at the international level: cooperation agreements between domestic and foreign firms and integration. These processes of concentration are necessary to compete globally, and therefore, governments should promote this type of strategies.

The study offers an original classification of the different types of spillovers based on the different channels through which MNE help local firms to improve their export performance and shows which specific spillover is associated with the different level of country development. These results have important implications in terms of theory development and managerial and policy implications.

The aim of this chapter is to examine the profile of high-performing small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Traditional Manufacturing Sectors (TMSs). The authors main contribution is to provide recommendations and benchmarks for prescribing a more robust model of internationalisation in these industries by specifying the types of internationalisation and innovation that better reinforce competitiveness. Our results, based on a sample of 132 SMEs, show that high-performing SMEs make more intense use of advanced operation modes that imply a closer interaction with the host country to access knowledge diversity, skills and work available in those markets. Moreover, compared to low-performing SMEs, and independently of their size and experience, these firms use a wide set of networking and marketing capabilities and develop innovations based on organisational changes that help to create new business models. After a number of years of forced adjustment and adaptation to a globalised context, the new model of high-performing SME in TMS could help to improve the global positioning of these firms in the long term.

This volume of Progress in International Business Research includes a selection of 13 papers from the 35th European International Business Academy (EIBA) annual conference, which was held in Valencia (Spain) from the 13 to the 15 of December 2009. Following the usual guidelines for EIBA annual conference organization, papers submitted to this conference had a double-blind revision process. The acceptance rate for oral presentations was 68%.

The purpose of this paper is to address foreign market entry mode as a way to enhance firm’s knowledge base, providing new insights into traditional explanations of entry mode choice for soft services. The authors offer an alternative knowledge-based approach to assess foreign investment decisions by considering the role of resource-augmenting (direct investment) and resource-exploiting strategies (licenses). In addition, the authors untie the type of experiential knowledge, i.e., host country and mode experience, to analyze its interactions with environmental uncertainties such as cultural distance.

Based on a customized database of the Spanish Global Hotel industry covering practically all foreign entries until 2012, the authors use regression analysis to test the proposal.

The authors demonstrate how in hotel chains (a) cultural distance influences the use of high resource-augmenting modes, due to both the difficulties in transferring the knowledge to third parties but also the imperative need of learning from local markets and (b) how strong brands tend to use resource-augmenting modes in their first steps abroad as a strategy to achieve a minimum level of resource basis to exploit it in a later stage.

The findings question the appropriateness of prior assumptions from traditional internationalization process theories for soft services MNE and provide an alternative approach to assess entry mode choice in this context.

Purpose – In accordance to the globalized and competitive environment, traditional manufacturing sectors’ companies are being particularly forced to reshape their global strategy and reconfigurate their activities to survive. Due to the fact that these firms present special characteristics that make the change extremely difficult, this chapter tries to analyze the influence of managerial attitudes and characteristics on the decision of their international strategy.

Methodology/approach – The study was carried out in Spanish traditional manufacturing sectors through a questionnaire, obtaining a final sample of 115 SMEs. We performed a cluster analyses to classify groups of companies, innovative and rigid, and assessed their different perceptions and characteristics.

Findings – Our results show that the adoption of these new models of internationalization is indeed related to the attitude and characteristics of managers. We found that more innovative strategies are associated with managers with intermediate experience in business, higher education levels, and a more realistic perception of the severity of the situation, the influence of the environment, and its strategic capabilities.

Practical implications – This chapter evidences that there are still important internal barriers affecting the international competitiveness of these companies. We propose that more traditional strategies of internationalization in the manufacturing sectors should move toward more complex models that combine the advantages of the cooperation, multilocation, diversification, and integration of those key activities of the value chain. Therefore, we display the critical role of managers’ profile in this process.

Originality/value of the chapter – Despite the fact that many works have analyzed the determinants of strategic change, we offer a wider view considering the essential role of managers, by combining demographic and perception variables. Furthermore, we based this idea on the theoretical perspective known as managerial cognition; therefore, we give new explanatory factors on the decision of the international strategy.

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to examine the influence of technological resources and external research partners on the export performance of Italian high-tech small and medium firms (SMEs).

Methodology/approach – Drawing on the resource-based view as theoretical framework and deriving hypotheses from the export management literature, we used a sample of Italian manufacturing firms to run a two-step analysis. First, a Levene's test is conducted to assess whether SMEs operating in the high-tech sectors differ from those operating in other manufacturing sectors. Second, employing ordinary least squares (OLS) regression we analysed which technological resources and external research partners best discriminate the export performance of high-tech SMEs.

Findings – Our empirical results revealed that: (1) the use of output rather than input measures of innovation better captures the contribution of technological resources on export performance of firms in our sample; (2) product innovations positively and significantly affect the export performance of technology intensive SMEs; (3) among external research partners, universities provide positive spillover effects on their export performance.

Originality/value – This study provides the heterogenic perspective of the high-tech sectors when attempting to explain the influence of technological resources and external research partners on the export performance of SMEs. Second, the study expands the traditional measures used in the literature for firms’ technological resources and it comprehensively analyses innovative inputs and innovative outputs while exploring whether innovative efforts have had a measurable effect on the export performance of high-tech SMEs.

The fifth volume of the Book Series Progress in International Business Research combines two basic themes in international business studies. On the one hand, global interdependence continues to rise, even though it looked as if the financial and economic crisis of 2008 and its aftermath would retard or stop the globalization process. On the other hand, firms engaged in international activities keep testing out new organizational structures that reconfigure their boundaries. Property rights over assets and control over decisions within and across these boundaries are central to the design of the multinational organization. Although the boundaries of the firm were originally stressed by Reginald Coase in his famous Economica article of 1937 (Volume 4, pp. 254–266) about The Nature of the Firm, the increasing complexity of international activities and the changing relationships between countries and regions make this into a continuous research challenge in international business.