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The purpose of this paper is to develop a framework that incorporates both firm- and process-level factors for understanding location distance choice in the business process outsourcing (BPO) decision.

The research involved undertaking in-depth case study analysis of a number of BPO decisions in six German companies, and employing transaction cost economics (TCE) and the resource-based view (RBV) as a theoretical basis.

The findings have shown that existing literature in the operations management (OM) literature does not provide a complete understanding of the complexities of location distance choice in the BPO decision. This decision requires an understanding of a range of factors at both the firm- and process-level. The findings here enhance the understanding of how these factors interact to influence the potential distance options.

The findings have shown how organisations can influence the factors that affect the location distance choice including modularising business processes, developing outsourcing capabilities, and supplementing internal skills in areas such as cultural management and performance monitoring.

This is one of the first studies in the OM field to analyse how organisations make the decision in relation to local, nearshore, and offshore location distance options. The paper has highlighted the importance of OM concepts such as performance management and continuous improvement to this phenomenon, and the paper has offered a number of important areas for further research.

Location choice made by emerging market multinationals (EMMs) constitutes an important yet somewhat neglected topic in business research. The purpose of this paper is to develop a research framework that elucidates the role of EMM‐specific resources and internationalization motivations on the location choice of EMMs.

The literature pertaining to firm‐specific resources and internationalization motivations as determinants of location choice is reviewed. This leads to the development of a research framework that takes into account various combinations of resources and motivations in explaining the location choice of EMMs. The paper offers research propositions by linking resources, motivations, and the appropriate choice of locations.

The paper illustrates that location choices of EMMs are determined by the interplay of various resources (relationship‐based, home experiences‐based, and country created assets‐based) and internationalization motivations (market‐seeking, asset‐seeking, and resource‐seeking).

The paper investigates the simultaneous influence of two important determinants: firm‐specific resources and internationalization motivations on the location choices of EMMs. Prior literature has extolled the importance of these factors in international business but not in the context of the location choices of EMMs. Thus, this paper fills an important void in business scholarship.

The pattern of racial segregation in U.S. elementary and secondary schools has changed significantly over the last 25 years. This chapter examines the relationship between the racial composition of schools and the choices white parents make concerning the schools their children attend. Restricted access files at the Bureau of the Census allow us to identify each household's Census block of residence and, in turn, suburban public school districts and urban public school attendance areas. We find that the racial composition of schools and neighborhoods are very important in the school and location decisions of white families.

The purpose of the present study is to explore the factors that influence the residential location choice of households in the Indian context.

Two sub-urban towns of Kolkata, i.e. Biddhanagar Municipal Corporation and Rajarhat Newtown, are taken as case studies. In total, 34 variables are considered related to the household's socioeconomic background (10), dwelling (3), travel (2) and level of importance of neighborhood characteristics (19). A revealed preference household survey is conducted, which resulted in the collection of 390 samples. Firstly, 19 level of importance variables are deduced to 3 latent factors using exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis. After that, a utility function is estimated using a multinomial logit regression to identify significant factors.

The results indicate the significance of car ownership, work travel time, work mode, monthly income, proximity to work, proximity to family/relative/friends, proximity to quality schools, quality of physical infrastructure such as water availability, power availability and housing typology among others in the residential location choice of households.

Kolkata, a major metropolitan area in eastern India, has been experiencing space constraints to cater to the housing demand of the ever-increasing population. Although satellite towns are being developed, the infrastructure landscape in such towns is uneven, resulting in more housing demand in one area than another. The study furnishes significant findings to develop more informed policies to attract households in low-demand areas and manage high-demand areas to achieve sustainable planning.

Considering the importance of geographical context, it is the first study on residential location choice, providing a perspective of household behavior from eastern India. It also shows the importance of physical infrastructure attributes in residential location choice for developing countries, which is seldom employed in the current practice. Moreover, previous studies (although few) done in India consider the objective value of location characteristics. The present study focuses on subjective value or the level of importance perceived by respondents.

This paper aims to report on the results of a study carried out to establish the contribution of business choice and location decision to the success of small and medium enterprises in an emerging economy like Uganda.

This study is cross-sectional and correlational. Data were collected through a questionnaire survey of 181 small and medium restaurants. The data were analyzed through correlation coefficients and hierarchical regression using statistical package for social sciences.

The findings reveal that both business choice and location decisions positively and significantly contribute to the success of small and medium enterprises. However, it was noted that more attention should be paid to location decision than business choice as determinants of SME success.

To the authors' knowledge, this is the first study to investigate the contribution of business choice and location decision to the success of SMEs using evidence from a developing African country like Uganda. Finally, this research offers practical contributions to managers and owners of SMEs who have to make strategic decisions for firm profitability, survival and growth in the competitive business arena.

We study the correlates of immigrant location and migration choices to address the following questions: What location-specific, economic, and demographic factors are associated with these choices? Does the influence of these factors differ by immigrant characteristics? What are the factors associated with the observed increase in immigrant geographic dispersion during the 1990s? Our analysis suggests that: (1) There is significant heterogeneity in the correlates of immigrant location and migration choices; associations vary by immigrant birthplace, age, gender, education, and duration of residence in the United States. (2) Economic factors are, for the most part, weakly associated with immigrant location decisions. (3) Immigrants appear to be more attracted to states with large (growing) populations; less attracted to states with a high proportion of other foreign-born persons; more attracted to states with high unionization, and less attracted to states with high crime. (4) The association between location-specific characteristics and immigrant location choices changed between 1990 and 2000 for some immigrant groups and this explains most of the increase in geographic dispersion during the 1990s. In contrast, changes in location attributes and changes in immigrant composition explain relatively little of the increase in dispersion.

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.

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.

This paper aims to clarify the fit of competitive strategies and firm-specific advantages (FSAs) with country-specific advantages (CSAs) in explaining manufacturing location choices at product category level in the European automotive industry.

Seven hypotheses are formulated and tested using binomial logistic regression with data from 148 passenger car models (i.e. product category level) that are sold in Europe and manufactured in countries that offer CSAs of either cost advantages or differentiation advantages. The first four hypotheses test manufacturing location choices of product categories pursuing cost leadership strategy, differentiation strategy, focus strategy and hybrid strategy. The other three hypotheses test whether FSAs of R&D capability, marketing capability and operations capability will impact on the manufacturing location choice. The tests control for the type of passenger cars as well as the manufacturer’s region of origin.

While pursuing cost leadership strategy leads to manufacturing in countries that offer cost advantages, pursuing differentiation strategy as well as strong R&D capability and marketing capability result in manufacturing in countries that offer differentiation advantages. Focus strategy, hybrid strategy and operations capability do not have an impact on the manufacturing location choice at product category level.

Conducting empirical research at product category level is subject to limitations in the choices of FSAs due to lack of availability of data.

Managers should assess the competitive strategies and FSAs of their product categories and then decide about manufacturing locations based on their fit with host country CSAs. Policymakers should understand the CSAs of their countries and target to attract manufacturing FDI from product categories with matching competitive strategies and FSAs.

The research contributes to discussions in explaining manufacturing location choices. Its originality lies in being the first study to test the fit of competitive strategies and FSAs of product categories with CSAs.