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The authors’ contention in this paper is that the expression of subsidiary strategy in IB literature has become fragmented and incomplete. Therefore, this study aims to propose a rethink on how IB scholarship approaches the important issue of subsidiary strategy by holistically examining the discrete and integrated set of activities, choices and decisions that constitute the subsidiary strategy process for, in this context, assuming a competence-creating role within the multinational enterprise (MNE).

A conceptual model is designed to illustrate the holistic process of subsidiary strategy from assigned to assumed role and how a subsidiary can navigate a pathway to elevated performance and survival.

The paper identifies the key integrated elements that constitute a holistic strategic process that can enhance a subsidiary’s standing within the MNE and maximise its survival prospects.

Particular focus is placed on subsidiaries that strategise to advance their internal corporate role to competence creator via upgraded knowledge capabilities.

This paper offers a roadmap for IB scholars to contribute to a future discourse around the subsidiary strategy process for assuming a competence-creating role.

The aim of the paper is to identify the determinants of the marketing and managerial knowledge transfer from a foreign subsidiary located in a post-transition country to its headquarters established in a developed country.

The authors combined the critical literature studies and empirical research, where the method of Computer-assisted Telephone Interview (CATI) was applied. The empirical data was gathered from 231 manufacturing foreign subsidiaries established in Poland (as one of the post-transition economy). To test the hypotheses logistic regression was applied.

The knowledge accumulated in the foreign subsidiary, the amount and level of novelty of innovation in the foreign subsidiary and its strategic autonomy is crucial for the occurrence of the reverse knowledge transfer. However, the more powerful the foreign subsidiary is, the less eager it is to transfer marketing and managerial knowledge to the headquarters.

The study is concentrated just on the manufacturing sector in the Polish economy. The results are based on the opinions and perception of managers, but they represent the corporate perspective (not their individual ones).

The study provokes asking the question about the proper level of strategic autonomy of a foreign subsidiary. The implication related to the autonomy is much about the proper strategy for human resources management. The obtained results indicate that the intensity of innovation in a foreign subsidiary “translates” to the outflow of knowledge from a foreign subsidiary to its headquarters. Thus, encourages headquarters to let their subsidiaries innovate still monitoring their power.

FSs are entities more or less embedded in the host markets, thus their strength and sustainable existence is important for their stakeholders, in particular – internal entities such as employees and external entities such as suppliers, and other cooperating organisations and institutions in the host market. The contribution of FSs to the innovation performance and knowledge pool of external partners is determined much by their absorptive capacity. Thus, the results obtained indirectly point to the importance of external agents ability to absorb and exploit the knowledge.

The originality of the paper concerns three issues. Firstly, the previous studies are mainly focused on either developed or emerging markets and as a result, the peculiarity of post-transition economies, like Poland has been neglected. Secondly, the determinants of reverse knowledge transfer are presented from the corporate perspective. Thirdly, authors focus on marketing and management knowledge distributed from a foreign subsidiary to its headquarter.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the effect of financial derivatives use on different exposures by comparing domestic firms, domestic multinational corporations (MNCs) and affiliates of foreign MNCs using a unique hand-collected data set of derivatives activities from 881 non-financial firms in eight East Asian countries over the period of 2003-2013.

In this paper, the authors apply a two-stage approach. In the first stage, exposures to country risks, exchange rate and interest rate risks are estimated by using the market model. In the second stage, potential effects of firms’ derivatives use on multifaceted exposures are investigated by carrying out pooled regression model, and panel data regressions with random effect specifications.

The authors provide novel evidence that financial hedging of domestic firms and domestic MNCs reduces exposure to home country risks by 10.91 and 14.42 percent per 1 percent increase in notional derivative holdings, respectively, while affiliates of foreign MNCs fail to mitigate exposure to host country risks. The use of foreign currency and interest rate derivatives by domestic firms and domestic MNCs is effective in alleviating such firms’ exposures to varied degrees, while foreign affiliates’ use of derivatives can only lower interest rate exposures.

The primary theoretical contribution of this study is applying the market model to estimate exposures to home and host country risks. Regarding empirical contributions, the authors provide strong evidence that the use of financial derivatives by domestic firms and domestic MNCs significantly contributes to a decline in exposure to home country risks, and evidence the outperformance of domestic MNCs vis-à-vis domestic firms and foreign affiliates.

In this paper, the authors contribute with insights on competition and cooperation in multinational enterprises with a focus on challenges related to these governance mechanisms in a knowledge development context. The mechanisms have been widely recognized as important for developing knowledge, but their contradicting nature implies considerable complexity when it comes to governance. The complexity is further increased as a result of the headquarters-subsidiary relationships. The aim of this paper is to contribute with theoretical and empirical insights on these aspects by focusing on the research question: How and why does competition and cooperation in an MNE emerge over time?

A manufacturing MNE with headquarters (HQ) in Sweden is analyzed on both HQ and subsidiary levels. Interviews with 24 managers in Sweden and India have been performed.

The study illustrates that competition and cooperation are integral aspects in HQ-subsidiary relationships. The results show that both competition and cooperation depend on environmental, organizational and object-related conditions and that these conditions influence the dynamics of the interplay. The importance of including a subsidiary perspective and the interdependencies in an MNE setting are emphasized.

The authors add to the discussion on the interplay between competition and cooperation as they play an important role for knowledge development in MNEs. The results indicate that they do not take place simultaneously, and therefore, the authors suggest that the dynamic can be better understood by focusing on the interplay and analyze the concepts separately.

This study aims to understand the role of drivers, underlying challenges and, consequently, the implications of the reverse knowledge transfer (RKT) process for the multinational enterprises (MNE)s.

A dyadic qualitative research design was used with a cross-country design covering perspectives from both the headquarters and subsidiaries from the USA, Denmark, Pakistan, India and Bangladesh. In-depth interviews were conducted with managers in multiple sectors such as information technology, telecommunications, project management and engineering.

The study reveals the constraints and drivers of the RKT process, and furthermore elaborates on the implications for MNEs. RKT can lead to the development of new processes, subsidiary independence and intra-organizational knowledge transfer. Besides, it can entail challenges such as position insecurity for subsidiaries and a blurring of the MNE market vision. The findings demonstrate several implications for the MNEs.

The study highlights the direct implications of RKT for the multinational enterprises. The findings serve as a practical guide for global managers seeking to improve their competitive edge.

The study presents a framework of the RKT process from emerging market subsidiaries to parent companies, that demonstrates the role of drivers, underlying challenges and implications of the RKT process for the MNEs.

Foreign subsidiaries incur substantial institutional conformity costs because they have to respond to host-country institutional pressures (Slangen & Hennart, 2008). The purpose of this paper is to study this type of cost from institutional and regulatory perspectives. The authors argue that these costs decrease when the host country adopts concepts of international regulations that multinationals may be familiar with due to their own home country regulation experience. This prior regulatory experience gives foreign subsidiaries an advantage of foreignness (AoF), which can offset their liability of foreignness (LoF).

This study compared the returns on assets of 35 domestic firms with those of foreign subsidiaries in the Brazilian energy industry between 2002 and 2021, using regression dynamic panel data.

The existence of a relationship between the international regulatory norm and the Brazilian regulator has transformed the LoF into an advantage of foreignness to compete with local energy firms. The results also suggest that the better the regulatory quality of the subsidiary’s country of origin, the better its performance in Brazil, as it can reduce compliance costs. Finally, the greater the psychic distance between Brazil and the foreign subsidiary’s home country, the worse its performance.

The research suggests that one of the keys to competitiveness in host countries is local regulatory ties. Prior international regulatory experience gives foreign subsidiaries an asset of foreignness (AoF). This result complements the current institutional and regulatory foreignness studies on emerging economies (Cuervo-Cazurra & Genc, 2008; Mallon et al., 2022) and the institutional asymmetry between home and host country (Mallon & Fainshmidt, 2017).

This research suggests that one of the keys to competitiveness in host countries is local regulatory ties. Prior international regulatory experience gives foreign subsidiaries an asset of foreignness (AoF). This result complements the current institutional and regulatory foreignness studies on emerging economies (Cuervo-Cazurra & Genc, 2008; Mallon et al., 2022) and the institutional asymmetry between home and host country (Mallon & Fainshmidt, 2017). The practical implication is that the relationship between conformity costs, capital budget calculation and strategic planning for internationalization will be related to the governance quality of the home country of multinationals. The social implication is that a country interested in attracting more direct foreign investment to areas that need foreign technology transfer and resources may consider adopting international regulatory standards.

The social implication is that a country interested in attracting more direct foreign investment to areas that need foreign technology transfer and resources may consider adopting international regulatory standards.

This research discuss firm and local regulator tie is one of core competitiveness in host countries (Yang and Meyer, 2020). This study also complements the current institutional and regulatory foreignness studies in emerging economy (Cuervo-Cazurra & Genc, 2008; Mallon et al., 2022). Second, prior regulatory experience of multinational enterprise in similar environment can affect its foreign affiliate performance (Perkins, 2014). Third, this study confirms current literature that argues that knowledge and ability to operate in an institutionalized country can be transferred from parent to affiliate. In the end, this study investigates whether AoF persists when host governments improve the governance of their industries.

The authors discuss a dominant logic as the main idea behind a global marketing logic (GML) of an MNE and investigate how local stakeholders’ influence the feasibility of applying the GML in emerging markets. The aim of the paper is to enhance the understanding of the factors that influence the local stakeholders' acceptance of the MNEs' GML and the different activities of MNEs that may increase the acceptance.

The authors apply a qualitative case study method investigating three Swedish MNEs and their activities while implementing a GML in the big emerging markets. The authors study their relationships with business, political and social stakeholders.

The authors identify three persistent contents of the GML: (1) a consistent value chain role across markets, (2) standardized, premium products/services and promotion strategies, (3) a corporate brand-based identity. The development of trust, commitment, legitimacy and power within local stakeholders’ relationships influences the approval. The acceptance of the MNE's GML by local stakeholders strengthens its market position.

The authors extend the knowledge by investigating the nature of a GML and explain to what extent it may help MNEs to gain a competitive position. The authors also discuss how global and local activities may influence local stakeholders' acceptance. This study contributes towards a better understanding of how and to what extent a GML can be successful.

This study aims to find how the turnover of host country nationals (HCNs) would be affected by the knowledge transfer from a headquarter to a subsidiary. Knowledge transfer in a multinational corporation (MNC) has been discussed as a critical factor in the MNC’s success. Because HCNs are essential to synergizing with a new knowledge inflow during this knowledge transfer process, their turnover entails negative consequences such as knowledge loss.

This paper empirically tests the unbalance between knowledge received (KR) and absorptive capacity (AC) as the most critical organizational predictor by using the secondary longitudinal records and survey data of 4,915 employees. Multilevel survival analysis is used to calculate the individuals’ turnover hazard.

While finding that the primary effect of transferred knowledge is to reduce turnover, the study demonstrates the unbalance between a subsidiary’s AC and KR increases the likelihood of HCNs’ turnover within the organization. The authors also recognize the possibility of nonlinear trends of KR and AC on the turnover hazard.

The authors answer how knowledge transfer shapes a subsidiary’s work environment to prevent or increase turnover, which has been barely examined for HCNs who comprise the crucial demographic group in knowledge transfer. To enhance the originality further, this study empirically observes the actual turnover of HCNs with a conceptually comprehensive view incorporating both learning and political approaches.

This study aims to investigate how different academic fields within and outside of international business (IB) engage with the topics of social value creation in the context of multinational enterprises (MNEs). The aim is to take stock of the main themes and offer suggestions for future research avenues.

The paper undertakes a scoping review. The authors use the Web of Science database to identify relevant articles. The database search yielded 466 articles. The NVivo software was used to code and identify key thematic areas.

The matrix analysis performed in NVivo yielded 15 main thematic areas spanning 37 research fields. However, further analysis revealed that 89 per cent of the articles originated from 13 fields. Furthermore, while IB journals represent the second-largest field home to publications related to the social value creation of MNEs, they only account for 12 per cent of the sample.

The paper responds to prior calls to reduce disciplinary silos through the performing of a thematic analysis across a multitude of research fields.