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The purpose of this paper is to empirically explore the relationship between individuals’ shared core knowledge within a firm and a collective understanding of management’s strategic priorities.

The study develops three sets of competing hypotheses to predict how three different aspects of individuals’ shared core knowledge – extent, diversity and interpretation – are related to their understanding of the organization’s strategic priorities. The hypotheses are tested using a cognitive mapping approach within the context of a manufacturing plant in the USA.

Organizational members with a lower proportion of shared core knowledge exhibit a greater appreciation of the firm’s strategic priorities. More diversity in this shared knowledge is associated with a greater appreciation of strategic priorities and when members agree on the relative importance of different types of knowledge, whether they actually share this knowledge, they have a better understanding of the firm’s strategic priorities.

The study uses data from a single firm in one industry.

This research helps to highlight and empirically isolate different aspects of shared knowledge that influence individuals’ understanding of organizational priorities. It also demonstrates the varying importance of different aspects of shared knowledge (e.g. extent, diversity and interpretation in explaining individuals’ understanding of the firm’s strategic priorities.

Firms competing in national contexts other than their own suffer from “the liability of foreignness” (Zaheer, 1995). This liability stems from their lack of in-depth knowledge relating to economic, cultural, social, and political factors that influence the operating environment in these countries. Without such knowledge, firms will incur greater risks than local firms who have detailed understanding of these factors, or other firms with more experience in such environments, thereby putting them at a competitive disadvantage. To compensate, firms expanding internationally need to develop, leverage, and deploy capabilities that provide them with advantages unavailable to their local competitors. For this reason, national context has been the foundation on which past theoretical treatments of the MNE rested, greatly influencing the formulation of international strategy.

The previous decade has been characterized by emerging market firms expanding into international markets. This trend has led to scholars in the IB arena to grapple with the new phenomenon of emerging multinational enterprises (EMNEs), specifically the relationship between internationalization and performance of the EMNEs. This paper seeks to add to the literature by capturing the impact of firm resources on the internationalization‐performance relationship. Empirical analysis on a sample of 787 Indian manufacturing firms indicates that there is a non‐linear relationship between internationalization and performance. Findings also indicate that a firm’s capabilities in cost efficiency and marketing have a moderating impact on this relationship.

Two hypotheses concerning two variables that potentially influence the “add/drop” foreign market decisions of U.S. exporters of sewing machines are developed and empirically tested. The variables are import market potential, and a surrogate measure of import market competitiveness. A third variable, concerning a developing country’s “trade regime” – Import Substituting, Export Promoting (Bhagwati, 1978) – is employed as a control variable in the tests. The two hypotheses are confirmed, and the results shed light on how U.S. exporters of sewing machines should analyze data on the three variables en route to adjusting their respective portfolios of export markets in a context of making add/drop foreign market decisions. The results of the research potentially contribute to three different literatures: the international marketing literature, the competitiveness literature and the “trade regime” literature in international economics.

This paper aims to explore the interlock-performance relationship among mainland Chinese firms listed in Hong Kong by taking advantage of a relationship-intensive context whereby such a link is likely to be especially important. Although strategic networks such as interlocking directorates have been found to affect a number of strategic behaviors, the link connecting board interlocks and corporate performance has remained ambiguous. Considerable light has been shed on the strategic networks of firms whose shares are listed abroad, which have been under-studied despite their rising importance in the global economy.

Data come from a particularly interesting historical period – the early 1990s prior to Hong Kong’s 1997 handover to China. Both quantitative and qualitative research have been used.

Empirically, it was found that good performance in an earlier period helps draw outside directors in a later period, and that network centrality and certain types of interlocks help improve performance, albeit with varying degrees. Overall, our results answer the question whether strategic networks such as interlocks matter for corporate performance with a qualified “yes”.

Taking advantage of a relationship-intensive context, this article explores the interlock-performance relationship among mainland Chinese firms listed in Hong Kong. Focus is specifically on the two years, 1993 and 1995, due to their specific historical importance because these two years represent the beginning of Chinese firms’ listing in Hong Kong.