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This study investigated a new attributional phenomenon in a brand scandal setting in which consumers tend to blame the top management of a brand, even though it was the frontline parties that caused the scandal. The authors termed this phenomenon upward blame attribution (UBA), shedding light on whether consumers in a host country indicate a higher UBA for a multinational (vs domestic) brand scandal, which in turn reinforces their revenge and impairs their reconciliation reactions, and whether these effects are contingent on consumer animosity.

Two experimental studies were conducted with real and fictitious brand/product and country stimuli with 1,399 Chinese participants.

Both studies verified UBA and found that Chinese consumers' UBA is higher for multinational (vs domestic) brand scandals, which drives their stronger desire for revenge and weaker desire for reconciliation. Moreover, consumers with high (vs low) animosity toward a multinational brand's home country reported a higher UBA for the multinational (vs domestic) brand scandal, which in turn reinforces their desire for revenge and impairs their desire for reconciliation.

The study provides new insights into host-country consumers' more severe UBA and responses toward multinational versus domestic brand scandals and the amplifying role of consumer animosity in these processes. It also has implications for mitigating host-country consumers' UBA and negative responses to multinational brand scandals.

This study contributes to the blame attribution literature by verifying consumers' UBA and the country-of-origin (COO) literature by revealing host-country consumers' higher UBA, stronger revenge desire and weaker reconcile desire toward multinational (vs domestic) brand scandals. It extends the knowledge regarding consumers' blame attributions toward the top management of a multinational (vs domestic) brand in scandals and the impact of such attributions.

Business research has highlighted the importance of knowledge transfer and innovation in multinational firms for better performance outcomes. However, the existing body of literature is characterized by differentiated theories, antecedents and outcomes. This study aims to address this gap by adopting a systematic approach to analyze knowledge transfer and innovation literature from the perspective of multinational organizations.

This study follows “preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses” (PRISMA) guidelines for conducting a systematic literature review. The study adopts a systematic approach for analyzing the literature using School of thought (S), Contexts (C), Methodologies (M), Triggers (T), Barriers (B), Facilitators (F) and Outcomes (O) framework (SCM-TBFO framework) devised for holistic literature review. The study analyzes 75 articles from reputed journals from 2000 to 2022.

In general, knowledge transfer and innovation in multinationals is a relatively new area and is evolving rapidly. There are many opportunities to study the various perspectives that are included in the SCM-TBFO framework. The key schools of thought included the evolutionary theory of innovation, institutional theory and internationalization theory. The studies had differing settings or contexts, including China, Europe, the USA and Taiwan. Further, key methodologies that were used included regression, case studies, structural equation modeling (SEM) and theoretical studies. Knowledge transfer and innovation triggers included competitive advantage, competitive pressure, constant requirements for better products and services, foreign direct investment (FDI) and globalization. Knowledge transfer and innovation facilitators were categorized into strategy-related facilitators, organization culture and orientation-related facilitators, and resource-related facilitators. Knowledge transfer and innovation barriers included autonomy, international knowledge dispersion, risk of knowledge leakage, search breadth, ambiguity and institutional voids. Key outcomes of knowledge transfer and innovation in multinationals included financial performance, innovation performance, knowledge flow, transfer effectiveness, patents and new product development.

By synthesizing the literature, the study aims to provide an overview of the current state of research on knowledge transfer and innovation in multinationals. The study develops a holistic model for fostering knowledge transfer and innovation in multinationals. The proposed novel framework can also be applied to perform a holistic assessment of the current literature in various research domains. Further, the study suggests future theory development and research agendas. The study also provides implications for practitioners using the framework to achieve more desirable outcomes.

This study aims to analyse the appropriateness of the information content and organization of multinational companies' (MNCs) web sites for Turkish local cultural values with the aim of supporting global brand management decisions.

In order to gather data for the study, 108 MNCs' web sites are analysed by content analysis which is an objective, systematic and quantitative way of conducting information about communication content.

It is seen from the analyses that foreign multinationals could adapt their web sites' information content to local markets appropriately and sufficiently. However, the face (language) and the way (menu) that these data are presented were not adapted as compared to information content on their web sites.

This study has mainly considered the company side of web sites and neglects the consumer side. Future researchers interested in this area could also investigate how consumers perceive adaptation activities of foreign multinationals through web sites in their countries.

One of the major decisions MNCs face in using web sites regards how to organize and present the web site content to fit local needs and values. Although adaptation becomes a major concern, there is no standard for the multicultural content of web sites. There are several cross‐cultural studies in the literature which compare countries by correlating the analysed variables with Hofstede's scores. Rather than comparing home and host countries of foreign multinationals based on certain dimensions, it is found to be more appropriate to assess on what terms and to what degree these companies could adapt or standardize their global communication channels, namely their web sites, in Turkey.

The purpose of this paper is to document similarities and differences between management practices of different types of organizations in India’s IT sector through an empirical survey. The authors expected these differences to be significant enough for us to be able to group a priori this set of companies meaningfully through cluster analysis on the basis of the similarity of their management practices alone.

Using a mixed-methods approach, 73 senior-level executives of companies working in India’s IT sector were approached with a pretested questionnaire to find out differences on eighteen management practices in the areas of operations management, monitoring management, targets management and talent management. The different types of organizations surveyed were small and amp; medium global multinationals, large global multinationals, small and medium Indian multinationals, large Indian multinationals and small and medium local Indian companies. The differences and similarities found through statistical testing were further validated a priori through cluster analysis and qualitative interviews with senior-level executives.

The management practices of multinationals in India are moving toward Western management practices, indicating that management practices converge as the organizations grow in size. Though the practices of large Indian multinationals were not significantly different from those of global multinationals, the surprising finding was that large Indian multinationals scored better than global multinationals on a few practices. The practices of small and medium Indian companies differed significantly from those of other types of organizations and hence they formed a cluster.

The finding that large Indian IT multinationals have an edge over global multinationals in certain people management practices is a confirmation of the role of human resource practices in their current success and their continuing competitive advantage.

This is perhaps the first study of its kind to document state of specific management practices across different types of organizations in India’s IT sector and then use measures on these practices to group a priori these organizations for validation.

The aim of this paper is to discuss the apparent paradox that multinational firms may and sometimes do pursue social benefits as their main objective.

This paper explores the grey area that lays between some consolidated analytical concepts, namely: spillovers, corporate responsibility, social cooperation and non‐governmental organizations. It is in this grey area that “social multinationals” can be placed and examined. Scattered evidence is provided to illustrate the emergence of this relatively new phenomenon.

There are weak signals that the “social multinational” is a viable institutional innovation. The economic rationale is mainly represented by what could be defined in Smithian terms as the “selfless component of self‐interest”, combined with the ex ante and ex post advantages associated to multinationality. Institutional and technological transformations have created opportunities for the emergence of this phenomenon over the past three decades. However, there is a need for specifically designed policies to reinforce this relatively new trend in international business.

The paper proposes a new analytical category and draws insights on its potential implications for welfare, poverty reduction and economic development.

Explores the relationship between the firm characteristics and the control mechanisms in 85 multinational manufacturing companies operating in Turkey. Takes size, age and country of origin as firm characteristics. Control mechanisms include ownership, board of directors, top management team and training. Size is more strongly associated with control mechanisms than age or country of origin. MNCs have majority ownership in nearly 70 per cent of the firms. Size is inversely related to ownership. Large MNCs have training programmes when small ones do not. Ownership significantly influences the composition of board of directors. The level of perceived control is related to the amount of ownership.

Multinational companies whose importance has increased or improved depending on global capitalisation and travelling around the world without knowing borders have activities in developing countries due to suitable conditions (e.g. cheap workers costs, flexible legal arrangements). In this study, the precautions set forth to prevent environmental troubles, to obliterate or to minimise it, are the activities undertaken by the multinational companies which are considered. In the study, Turkey as a case country in which this subject was studied. Globalisation is the last step of economical sovereignty set up by means of multinational companies all over the world by capitalism which affects our age deeply. Unlimited capital stocks of capitalism and its economical development aim “whatever the result is” fastens the problems internationally as a result of not recognizing the social developments and justice, inequality, poverty and unsocializing people in developing countries. As a result of this, we're having environmental problems, the speed of nature's being consumed has been increased and there have been troubles almost every field of the social lives. However there is no one else who accepts the responsibilities of cost and social policies in the global economies in which international capital and global corporations decide on the rules; there is also no one else who accepts the responsibilities of environmental pollution and natural possessions' destruction as the result of the activities of international capital and global companies. The reason for this is that it is assumed that the government must take the responsibility “to protect and to development the environment”. According to this idea, protecting and developing the environment has been supplying public use and public service. Thus public service is the duty of the state. Environmental rights subject, known as third generation rights or corporation rights, is to protect the environment and to development it. People who have the environmental rights are those actors who will make use of these rights and who will have the responsibilities of these rights. The people who will make use of these rights and who will have the responsibilities are generally the same actors. These are not only the people but also public and special institutions including communities; states and public; and the next generation. In this case, all the right owners who have the rights to live in a healthy and well balanced environment are obliged to protect and to development the environment at the same time, including the multinational companies. Every economic activity has an effect on the environment. Multinational companies have activities in the fields like gold mining, petrol, chemicals and food industry which have high potential effects on the environment in developing countries like Malaysia, Indonesia and Nigeria. On this point the question why multinational companies choose these countries should be answered. The answer doesn't only help to explain the issue's political sides but also it could show that the most dirtying foreign capital activities take place in developing countries. Why multinational companies have chosen these developing countries was studied under two titles. (1) Dirtying industries are choosing the countries which don't have severe legal arrangements, (2) The public opinion in developing countries is unconscious of the harms that economical activities give to the environment. If the first finding hadn't been true, the activities in most polluting sectors wouldn't have been directed to the countries where environmental laws are flexible/flexibly practised. Besides, the public opinion in these low educational level countries doesn't have enough knowledge about the environmental problems and importance of environment. This information also gives assurance to the multinational companies that they don't face with the opposing activities of the public there. Nevertheless, foreign capital is wanted by these countries to supply new technologies, to supply the political and economical support of the countries which export development and capital, to open their economy to other countries and to protect the environment of the country. But, in practice, these countries which are under pressure to pay their debts don't pay attention to the ecological defects of the activities let the multinational companies to settle in the country, import the wastes which supply currency entrance, to be stored in the national borders and to be reused without evaluation. Foreign capital entrance in gold mining fields is a small example about being served and defended as a gold opportunity to pay Turkey's foreign debts. As a result, multinational companies are unsuccessful in sharing environmental responsibilities in the developing countries. Multinational companies have been making use of the opportunities that the environment presents but they don't do their duties to environmental rights. The efforts by multinational companies have been improving as prevention of increasing the environmental standards. Related to this, in the countries mentioned and also in Turkey, where economical activity fields like ecological sensitivity isn't assured enough by law and isn't protected wholly is a kind of great danger for Turkey.

The focus of this paper is the emergence of Russia's multinational companies. It aims to analyse their motives to internationalise as well as the approaches to internationalisation. While relevance of the theoretical perspectives is highlighted, the purpose of this paper is to contribute to the understanding of the present‐day phenomenon of emerging Russian multinationals.

The paper relies on a qualitative approach for the analysis of the nature of Russian multinationals. The phenomenon of the emerging Russian multinationals is analysed through the prism and using insights from a number of subjects, namely transition studies, politics, innovation studies and international business studies.

The paper traces the evolution of Russian companies; the idiosyncratic path of their formation serves as a background for understanding of their internationalisation strategies. A special attention is devoted to the R&D activities of Russian multinational companies, and access to foreign technology is found to be an important driver of internationalisation.

The paper highlights relevance of further research on Russian multinationals and outlines research avenues.

The paper is rich in its practical implications. Specifically, it elaborates on the European Union‐Russian bilateral relations and the role of Russian multinationals in the European economies. The issue of political involvement is raised, and the paper seeks to identify whether Russian companies serve as tools of foreign policy, or they operate as business agents.

Despite their increasingly important role in the global economy, Russian companies have been largely overshadowed by the emergence of Indian and Chinese multinationals and not sufficiently addressed, even neglected, in the literature. Therefore, the objective of this paper is to fill in some gaps in the literature regarding this research area.

The Nature of Business Policy Business policy — or general management — is concerned with the following six major functions:

This paper explores the major factors influencing multinational companies’ (MNCs) propensity to change the level of resource commitments during financial crises in emerging markets. Favorable changes in the host government policies, market demand, firm strategy, and infrastructural conditions are hypothesized to influence the MNCs’ decision to increase resource commitments during a crisis. The hypotheses are tested with data collected in a survey of 82 MNCs during the recent Argentine financial crisis (late 2002). While all the above variables are considered by the respondents as generally important reasons for increasing resource commitments during a crisis, only favorable changes in government policies significantly influence MNCs’ decisions to change the level of resource commitments during the Argentine financial crisis. The research, managerial implications, and policy‐making implications are discussed.