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Deglobalization and the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic have severely hindered multinational enterprise (MNE) investment. At the same time, digital technology is seriously challenging it with traditional production factor flows. Few studies have realized that the impact of digitalization is not limited to either transaction costs or the location-boundness of firm-specific advantages (FSAs), but extends to profound changes in the fundamental essence of MNEs. There is still limited understanding of this body of knowledge as a whole, including how its subtopics are interrelated. This study took the production factor change perspective to review MNE theory in the digital era. Therefore, this study aims to identify any upcoming and undeveloped themes in order to provide a platform suited to direct future research.

This paper presents a summary and a review of 151 articles published between 2007 and 2020. Such review was conducted to systematically explain the connotations and influential mechanisms of digital empowerment on MNE theory. This was achieved by using the CiteSpace citation visualization tool to build a keyword co-occurrence network.

The research findings pertain to how digitalization expands, breaks through, and even reshapes traditional MNE theory from four distinctive angles: the influential factors of internationalization, the process of internationalization, competitive advantage, and location choice. The findings are followed by the presentation of future research directions.

This paper presents an examination of MNE theory in the digital era from the perspective of production factor change. In doing so, it identifies significant theoretical innovation opportunities for future scholarly research priorities.

This paper aims to explore the strategic and evolving role of human resource management (HRM) directors within the context of underdeveloped institutional arrangements. The study focuses on India and conducts a comparative analysis of the roles of HRM directors in both multinational enterprises (MNEs) and domestic firms.

Survey-based data from the HRM directors of 252 enterprises were gathered for the comparative analysis, including both multinational and domestic enterprises.

HRM directors in MNEs lack the proficiency required to effectively fulfil their strategic role. In addition, there has been a notable shift in the responsibilities of HRM directors in MNEs, with increased emphasis on labour movements and trade union negotiations, as opposed to traditional human resource (HR) activities. This shift suggests that the role of HRM in MNEs operating in India has been influenced by local isomorphic forces, rather than following a “pendulum swing” between home and host country institutional pressures. The prevalence of informality in the Indian institutional arrangements may act as a strong counterforce to integrating the strategic agency of MNEs' home country HRM directors into the organizational structure. Despite facing resistance from the local institutional context, HRM directors in MNEs are responding with a pushback, prioritizing labour movements and trade union negotiations over core HRM activities.

The study highlights the broader implications for theory and practice, shedding light on the challenges faced by HRM directors in navigating incoherent institutional arrangements. It emphasizes the need for a deeper understanding of local forces in shaping HRM practices within multinational settings.

We contribute to the comparative HRM literature by elaborating on power struggles that HRM directors face amid the dichotomies of formal power and authority that are encoded in the organizational structure versus culturally contingent power that can be accrued from engaging in informality. We also highlight their engagement in prolonged institutional mediation and change, which serves as a compensatory mechanism for the institutional shortfalls they encounter within the context of emerging markets.

The COVID-19 pandemic has showcased the lack of resilience found in the global value chains (GVCs) of multinational enterprises (MNEs). Existing evidence shows that MNEs have only recently and slowly started recovering and attempting to rebuild the resilience of their GVCs. This paper analyzes the challenges/inhibitors faced by MNEs in building their resilience through their GVCs.

A four-stage hybrid model was used to identify the interrelationship among the identified inhibitors and to distinguish the most critical ones by ranking them. In the first stage, we employed a modified total interpretive structural modeling (m-TISM) approach to determine the inter-relationship among the inhibitors. Additionally, we identified the inhibitors' driving power and dependency by performing a matrix multiplication applied to classification (MICMAC) analysis. In the second stage, we employed the Pythagorean fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (PF-AHP) method to determine the weight of the criteria. The next stage followed, in which we used the Pythagorean fuzzy combined compromise solution (PF-CoCoSo) method to rank the inhibitors. Finally, we performed a sensitivity analysis to determine the robustness of the framework we had built based on the criteria and inhibitors.

We find business sustainability to have the highest importance and managerial governance as the most critical inhibitor hindering the path to resilience. Based on these insights, we derive four research propositions aimed at strengthening the resilience of such GVCs, followed by their implications for theory and practice.

Our findings contribute to the extant literature by uncovering key inhibitors that act as barriers to MNEs. We link out our findings with a number of propositions that we derive, which may be considered for implementation by MNEs and could help them endow their GVCs with resilience.

This study aims to explore the internationalization of multinational enterprises (MNEs) from China and aims to examine the relationship between Chinese MNEs’ duration of internationalization and export intensity, and the contingent roles of the home country government.

By extending the springboard theory with institutional and cost-benefit analyses, the authors elaborate a two-phase framework of internationalization to explain how Chinese MNEs develop their international business under the influences of the home country government. Furthermore, the authors apply the Heckman two-stage method based on a panel data set of 19,994 firm-year observations of Chinese listed firms in 2008–2018 to test the hypotheses.

The research findings demonstrate an inverted U-shape relationship between the duration of internationalization and the export intensity of MNEs from China. The export intensity of MNEs from China increases during the initial phase of internationalization, and decreases during the subsequent. A further study reveals that the inverted U-shape of Chinese non-SOEs is steeper than that of SOEs, and this moderating effect is more salient after the Belt and Road Initiative. These results highlight the influence of the home government through state ownership and policies on the inverted U-shaped relationship.

This study helps to refine the understanding of Chinese MNEs’ global expansion by addressing time as an explicit dimension and revealing the mechanism of state ownership and the home country governmental policy in the dynamic internationalization process.

This study aims to explore the extent to which Chinese multinational enterprises (MNEs) rely on supranational institution – the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) – versus host country institutional quality to navigate their foreign location choice.

This study uses a conditional logit regression model using a sample of 1,302 greenfield investments by Chinese MNEs in 54 BRI participating countries during the period 2011–2018.

The results indicate that as a supranational institution, the BRI serves as a substitution mechanism to address the deficiencies in institutional quality in BRI participating countries, thereby attracting Chinese MNEs to invest in those countries. In addition, the BRI’s substitution effect on host country institutional quality is more pronounced for large MNEs, MNEs in the manufacturing industry and MNEs in inland regions.

This study expands the understanding of the BRI as a supranational institution for MNEs from emerging markets and reveals its substitution effect on the host country institutional quality. Furthermore, it highlights that MNEs with diverse characteristics gain varying degrees of benefits from the BRI.

The purpose of this study is to shed light on the twin transition in China in the organization of innovation processes in artificial intelligence (AI) and green technology (GT) development and to understand the role of foreign multinationals in Chinese innovation systems.

A qualitative research approach is used by interviewing executives from German multinationals with expertise in AI and GT development and organization of innovation processes in China. In total, 11 semi-structured interviews were conducted with companies, and the data were analysed with a thematic qualitative text analysis.

The findings show that AI applications for GT are primarily developed in cross-company projects that are led by local and regional authorities through the organization of industrial districts and clusters. German multinationals are either being integrated, remaining autonomous or being excluded from these twin transition innovation processes.

This paper aims to fill the gap in the literature by providing one of the first qualitative approach towards twin transition innovation processes in China and exploring the integration of multinational enterprises in cluster organizations. To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is one of the first twin transition studies from this perspective in emerging economies.

This study aims to examine the effect of exploratory innovation offshoring on the level of hierarchical control and how this effect is moderated by transnational and dynamic environments.

This study draws on a sample of 148 Taiwanese multinational enterprises to examine their governance decisions on foreign investments.

Findings show that the more innovation offshoring is exploratory, the higher the level of hierarchical control will be used by multinational enterprises (MNEs) and that transnational and dynamic environments have different moderation effects on the positive exploratory innovation offshoring-hierarchical control relationship.

This study has two theoretical implications. First, this study extends the concept of complexity from a transaction attribute level (problem) to an environmental level (transnational environment) and finds that exploratory innovation offshoring and transnational environments interactively impact governance choices. Second, this study distinguishes between two sources of technological uncertainty – uncertainty due to transaction-level attributes (exploratory innovation offshoring) and external environments (dynamic environments) and finds that exploratory innovation offshoring and dynamic environments interactively impact governance choices.

The practical implication of this study lies in the simultaneous consideration of exploratory innovation offshoring and transnational/dynamic environments, which will allow international decision-makers to adjust/select the governance forms most appropriate for speedy responding to and handling environmental changes.

This study employs the theoretical perspectives of transaction cost economics (TCE) and resource-based view (RBV) to analyze and discuss the impact of operational environments – transnational and dynamic environments – on MNEs’ decisions on the governance structure for a given innovation offshoring.

The paper aims to provide an understanding of how the transfer of progressive human resource management (HRM) practices may or may fail to render multinational enterprises (MNEs) institutional entrepreneurs creating change in job quality and decent work to underprivileged workers in the low-pay retail sector in Japan.

The paper draws on survey questionnaire data and interviews with workers and management in a foreign retailer in Japan.

The findings suggest that even where MNEs may provide some measurable material improvements in job quality, in this case equal pay for equal work, the total outcomes are nevertheless shaped by institutional context and constraints. In this case, the improvement in pay was intertwined with flexibility demands that were possible to meet for some workers but not others. In particular, women with care responsibilities and competing demands on their time were not able to experience “decent work” in the same way as others.

The study had a relatively low response rate, due to lack of discretion over time experienced by workers in Japan, as well as limited data on program outcomes, with interviews conducted with a small number of participants.

The study suggests that spaces and opportunities exist for MNEs to diverge from dominant practices in given host country locations and exercise a level of agency as emissaries of decent work but successful outcomes require a very thorough understanding of individual worker experiences within the institutional constraints of given environments.

The study offers insights into the complexities of initiatives by MNEs to contribute to the provision of decent work, particularly for workers in underprivileged positions including women in low-pay sectors such as retail, as firm-level practices lead to variable outcomes when filtered through local institutions.

The study brings together a focus on firm-level practices that inform much of the international HRM and international management scholarship with an emphasis on the experiences of workers, which is pursued in the sociology of work, to investigate whether MNEs can be actors in the realising of the Sustainable Development Goals around decent work.

There is an extensive research stream devoted to evaluating host country political risk as it relates to foreign investment decisions, and in today’s geopolitical climate, this type of risk is becoming increasingly salient to business leaders. Despite notable advancements related to understanding the importance of government-related risk, inconsistent conceptualizations and findings remain. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to offer a comprehensive overview of how host country political risk has been conceptualized, measured and studied in relation to multinational enterprises' (MNEs’) investment decisions. After reviewing the relevant literature, five major aspects of non-violent (government type, public corruption, leadership change) and violent (armed conflict, terrorism) political risk were identified. The organization and review of each aspect of political risk provide insights on fruitful directions for future research, which are discussed.

To identify research articles on political risk and foreign investment, 13 leading management and international business journals were searched using relevant keywords (January 2000 to January 2023). Moreover, reviewing articles from these journals led to locating and reviewing additional relevant articles that the authors cited. Keyword searches were also conducted on Google Scholar and Web of Science in an effort to identify relevant articles outside of the 13 targeted journals.

Both violent and non-violent aspects of host country political risk have been studied in relation to MNEs' investment decisions. Specifically, five major aspects of host country political risk were identified (government type, public corruption, leadership change, armed conflict and terrorism). Although the general consensus is that risk related to the government often creates obstacles for MNEs, conceptualizations, measures and findings in prior research are not uniform.

This paper provides a comprehensive overview of host country political risk and foreign investment. In doing so, the aspects of political risk are identified, organized and overviewed.

Given the great upheaval in the international situation and the increasing operating risk in international business, research on corporate diplomacy is thriving. However, it still lacks clear conceptualization and operationalization. Based on social capital theory, our study conceptualizes corporate diplomacy as a three-dimensional construct and quantifies its distinct and combined impacts on multinational enterprises’ (MNE) subsidiary performance.

This research analyzes 134 responses collected from a questionnaire survey among key informants in Chinese MNEs using the regression method.

This research finds that corporate diplomacy is positively correlated with MNEs’ subsidiary performance. Specifically, compatriot-oriented diplomacy is the most effective, followed sequentially by host-partner-oriented and host-regulator-oriented diplomacy. In addition, compatriot-oriented diplomacy substitutes for host-partner-oriented diplomacy but complements host-regulator-oriented diplomacy in enhancing subsidiary performance.

Our research enriches the conceptualization and operationalization of corporate diplomacy and provides a nuanced view of its distinct and combined effects on MNEs’ subsidiary performance.