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By combining manifold approaches from migrant entrepreneurship and family business studies, the purpose of the paper is to shed some light upon the contextual features of motivation, resources, generational pathways of Turkish migrant family entrepreneurs in Berlin – through the lens of a mixed and multiple embeddedness approach.

An explorative research design, based on an eclectic theoretical framework and on purposive sampling, combines qualitative in-depth interviews/content analysis and on-site observation resulting in an almost ethnographic assessment of selected case studies of Turkish migrant family entrepreneurs (concerning age (min. 20 years), size (15+ employees) and currently at a stage of succession).

The results show that despite specific strategies vary – four circumstances hold true for all cases: (1) firm trajectories were characterized by little strategic planning and mostly trail-and error processes in the past and business survival is highly dependent on owner families; (2) owner families heavily relied on personal, family and collective resources, not benefiting from promotion programmes or micro-funding measures for SMEs; (3) owner families have actively developed their (mixed) embeddings during the growth of their migrant business beyond the single ethnic group at various spatial scales; (4) succession adds another layer of context – what we call here multiple embeddedness – with ambivalent effects: emerging potentials and conflicts between the preceding and succeeding generation.

Results have shown that is it necessary to set up both: customized funding opportunities for migrant start-ups in general and succession consulting for migrant family entrepreneurs in particular. Given the magnitude of family migrant entrepreneurs and the accelerating migration patterns in most Western European countries, there is urgent need for such measures.

Family entrepreneurship has been often discussed without a migration perspective, neither taking a systematic look at pertinent motivation, resources, and future trajectories nor context. Migrant entrepreneurship studies barely take the family or family-specific issues (e.g. succession) into account, and mainly deal with the integration or economic aspects. Our mixed and multiple embeddedness approach allows for a holistic view on transgenerational migrant family entrepreneurship by integrating both socio-spatial (actor, family, network, micro, meso, macro) and multi-generational contexts (preceding, succeeding).

This paper aims to synthesize the literature on embeddedness of MNE subsidiaries, rethinking the concept of “multiple embeddedness” in order to clarify the importance of the subsidiary-specific advantages.

A new and innovative framework based on four key relationships: home country-specific advantages (CSAs)-Headquarters (HQ); HQ-subsidiary; subsidiary-host CSAs; and subsidiary-HQ. This framework is used to discuss the complex phenomenon of “multiple embeddedness”.

The framework proposed sheds light on the subsidiary's need to develop and sustain over time its subsidiary-specific advantages (SSAs) and, where possible, to “upgrade” these SSAs and to integrate them across the entire network of the MNE. The framework is based on two pillars. The first one is the “creation and development” of firm-specific advantages (FSAs) (in the home country) and SSAs (in the host country); the second one is the “transfer” of these advantages from the parent to the subsidiary and vice versa. In addition, several interesting interrelations are found between the four main relationships, and the central role of the recombination capabilities and the importance of distance are highlighted.

This paper is one of the first to develop a framework incorporating all the relevant relationships in multiple embeddedness. The framework is innovative and “embeddedness” is analyzed in a novel way, as many studies only partially analyze this complex phenomenon and neglect one or more of these relationships.

The purpose of this paper is to examine opportunities and challenges from multiple-embeddedness of developed countries multinational enterprises (DMNEs) in emerging economies. It further investigates the effect of global financial crisis on the DMNE’s embeddedness strategies.

Utilising POLS regression on secondary data bases, such as World Bank Development Indicators, over two period, first, from 2003 to 2007 (pre global financial crisis period), and second, from 2008 to 2012 (post global financial crisis), this study models the advantages and challenges faced by DMNEs into emerging markets.

Findings suggest that challenges in terms of institutional and cultural differences have decreased over time. This may be due to the DMNE’s experience of operating in emerging economies.

Since the global financial crisis is on-going, further changes in terms of opportunities and challenges are yet to be uncovered. Further investigations using qualitative designs are also warranted because many qualitative phenomena, such as cultural differences, cannot be captured through purely quantitative methods.

There are two practical implications. First, policy makers can appreciate the change in the economic gravity in the current scenario. Openness of economies may further bring in economic equilibrium in favour of emerging economies. Second, managers of businesses looking to internationalise should pay attention towards changing market conditions and requirements in emerging economies.

This paper portrays the importance emerging economies which consist of a large proportion of the world’s population.

In the current economic scenario, this paper seeks to highlight the opportunities and challenges for multiple embeddedness through mergers and acquisitions in emerging economies, which is seen to be timely and topical and at the same time advances the theoretical knowledge and practical implications.

The purpose of this paper is to address the misapplication of the embeddedness concept in Ferraris’s (2014) paper and show how it needs to be used as a cornerstone economic sociology concept within his proposed framework. This paper is a response to his paper in the Multinational Business Review “Rethinking the literature on ‘multiple embeddedness’ and subsidiary-specific advantages”.

The paper outlines the origin of the embeddedness concept and its evolution within the economic sociology literature. It addresses different types of embeddedness and continues with a critical analysis of Ferraris’s (2014) proposed framework of four main types of multinational enterprise (MNE) relationships. It provides suggestions for its improvement and application, as well as discusses the appropriate applications of embeddedness concept by international business (IB) scholars in MNE research.

The paper shows how the embeddedness concept is mostly used as a metaphor and as a simple umbrella label for different types of connections between MNEs, their subsidiaries and different types of environments. The analysis of Ferraris’s (2014) proposed framework shows how MNE embeddedness is incorrectly understood as emanating from the balancing of local responsiveness and global integration within MNEs, where subsidiaries develop subsidiary-specific advantages (SSAs) by recombining home – host country-specific advantages and parent – subsidiary firm-specific advantages (FSAs).

The paper adds to the existing IB understanding of MNEs’ multiple embeddedness and subsidiaries’ dual embeddedness through a wider and more structured economic sociology perspective. It provides an appropriate economic sociology-grounded typology of different types of embeddedness. A discussion of possible future research directions stresses how the embeddedness – dissembeddedness capability is a key source of MNE competitive advantage, which moderates the actual recombination process of producing FSAs and SSAs.

This chapter analyses the multiple embeddedness of MNEs, and their participation in solving contemporary societal issues. We aim to increase understanding on the relational processes and network dynamics present in MNEs’ participation in cross-sector partnerships.

Our study addresses the issue of the poor ecological state of the Baltic Sea and illustrates the early developments in cross-sector collaboration. We build on a single exploratory case study of the cooperation of one MNE (IBM) with an environmental NGO (BSAG) in Finland. We analyse how participation in the cross-sector collaboration manifests itself in the external and internal networks of the MNE.

We show that an initiative by the NGO to participate in environmental work was actively adopted within the MNE and led to network changes. These changes concerned both the activation of existing links and the establishment of new links with such actors as authorities and research institutes. The NGO acted as a catalyser and cultural mediator to create a bridge between the MNE and governmental actors.

There is a need to investigate cross-sector collaboration in other contexts – particularly from the perspective of MNEs and (international) business networks. Questions such as how do enduring (business and socio-political) relationships emerge from MNE’s participation in issue networks and how technology that has been developed to solve a specific societal issue may be translated into commercial solutions are especially promising. We also urge scholars to investigate the ties, texture and dynamics (including tensions) of business relationships with those of public actors and civil society.

Participation in cross-sector initiatives may grant an MNE a forerunner position in the creation of new sustainable markets and technologies. It may also create an opportunity to influence policymakers and build new socio-political networks. From the perspective of a subsidiary of an MNE, engagement with cross-sector partnerships may strengthen its voice within the MNE network.

Our study contributes to the understanding of the relationship dynamics between actors in cross-sector collaboration around a societal (environmental) issue. Our analysis illustrates the embeddedness of MNE networks, where actions in the regional and global networks (the representatives of the headquarters) overlap with and strengthen the local actions of the subsidiary.

For the developed economies in Europe, to which refugees move, and as refugees’ enterprising expectations evolve, emerging cognitive factors have become closely intertwined with their post-arrival encounters. However, the link between refugees’ social cognition and entrepreneurship commitment tends to be overlooked. This paper aims to join the international debates regarding cognitions of refugee entrepreneurship and explain the bewildering effects of refugees’ social cognitive dissonance on refugee business support.

This paper reviews the extant knowledge of refugee entrepreneurship and refugee business support. It synthesizes the literature on cognitive dissonance, multiple embeddedness and hospitality to inform a conceptual model and explain the ramifications of refugees’ entrepreneurial cognition on refugee business support and how public attitudes in the destination transform accordingly.

This paper illustrates the prevalent imbalance between the provision of support and refugees’ anticipations in developed economies. A conceptual toolkit is framed to disclose the succeeding influence of cognitive dissonance on the performances of refugee business support. This framework indicates that the cognitive dissonance could elicit heterogeneous aftermath of refugee business support service, resulting in a deteriorated/ameliorated hospitality context.

This conceptual toolkit unfolds cognitive ingredients in the refugee entrepreneurship journey, providing a framework for understanding refugee business support and the formation of hospitality under cognitive dissonance. Practically, it is conducive to policymakers nurturing rational refugee anticipation, enacting inclusive business support and enhancing hospitality in the host country.

The purpose of this paper is to argue that multilateral knowledge transfer emerges from two lines of thinking in the international business (IB) literature – the exploitation of multinationality and the contributory role of subsidiaries – and links three levels of analysis – headquarters, knowledge-creating subsidiaries and host-country environments.

Multilateral knowledge transfer, both vertical and horizontal, is considered in this paper as a cross-level phenomenon that emerges as a result of beneficial interdependencies between headquarters, knowledge-creating subsidiaries and their host-country environments. The paper also discusses the concept of embeddedness, which both lines of thinking draw upon, and argues that the multinational enterprise (MNE) headquarters can actually moderate both internal and external embeddedness through global strategy and organizational design.

By putting forward an integrative cross-level interdependency framework that incorporates insights from the R&D internationalization literature and the subsidiary evolution literature, this paper delineates multilateral knowledge transfer as an MNE strategy to systematically transform and integrate knowledge created at the subsidiary-level for the global competitive advantage at the MNE group-level.

Such a perspective reemphasizes the multi-level nature of IB studies and provides new opportunities for theoretical and empirical development as did the internalization theory which has theorized the conventional headquarters-to-subsidiaries knowledge transfer more than 40 years ago.

This study examines the case of an initial training, called “Dojo”, invented and implemented at a production site in the Czech Republic. It clarifies the initial training program implementation process and offers a conceptual framework for cooperative management of subsidiary activities at the site and firm.

This study conducts an in-depth analysis of qualitative data from the Czech production site over a five-year period. The theoretical base is the theorization and labeling phase of management innovation (MI), the final phase of which legitimizes a new management practice. Interview data, archival data, pictures and financial data are used for the analysis.

To legitimize the Dojo in the operational flow controlled by the site and firm, the Czech production site acquires validation of the Dojo from employees and board members of the Japanese and European headquarters, helping the site build trustful relationships with them. Training programs, process standardization and skills standardization of the workers offer benefits to the trainees, production site and firm.

The authors offer theoretical insights into MI at the subsidiary-level, which past studies have not differentiated at the firm-level. The authors also provide details of the implementation and management of initial training for newly hired blue-collar workers at the production site. The findings complement related literature on human resource management and operational management.