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The paper's aim is to build a model that predicts the optimum tactics for capitalizing on inventions within the context of competitive interaction among large firms. For patenting, the paper seeks to show how invention value and firm rivalry drive the tactics of competing, deterring competitors, retreating from markets, and cooperating. It also aims to explore the effects of the contingencies of patent bulking, technology complexity, spheres of influence, resource similarity, and complementary‐resource tacitness.

The work is conceptual.

The base model shows that patenting can be used to protect markets where there is high invention‐value and high rivalry. When both invention‐value and rivalry are low, the best tactic is to cooperate. When value is high and rivalry low, patenting can be used as a signaling and deterring mechanism, but when value is low and rivalry is high the best option is to let patents lapse and retreat from markets. The moderating effects of patent bulking, technology complexity, spheres of influence, resource similarity, and complementary‐resource tacitness affect rivalry and the amount of patenting that will be done.

The paper provides propositions for empirical testing that are predictive of firm performance, rivalry, and patent bulking. Despite the authors' attention to key contingencies, it is impossible to be completely comprehensive in addressing all contingencies.

The framework provides tactics for competing and, consequently, maximizing income and minimizing costs.

The work synthesizes extant thinking on patents and multipoint competition. While the base model should be valuable for managers, the overall work should be valuable for academics.

Aim of the present monograph is the economic analysis of the role of MNEs regarding globalisation and digital economy and in parallel there is a reference and examination of some legal aspects concerning MNEs, cyberspace and e‐commerce as the means of expression of the digital economy. The whole effort of the author is focused on the examination of various aspects of MNEs and their impact upon globalisation and vice versa and how and if we are moving towards a global digital economy.

Strategy and marketing scholars look at strategic issues from different points of view and attempt to explain strategic choice and performance from their unique perspectives. This paper combines these perspectives in the context of international ventures and develops a conceptual framework integrating international marketing strategy decisions with entry mode decisions. The resulting contingency framework extends the hierarchical entry‐mode decision model and allows for a better specification of the strategy‐performance relationship in international business.

Conventional economic and management theories explain that business groups facing market liberalization policy reforms (i.e., competitive shocks) would have incentives to reduce corporate portfolios and increase internationalization. We empirically examine the strategic responses of Argentine business groups and, through an inductive theory building process, propose refinements to this theory. We argue that such a strategy process is moderated not only by differences in market forces set out by policy reforms across different economic segments but also by the path dependency of resources and capabilities as well as management decision‐making style of individual business groups. We discuss implications for theory and practice.

Competitive advantage is perhaps the most widely used term in strategic management, yet it remains poorly defined and operationalized. This paper makes three observations regarding competitive advantage and conceptually explores the various patterns of relationship between competitive advantage and firm performance. First, competitive advantage does not equate to superior performance. Second, competitive advantage is a relational term. Third, it is context‐specific. This paper examines three patterns of relationship between competitive advantage and firm performance: 1) competitive advantage leading to superior performance; 2) competitive advantage without superior performance, and 3) superior performance without competitive advantage. The ultimate purpose of this article is to help generate a healthy debate among strategy scholars on the usefulness of the competitive advantage construct for our theory building and testing. This paper proposes that we re‐examine the notion of competitive advantage and formally assess its usefulness for theory building and testing in the field of Strategic Management. The notion of competitive advantage has been a cornerstone of our field. As such, research on competitive advantage occupies a central position in strategy literature (e.g., Porter, 1980, 1985; Rumelt, 1984, 1987; Barney, 1986, 1991; Ghemawat, 1986, 1991; Peteraf, 1993; Teece, Pisano, & Shuen, 1997). However, the notion of competitive advantage itself has rarely been systematically addressed and, to date, remains poorly defined and operationalized. Is competitive advantage what it takes to compete, a characterization observed during competition, or an outcome of competition? Is competitive advantage contingent on the competitive situation or is it a more general trait of the firm? Put differently, how is competitive advantage different from competence, strengths and, ultimately, performance? This article, addressing the above questions, makes three observations regarding competitive advantage. First, competitive advantage does not equate to (superior) performance. Second, competitive advantage is a relational construct. Third, competitive advantage is context‐specific. In presenting these three observations, this article proposes suggestions to refine and operationalize “competitive advantage.” It then conceptually explores the relationship between competitive advantage and performance, which is argued to be much more complex than it is currently being treated in the literature. Concluding remarks follow.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an analysis of factors that impact global competitiveness for firms in the Fortune Global 500.

The paper uses regression analysis to investigate the relationship between relevant competitiveness factors and firm performance for Fortune Global 500 firms, using the time period 1995‐2009.

The composition of firms on the list has changed over the timeframe. The results indicate that headquarters location and globalization are key indicators of firm performance. Other factors such as chief executive officer tenure have a lesser impact on firm performance.

The timeframe of the study may have impacted the findings. The study included only large firms and thus the findings may not hold for smaller or medium‐sized firms. Additional follow‐up studies are planned.

Managers can identify factors associated with global competitiveness from the paper and pursue those factors in their business strategies.

This study replicates other studies that analyze the relationship between firm situational factors and firm performance. However, this study uses a unique sample, the Fortune Global 500, over a 15‐year period.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how firms with multimarket contacts in both product and geographic markets make foreign direct investments (FDI) location choices and to advance the understanding about how managers with cognitive limits cope with opportunities to take the advantage of mutual forbearance in two types of markets.

Drawing upon the literatures on multimarket contact and decision making, the authors develop original hypotheses on how multimarket contacts in two types of markets influence firms’ choice of destination for foreign investments. The authors test the hypotheses using longitudinal archival data on foreign market entries of Japanese auto parts makers.

The authors find that when choosing FDI locations, firms reduce the cognitive burdens of coping with multimarket contacts in the two types of markets by focussing exclusively on what is perceived as relevant to the decision at hand. The authors also find that this propensity is particularly significant for large firms, whereas small firms use different decision rules and avoid entering markets with the greater degree of multimarket contact with prior entrants, whether in product or national market.

Although heuristics simplify competitive environments and reduce managers’ cognitive burdens, such a cost-saving orientation could increase the risk associated with international entry that may end in severe counterattacks from prior entrants, wasteful foreign investments, and substantial entry failures.

This study contributes to the literature by adopting multimarket contact theory to foreign market entry, jointly analyzing two types of multimarket contacts, testing three alternative hypotheses about how boundedly rational managers cope with multimarket contacts in two markets, and demonstrating that managers focus on multimarket contacts only in one type of markets when making entry decisions.

Drawing on the contingency perspective of strategy, the purpose of this paper is to extend current understanding of fit between a differentiation strategy of the industrial firm’s foreign subsidiary and key contextual boundaries.

A conceptual framework is developed in which a differentiation strategy involves the complementary approaches of innovativeness and customer responsiveness. The key boundaries consist of local competitive dynamics and the value-adding mandate assigned to the subsidiary. Detailed features of four types of differentiation strategies are identified by analysing strategies applied by subsidiaries of industrial firms operating on the US market.

Four propositions are developed regarding alignment between strategy types and the boundaries. Relationships are proposed regarding a strategy type and a context specified by rivalry/relational competitive dynamics, and a broad/narrow value-adding mandate.

The conceptual framework and the propositions may be tested by analysing statistical data on industrial firms’ subsidiaries operating in several host countries.

To increase a foreign subsidiary’s contribution to the global competitiveness of an industrial firm, an awareness of the boundaries to the subsidiary’s strategy of differentiation that may hamper the subsidiary’s performance is essential.

The conceptual framework, and the propositions, contributes to literature on the industrial firm’s global strategy because it focuses on subsidiary strategy and extends present understanding of the mechanisms that drive the effectiveness of a foreign subsidiary’s differentiation strategy.

The paper aims to understand which location determinants are relevant in a subsidiary location decision under the interaction influence of an emerging‐market firm's (EMF) resource and internationalization motives.

The paper prepares a typology of an EMF's resources which are different from those of a developed‐country firm. It proceeds to argue which internationalization motives are likely to work for an EMF endowed with a specific resource. Finally, the paper posits the impact of resource and internationalization motives on the relevance of some location determinants over others in an EMF's location decision matrix.

The conceptual framework proposes a relationship between EMF resources, internationalization motives and location determinants and prioritizes some location determinant(s) over others for various combinations of EMF resource and internationalization motives.

The paper contributes to the literature by proposing a unique typology of EMF resources. The overall framework informs the scholars about the importance of idiosyncratic resources as the basis of differential location decisions.

This article presents a guiding framework for multinational managers to assess optimum location decisions on the basis of idiosyncratic firm resources and internationalization motives.

The paper fills a scholarly gap by proposing a framework that relates firm resources and internationalization motives to location determinants. In the process, the paper also proposes a resource typology for resources unique to EMFs.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how managers’ evaluation of and reaction to multiple rivals’ actions will be affected by the distributional characteristics of these actions, including the extent to which rivals’ actions are centered on certain firms (actor concentration), concentrated in certain time periods (temporal concentration), and clustered in certain geographic locations (spatial concentration).

The analyses are based on panel data on Taiwanese producers of personal computers and peripherals and the investments they made in mainland China after the Asian financial crisis. The authors employ fixed-effect logit regression to test the hypotheses.

Rivals’ recent actions in China increase a focal firm’s inclination to act especially when these rivals’ actions are characterized by a high level of actor, temporal, and/or spatial concentration.

The analytical approach goes beyond a dyad-level conceptualization of interfirm rivalry. Incorporating insights from behavioral decision making, the paper shows how a firm with limited attentive capacity reacts to the aggregate impact of multiple rivals’ actions.