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John Dunning introduced the OLI (Ownership‐Location‐Internalization) paradigm 37 years ago to explain the origin, level, pattern, and growth of MNEs’ offshore activities. Over the years, OLI has developed into perhaps the dominant paradigm in international business (IB) studies. However, the costs of being a paradigm are reflected in Dunning’s efforts to include an ever‐expanding array of IB theories and phenomena under the OLI “big tent.” In this paper, we focus specifically on the O in the OLI paradigm, tracing the history of Dunning’s ownership advantages. We argue that the modifications of O advantages over the past 37 years, as Dunning attempted to bring all IB phenomena and IB‐related theories under the OLI “big tent,” has had mixed results. However, we continue to believe that the typology of ownership advantages retains its relevance for IB scholars; that O advantages cannot and should not be subsumed within internalization advantages; and that O advantages are necessary for explaining the existence and success of the MNE as an organizational form

This study aims to advance a sub-national perspective within the OLI Paradigm by analyzing how and to what extent the Eclectic Paradigm can serve as a general model to capture region-specific aspects of the location determinants of FDI, encompassing institutional effects that extend beyond the quality of institutions.

The authors conducted a systematic literature review of 41 selected papers published between 1990 and 2019. Using inductive content analysis, they investigated the theoretical choices used to support analyses of the effects of institutional factors on MNEs' location decisions at the sub-national level.

It was found that, when changing from the national to the sub-national level of analysis, there is no need to change the main assumptions used in the literature, although a different perspective must be adopted. The Eclectic Paradigm permeates most of the studies revised and can serve as a general model to capture the sub-national perspective. It offers a foundation for new perspectives on the dynamics of institutional and political factors and their effects on location strategies and determinants at the sub-national level. Adopting the OLI Paradigm with a sub-national approach could widen the IB literature's prevailing focus on traditional economic factors and institutional quality.

The authors contribute to extant International Business literature Their paper enhances the literature on FDI location determinants by providing a more specific approach to development of a sub-national perspective within the OLI Paradigm, extending the institutional effects to capture more region-specific factors influencing the location of FDI. Study limitations are related to our analytical focus on the location dimension, excluding motives for FDI or firm-level location strategies. Rather than limiting analysis to quantitative studies, future research that includes qualitative studies and also covers the other dimensions of the OLI Paradigm could open additional new research avenues for advancing the sub-national perspective within the field of IB.

The authors’ main findings suggest that MNEs' location strategies should include a sub-national perspective, which means that firms need to assess different levels of the location and understand their interaction with nationwide constraints and limitations, as it may affect firms' ability to effectively conduct their value-adding activities. They also contribute elements that can support sub-national governments' actions and policies aiming to enhance locational advantages to attract and retain FDI.

This review specifically analyzes the location determinants of FDI at the sub-national level, in studies published in a broad set of journals, from a variety of fields, prioritizing articles that investigate sub-national institutional determinants. The authors derive implications for the International Business literature and propose that the sub-national dimension should be incorporated into the Eclectic paradigm in order to better understand the influence of institutional sub-national determinants.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the main contributions of the new institutional economics to the international business (IB) arena. It also intends to show how the NIE is being incorporated to both eclectic paradigm and Uppsala school’s view, and how it is modifying them.

A range of IB articles, which contained an institutional view and also discussed the eclectic paradigm or the Uppsala school, provides the background to build a framework.

This paper proposes a framework showing the impact of the institutional variables on the internationalization of firms, by addressing both the OLI paradigm and Uppsala school. It also concludes that the institutional theory has been a point of intersection between the OLI paradigm and Uppsala school, since both have been renewed to understand the transaction costs borne by the firms in their international learning process and in the search for less asymmetrical information.

This paper provided a brief discussion about the institutional components.

This study is a useful source of information for those who want to discuss the institutional impact in the IB arena and emerging markets.

This paper summarizes how the OLI paradigm and Uppsala school encompassed the institutional variables. It also presents a framework that allows new study possibilities since the understanding of the influence of institutional variables on the international movements of firms is still cloudy.

The purpose of this paper is to present a novel version of Dunning’s eclectic paradigm of internationalisation (OLI framework) to explain both inbound and outbound Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in multinational contracting.

The OLI factors and hypothesis are significantly developed to address a weakness in the OLI framework in its application to settings, such as multinational contracting, with extreme heterogeneity arising from extreme location specificity.

These developments advance Dunning’s seminal contribution and bring this to life in construction research that has barely applied the framework and, when doing so, has focused only on outbound FDI by multinational contractors (MCs).

The power of the OLI framework is increased on explaining and predicting FDI in contexts that exhibit extreme heterogeneity associated with extreme location specificity. Furthermore, the operationalisation of key theories representing the framework’s OLI factors is made far more precise.

Engineering, construction and architectural managers, can now more reliably apply the OLI framework both in MCs’ outbound FDI decisions and in governments’ decisions to attract new MCs – or inbound FDI.

A significant advance is made in the OLI framework in settings with extreme location specificity, along with the operationalisation of key theories associated with the OLI factors, including the first steps to operationalise Coase’s Nobel prize-winning transaction cost thesis.

The authors revisit the traditional OLI paradigm with the objective to allocate politics within the set of internationalization advantages by building on the political strategy literature. The authors outline the specific role of political advantage that facilitates and propels the international expansion of state-owned multinational enterprises (SOMNEs) from emerging markets.

A conceptual paper which explains the role of political advantage in the internationalization of SOMNEs. The authors expand the scope of the OLI to capture the impact of firms' home governments' policies and relationships with host countries which are leveraged by SOMNEs in their internationalization.

The authors define political advantage as a new type of advantage which depends on and is sourced from external actors. The authors argue that P-advantage is a multifaceted and unstable part of POLI composition, which is contingent on political shifts and may be leveraged by various firms. The authors also assert that political capabilities have limitations in sustaining political advantage, which may be compensated via enhancing the political activity of firms.

The authors conceptualize the POLI-advantages paradigm for the internationalization of SOMNEs by proposing that in addition to the traditional ownership, location, and internalization advantages, firms can capitalize on their political advantage to enter markets where internationalization might have been difficult without their political connections.

This study investigates the impact of geopolitical disruptions on the manufacturing supply chain (SC) location decision of managers in UK multinational firms. The context of study is the UK manufacturing sector and its response to the UK's decision to leave the European Union (EU), or Brexit.

The study adopts an abductive, theory elaboration approach and expands on Dunning's eclectic paradigm of international production. A Delphi study over four iterative rounds is conducted to gather and assess insights into manufacturing SC location issues related to Brexit. The panel consisted of 30 experts and managers from a range of key industries, consultancies, governmental organisations, and academia. The Delphi findings are triangulated using a focus group with 38 participants.

The findings indicate that the majority of companies planned or have relocated production facilities from the UK to the EU, and distribution centres (DCs) from the EU to the UK. This was because of market-seeking advantages (being close to major centres of demand, ease of access to local and international markets) and efficiency-seeking advantages (costs related to expected delays at ports, tariff and non-tariff barriers). Ownership and internalisation advantages, also suggested by the eclectic paradigm, did not play a role in the location decision.

The study elaborates on the OLI framework by showing that policy-related uncertainty is a primary influencing factor in the manufacturing location decision, outweighing the importance of uncertainty as an influencer of governance mode choices. The authors find that during geopolitical disruptions managers make location decisions in tight time-frames with incomplete and imperfect information, in situations of high perceived uncertainty. The study elaborates on the eclectic paradigm by explaining how managerial cognition and bounded rationality influence the manufacturing location decision-making process.

The eclectic paradigm as developed by Dunning evolved in response to the changing IB milieu. I argue that this continual expansion threatens to make the paradigm tautological, without an honest “gatekeeper.” Continual expansion to address new lacunae begins to have decreasing returns, either because the gatekeeper cannot expect to have the specialized knowledge, or because the number of extensions makes the final product unwieldy. I propose a return to a basic eclectic paradigm, which I refer to as “EP‐lite,” that can then be complemented by other frameworks and theories as needed. In a similar vein, the growing number of sub‐categories of ownership advantages does not in itself provide greater clarity. Besides, the “correct” definition of what constitute O advantages is relative to the purpose for which it is being used.

The purpose of this paper is to complement the conventional international business (IB) theory, the OLI perspective, which is good at explaining the foreign direct investments (FDIs) undertaken by developed market multinational corporations (DMNCs). This study also suggests a new theoretical framework, namely, the OILL paradigm, that is able to encompass FDIs from emerging market multinational corporations (EMNCs) toward developed economies.

The data comprising 206 Chinese MNCs, which completed international mergers and acquisitions (IMAs), were obtained from Zephyr. By using these data, logical regressions are conducted to statistically confirm that we should not omit the learning motivation if we want to adequately understand the FDI phenomenon by encompassing investment flow from developing (or emerging) to developed countries.

The results based on this data set indicate that EMNCs often try to enter developed economies with the motivation to seek sophisticated foreign host knowledge that is not available internally. In particular, they tend to use IMA strategies when they want to learn from heterogeneity (i.e. inter-industry mergers and acquisitions) and absorb advanced technologies from DMNCs.

By shedding light on the recent new trend in FDI (i.e. FDI from emerging countries to developed economies), the study provides useful theoretical implications, as well as suggesting scholarly contributions. However, we should acknowledge that there are some limitations to this study. First, the study explores only Chinese MNCs. Second, learning motivations need to be minutely and precisely measured by other studies. Third, this study argues that FDI from EMNCs to DMNCs is triggered by the former’s motivation concerning knowledge acquisition. However, the type of knowledge should be considered, and this is perhaps another avenue for future research.

Conventional IB theories, such as the OLI paradigm and internalization theory, have long sought to answer the question of why DMNCs go for foreign markets, in spite of the presence of the liabilities of foreignness, and focused on their main investment motivations (i.e. market-seeking, efficiency-seeking and resource-seeking motivations). For this reason, these theories do not adequately capture the primary FDI motivations of EMNCs, and consequently, they are unable to see the big picture when it comes to the FDI phenomenon. Based on this idea, the authors complement the well-known triad motivations (i.e. market-seeking, efficiency-seeking and resource-seeking motivations) by adding the knowledge-seeking motive and contribute to the evolution of IB theories by suggesting a new theory, which is the OILL paradigm.

The study contributes to the extant literature in the field of IB in two key ways. First, it examines EMNCs’ central motivations in conducting FDI where empirical research is sparse. By doing this, this paper attempts to solve the query indicated above (i.e. why MNCs choose FDI in spite of the presence of the liabilities of foreignness), and it offers a new theory (i.e. the OILL paradigm).

The purpose of this paper is to synthesize a manufacturing value network for digital multinationals that combines the global reach of multinationals, the power of platform business models and digitalization. Toward this, the authors assess the critical roles platform ecosystems, and Industry 4.0 play in resolving the key challenges associated with asset specificity, location specificity and information asymmetry, inherent in the conventional business models of manufacturing multinationals.

The authors take an exploratory approach in reviewing industry literature and analyzing implementations of digital technologies in manufacturing and supply chain processes at four large manufacturing multinationals from diverse industry sectors, from electronics to packaged food production. The authors also identify how value-creation activities are relocated, and how players collaborate to create and capture value. Consequently, the authors abstract a framework for global value network of manufacturing multinationals.

With changing definitions of industry, competition and organizations, the authors’ framework for manufacturing value network establishes the ways digitalization can be integrated in the global businesses of manufacturing multinationals, realizing the combinatorial effect of Industry 4.0 and platform ecosystems. The transformation redefines the ways multinationals have been leveraging their ownership-location-internalization (OLI) advantages. The authors recognize that the multinational orchestrator plays a critical role in creating shared goals for platform participants and governing the dynamics. In addition, the participants' propensity to trust the platform and the perceived trustworthiness of the orchestrator shape the scope and boundaries of the platform.

The authors raise critical questions about the role of multinational orchestrator and trust dimensions. In addition, the OLI-platform paradigm that incorporates the combinatorial effect of platform ecosystem and Industry 4.0 explains how multinationals create and capture value in new ways.

The purpose of this perspective paper is to answer the question of why some multinational corporations (MNCs) do not evolve and fail to avoid retrogression by natural selection in international business (IB) and to introduce eight papers selected for this special issue.

The authors conceptually discuss the reasons for MNC failure by illustrating key motivations behind foreign direct investment (FDI) undertaken by MNCs based on internalization theory, the OLI paradigm and the OILL (i.e. OLI plus the learning motivation) paradigm. Then, the authors develop an evolutionary perspective to explore the survival of the fittest in the global markets and the natural selection of MNCs.

The eight papers selected for this special issue expand the authors’ understanding of globalized organizations' challenges, evolution and decline as well as offering a distinct opportunity to reconsider diverse extant theories about MNCs by suggesting an extension that accounts for the rise of various globalized organizations particularly in and from emerging markets.

Despite increased numbers of MNCs, which struggle to survive and are faced with great risk of failure, the authors’ understanding of them still remains in infancy. While scholars have investigated diverse topics related to MNCs, existing studies have developed theories predominantly emphasizing MNC success. Thus, conventional theories in IB such as internalization theory and the OLI paradigm may not be sufficiently applicable to explain the phenomenon of MNC failure (i.e. MNC decline). Based on authors’ discussions, the authors believe this is an appropriate time to refine mainstream IB theories by concurrently considering both evolution and retrogression.