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While publications on the regional nature of multinational enterprises have sparked a lively debate about the nature and measurement of regionalization and (semi)globalization, and performance implications are starting to be addressed, the broader societal and sustainability dimensions have received limited attention. Likewise, international business research on these issues has generally not considered regionalization and its consequences. This paper extends insights from the regionalization literature and broadens the debate by exploring aspects that arise when societal and sustainability implications are taken into account as well. It outlines several areas for further research, addressing geographic scope, organizational levels, and upstream/downstream and country/industry/issue peculiarities

This chapter is a commentary on Kobrin's essay on the current transition to the transnational era where there is a shift in the balance of power from sovereign states to non-state stakeholders and what role the multinational corporation (MNC) plays in this transition. It celebrates Kobrin's long-established scholarship and discusses his recent thinking regarding the new reconceptualization of space, the fragmentation of political authority and the intermingling of public and private spheres, in the context of transnational governance. In his essay, Kobrin raises many interesting questions and opens new avenues for inter-disciplinary research on the MNC in the up-and-coming transnational era.

Exploration of potential markets in foreign regions such as Europe becomes critical for emerging market multinational enterprises (MNEs). This study aims to investigate structural factors that affect the location choice of Chinese and Indian MNEs in Europe and compares them with USA and Japanese MNEs.

The authors use a holistic approach to identify possible configurations of the determinants of Indian and Chinese outward foreign direct investment (FDI) into 38 European countries. The authors test two configurations as follows: knowledge-seeking by Chinese and Indian MNEs in “non-predictable” markets; market-seeking by USA and Japanese MNEs.

The findings reveal several strategies deployed in Europe by Chinese and Indian MNEs that are more specific than the pure strategies identified in the literature (e.g. market-seeking, knowledge-seeking). More importantly, unlike USA and Japanese MNEs, the findings confirm a two-stage strategy hypothesis for Chinese MNEs in Europe. Additionally, they show that the quality of institutions and infrastructure underlies the attractiveness of a territory.

Multilevel configurational research might have also been used to consider firm- and industry-level determinants.

Good governance positively affects the entire set of locational determinants. In addition, good infrastructure and institutions are necessary conditions for a country to attract FDI inflow.

Recent internationalization models have been useful in identifying drivers of FDI by emerging market multinational enterprises vs advanced market multinational enterprises in Europe. This study mobilizes a comparative configurational approach.

The purpose of this paper is to address the issue of the implementation of international advertising strategies by first introducing a framework of four options that multinational enterprises (MNEs) can use to implement such strategies and second by drawing on contingency theory to develop and test hypotheses relating to how environmental factors and company characteristics affect such implementation.

Hypotheses are tested using web‐survey data obtained from 182 Latin American managers based in the Mercosur trading bloc.

Findings show that the choice of implementation process option is contingent on the environmental factor, cultural homogeneity and the company characteristics subsidiary size and MNE country‐of‐origin, yet not on regional economic integration.

This exploratory study contributes to advertising theory by offering an alternative approach to the consideration of the international advertising standardization question that focuses on the implementation of strategies rather than on their development. The findings further confirm the theory of regional multinationals in the context of international advertising decisions.

The study presents practitioners with four distinct approaches to implementing their international advertising strategies as well as with clear guidelines as to how managers should implement those strategies depending on the specific benefits of standardization they want to achieve.

To the knowledge of the authors, this study is the first to specifically address the implementation of international advertising strategies.

The authors seek to advance the understanding of small- and medium-sized enterprise (SME) internationalization at the regional level and examine the role of home market institutions in this process.

The authors analyze hypotheses with data from SMEs in five country markets and from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor. A cluster analysis establishes the regional diversification patterns (based on regional diversification scope, speed and rhythm) and a multinomial regression tests the effect of home market institutions on their adoption.

The results offer a refined picture of SME regional diversification by revealing three patterns: intra-regionally focused firms, late inter-region diversifiers and early inter-region diversifiers. They also suggest that the adoption of these patterns is determined by SMEs' home market institutions.

The authors develop a nuanced understanding of SME internationalization by building upon and expanding the regionalization rationale in the internationalization patterns literature. Additionally, the authors address the acknowledged, yet rarely investigated, country-level determinants of internationalization patterns.

This paper aims to contribute to the regionalisation–globalisation debate in international business (IB) by providing a longitudinal analysis of firm-level multinationality. The analysis uses a unique hand-collected data set of both accounting (sales) and non-accounting (subsidiaries) data. The percentage of foreign sales is also used as an additional measure of multinationality.

This paper categorises constituent firms of the Financial Times Stock Exchange 350 index over an 18-year time period from 1998 to 2015. Firms are categorised using the multinationality classification system developed by Aggarwal et al. (2011). The paper also conducts an industrial analysis across ten industries.

The evidence shows increasing multinationality over time that suggests a “trans-regional” operational strategy rather than a global or regional one. The results also show that UK firms are more multinational based on subsidiaries than sales. This contradicts the traditional stages theory of internationalisation where firms first expand sales, then subsidiaries. While some support for triad regions is found, there is also evidence of firm-level operations expanding beyond the triad regions of North America, Asia and Europe to non-triad regions such as Africa, Oceania and South America. The industrial analysis shows that non-service firms are more multinational than service firms.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper to provide an in-depth longitudinal analysis of the geographical dispersion using both sales and subsidiaries data for UK firms. This paper provides a unique perspective on the regionalisation–globalisation debate in IB and presents evidence contrary to traditional stages theories of firm-level internationalisation.

When firms consider entering a new foreign market, they also consider the institutional distance between the home and host countries. The differences in culture and in formal institutions compose the institutional distance and affect whether and how firms enter these markets. Greater institutional distance contributes to the liabilities of foreignness the challenges of which must be managed effectively to succeed in the new market.

The paper aims to motivate more rigorous theoretical and empirical specification of the home regionalization phenomenon, in particular the dynamics of shifting advantage over time within a multinational enterprise. It aims to improve dialogue among regionalization researchers.

Contrasting the economizing and behavioral perspectives on internationalization, the paper presents five different archetypes of the home‐regionalization phenomenon. These archetypes are predicated on strategic management stylizations of competitive advantage.

The paper demonstrates that the notion of home regionalization as a dominant and superior model for firm internationalization remains a promising yet under‐explained and inconsistently articulated thesis. By introducing and exploring the archetypes, it shows the diversity of home‐regionalization theses, and the prospect that multiple forms of regionalization may be at play for different firms, industries and locations.

The paper presents the full complement of archetypes of the home‐regionalization phenomenon and explores their corresponding assumptions. These explorations open up new empirical and theoretical research avenues for distinguishing any genuine region effects.

Since the end of the cold war, the arms industry has been experiencing a deep structural transformation. The logical consequence of such short-term and structural evolutions is that companies in the arms industry are looking to access markets beyond national borders. Such transformation becomes a policy concern, since the core regulatory framework has been built on a national basis and there are very limited structural and regulatory means for dealing with an international, or even a transnational, industry in such a sensitive activity as weapons development and production. This chapter wonders whether it is possible to qualify such transformation of the arms industry as an internationalisation process and whether it can be compared to the globalisation of commercial activities. It compares what has happened and continues to happen in the arms industry with the globalisation experienced by commercial industries.

Virtually all of the literature of the MNC assumes that the modern or Westphalian international order of geographically defined sovereign states is the context in which international business takes place. I argue that we are in the midst of a deep-seated systemic transformation to a transnational or post-Westphalian world order characterized by a redefinition of space and geography, the fragmentation of political authority and a more diffuse distinction between public and private spheres. The emergence of a transnational order will have significant implications for the multinational firm in terms of the depth of its involvement in politics and how it formulates strategy. MNCs will both be subject to and a participant in governance, the latter in terms of hybrid public–private regimes. Strategy will have to be reformulated to incorporate a non-territorial context where firms function as actors in the international political process.