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Extant work in international business (IB) involves a partial contingency-theoretic perspective: a holistic view of the impact of bundles of contingencies on an outcome variable is missing. The purpose of this paper is to adopt a contingency approach to study multinational enterprise (MNE) subsidiary performance in the appropriate context of European transition economies at the beginning of the current millennium.

Methodologically, the authors introduce abduction as a line of inquiry into IB and management to develop new theoretical insights, and apply the novel empirical general interaction method to estimate bundle effects. In so doing, the authors contribute to the further development of a theoretical and empirical toolkit to revitalize holistic, or configurational, quantitative research in IB and management.

The authors find that capability fit is a necessary condition for high MNE subsidiary marketing performance, whilst environment fit is particularly critical for high MNE subsidiary financial performance.

A key limitation is that this is a cross-section study.

This study offers insights as to subsidiary fit into Eastern Europe, indicating fitting entry and establishment modes.

This paper offers a novel holistic approach to IB, both in terms of theoretical and empirical methodology.

A dynamic econometric model of wine auctions is estimated to measure the informational signalling impact of a wine critic on the return to the investment in fine wines. United States data suggests that critic Robert Parker is an influencer on the auction price of Bordeaux wines. Furthermore it appears that American buyers look toward the much larger European market in order to establish values. In doing so they may be able to mitigate the effects of asymmetric information.

For many years within Organization Studies, broadly conceived, there was general agreement concerning the pitfalls of assuming a ‘one best way of organizing’. Organizations, it was argued, must balance different criteria of (e)valuation against one another – for example ‘exploitation’ and ‘exploration’ – depending on the situation at hand. However, in recent years a pre-commitment to values of a certain sort – expressed in a preference for innovation, improvisation and entrepreneurship over other criteria – has emerged within the field, thus shifting the terms of debate concerning organizational survival and flourishing firmly onto the terrain of ‘exploration’. This shift has been accompanied by the return of what we describe as a ‘metaphysical stance’ within Organization Studies. In this article we highlight some of the problems attendant upon the return of metaphysics to the field of organizational analysis, and the peculiar re-emergence of a ‘one best way of organizing’ that it engenders. In so doing, we re-visit two classic examples of what we describe as ‘the empirical stance’ within organization theory – the work of Wilfred Brown on bureaucratic hierarchy, on the one hand, and that of Paul Lawrence and Jay Lorsch on integration and differentiation, on the other – in order to highlight the continuing importance of March's argument that any organization is a balancing act between different and non-reducible criteria of (e)valuation. We conclude that the proper balance is not something that can be theoretically deduced or metaphysically framed, but should be based on a concrete description of the situation at hand.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to develop a framework which sheds new light on how sustainability control systems (SCS) can be used in proactive strategic responses to corporate sustainability pressures.

Design/Methodology/Approach – Corporate sustainability pressures are identified using insights from institutional theory and the resource-based view of the firm.

Findings – The paper presents an integrated framework showing the corporate sustainability pressures, proactive strategic responses to these pressures, and how organizations might use SCS in their responses to the corporate sustainability pressures they face.

Practical Implications – The proposed framework shows how organizations can use SCS in proactive strategic responses to corporate sustainability pressures.

Originality/Value – The paper suggests that instead of using traditional financial-oriented management control systems, organizations need more focus on emerging SCS as a means of achieving sustainability objectives. In particular, the paper proposes different SCS tools that can be used in proactive strategic responses to sustainability pressures in terms of (i) specifying and communicating sustainability objectives, (ii) monitoring sustainability performance, and (iii) providing motivation by linking sustainability rewards to performance.