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The increasing pace of global competition has recast the balance between multinational corporations’ (MNCs’) needs to protect the knowledge that underlies their competitive advantages and their needs to continually create new knowledge. This essay will discuss MNCs’ knowledge-seeking strategies as industry-level phenomena. I will argue that knowledge-seeking strategies demand a concept of industries both as arenas for competition and as global knowledge networks within which firms collaborate to innovate. Contemporary MNCs face challenges to function not only as self-contained production systems that internationalize in the search for efficiency and markets, but also as open systems globally seeking knowledge and innovations. Metanational strategies and organizations represent a new response to these challenges. I present empirical evidence of distinctive metanational industry opportunities and organizational responses from the emergence of the global flat panel display industry. The essay concludes with a framework that outlines the characteristics of a global knowledge-driven generic strategy as an alternative and synthesis of generic product-driven strategies of cost-leadership and differentiation.

If one traces the changes in India's economic policies over the last five decades, they bear the imprint of changing geopolitical dynamics. While India's policy makers often couch their agendas in ideological terms, in reality the economy has been steered by the ruling elite to their economic advantage. Therefore, liberalization and the permissible boundaries within which a reform process will operate can be best understood if contextually examined and interpreted. This paper attempts to explain the dynamics of the economic policy process and outlines the contours of India's liberalization program.

Within the literature of global mindset there has been much discussion of antecedents. Few attempts have been made, however, to analyze the outcomes of a global mindset. Our chapter undertakes a thematic analysis of global mindset antecedents and outcomes in the 1994–2013 literature. Adopting an inductive approach and borrowing methods from international business and managerial cognition studies, we map, assess, and categorize 42 empirical and 10 theoretical studies thematically. We focus on the antecedents and outcomes at individual, group, and organizational levels. We conceptualize corporate global mindset as a multidimensional construct that incorporates global mindset at the individual level and is dependent on a robust communications infrastructure strategy for its cultivation throughout the organization. Our study categorizes antecedents and outcomes by level and identifies the gaps in global mindset outcomes and firm performance for future researchers to address.

In this section, we offer a careful and systematic review of the theoretical and empirical studies relating to global mindset that have been published in books and peer-reviewed journals. This review includes studies that use differing terms to refer to the idea of global mindset but consider the same general concept. At the same time, we exclude studies that do not specifically pertain to global mindset but concentrate on such areas as global leadership, expatriates, and expatriation, even though they may focus on similar underlying themes found in the global mindset literature. We then identify two fundamental themes in the global mindset literature – cosmopolitanism and cognitive complexity – and use these concepts to develop a new integrative approach to global mindset.

Global Mindset (GM) is a multifaceted construct that has received broad interest among practitioners and academics. It is a fragmented construct at this point in time, due to definitional overlap with other constructs such as global leadership and cultural intelligence. This overlap has created complexity for research that attempts to understand GM in isolation. Lack of clear boundaries in defining and conceptualizing this construct challenges researchers who are attempting to capture fully what constitutes GM. Our work seeks to better understand and explain what underlines the individual GM construct and how does this impact the development of global competencies in individual managers.

We systematically review and analyze the individual GM literature thematically to provide an overview of the extant research from a broad array of scholarly sources dating from 1994 to 2017. Our work offers a thematic analysis that provides a visual guide to GM by tracking the corpus of individual-level GM studies. We categorize the research according to its theoretical groundings and basic concepts and proceed review how GM has been operationalized at the individual level and measured. Next, we integrate major dimensions in the GM research and propose a framework to enhance understanding of the phenomenon. Finally, we discuss the implications of our review for the development of GM for practitioners, coaches and trainers.

This study aims to understand what primary relationship problem mechanisms can exist in the franchise channel and how exchange partners respond to them. This study demonstrates how the franchisor’s relationship problem mechanisms (threat, contract enforcement) affect the franchisee’s negative active responses (venting, threatened withdrawal).

This study tested hypotheses through multiple regression analysis using data from 200 franchisees in Korea-based food franchise systems.

The results indicated that threat increases venting and threatened withdrawal, while contract enforcement only increases venting. Venting increases threatened withdrawal. In addition, the results indicated that the franchisor’s behavior monitoring positively moderates the relationship between relationship problem mechanisms and negative active responses.

This study helps strategically manage responses to relationship problems by categorizing ‘relationship problem mechanisms’ into intentional relationship problem mechanisms based on communication (threat) and unintentional relationship problem mechanisms based on action (contract enforcement). This study finds that both relationship problem mechanisms, intentional or unintentional, eventually cause threatened withdrawal directly or indirectly. Even if the threat is merely communication, not action, it is more likely to cause relationship dissolution than contract enforcement by directly triggering any negative active response. This study also finds that behavior monitoring can affect exchange partners through interaction with other management mechanisms rather than directly affecting them.

One of the biggest challenges facing global organizations is the ability of leadership and International Human Resource Management (IHRM) professionals to capture the positive outcomes of a diverse workforce while fostering inclusion amongst its workers. New theory based upon optimal distinctiveness theory has challenged researchers to approach inclusion in a holistic manner, transcending political boundaries and cultural meanings of diversity to instead promote the uniqueness of individuals within-group belongingness. This chapter proposes a theoretical model that suggests leader capabilities such as global mindset can foster inclusiveness while reaping the benefits of unique backgrounds and diverse ideas. Two important individual-level outcomes of inclusiveness are presented: creativity and psychological safety. Also discussed are implications for strategic IHRM through recruitment, selection, talent management, and performance management activities.

The digital economy, which heralds the start of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (IR4), is upon us. What can history teach international business scholars about how firms are likely to respond to this new form of technological change? Who are the likely winners or the likely losers? For 30 years, the author has lived through, studied, and written about the Third Industrial Revolution and other major environmental shocks, ranging from new entrants to academia to regional integration to outbreak of war, looking at the fundamental issues of how individuals, firms, communities, and countries respond to and are affected by life-changing events. In this chapter, the author tells seven brief stories about living through and studying “shocks and responses.” Perhaps, some of these stories may provide useful lessons to the scholars of IR4.