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Answering to calls for further contextualizing global leadership, this study investigates power dynamics and cultural identities in global leadership in an African context. We took a grounded theory approach to investigate how a specific cultural context shapes assets and liabilities of global leaders. Drawing on our data comprising semi-structured interviews of managers of multinational enterprises operating in Ghana, we identified key assets and liabilities for being local or foreign in one’s global leadership role. Furthermore, we theorize four specific styles of leadership leveraging: identity leveraging, power leveraging, juxtapositional leveraging, and temporal leveraging. Finally, we integrated the above-mentioned elements and proposed a framework of contextualized assets and liabilities which illustrates how specific cultural context affects the assets and liabilities of localness and foreignness for global leaders, and how these assets and liabilities constitute the four styles of leveraging in such context. Implications of our findings for research and practice are discussed.

As part of an exploratory study on the nature of global leaders' power, we interviewed 23 global leaders to address the question: “How do the task, culture, and relationship complexities of global leadership shape the way global leaders exercise power and influence their followers?” We identify five complicating factors that shape the use of power by global leaders: Language, culture, time zones, physical distance, and matrix organizational structures. When compared with domestic leaders, these five factors make the use of power more complex for global leaders and require global leaders to invest substantially more time and energy into building relationships, sharing leadership, and prioritizing communication to ensure common understanding of vision and goals. We highlight a sixth factor, high-quality relationships, as an enabling resource for global leaders to succeed despite contexts of global leadership complexity. We provide a conceptual model summarizing how global leader influence attempts are complicated and enhanced and offer implications for future research and practice.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the simultaneous evolution of LOF and AOF in the context of environmental protection (EP) companies from Europe in the Chinese market.

The authors adopt a qualitative, case study approach, using interview data to explore the extent of liability of foreignness and how the FSAs of firms have changed from the time on market entry. The authors undertook 15 in-depth interviews with decision makers in six companies addressing their experience of foreignness during their long tenure in China. To control for sector-level effects, the authors focus on companies in the EP sector.

The authors found the evolving AOF of the firms were challenged to a significant extent that caused difficulties in reducing their LOF over time. The EP sector is dominated by state-owned enterprises that have unique organized structure preventing localized foreign firms from gaining access into the institutionalized network. This deeply quilted institutionalized network had a corrosive effect in the gradual erosion of the LOF manifested from unfair price strategy practice, forced collaborations, ostracization of project participations, operational barriers, prohibited and restricted market access. The research also uncovered the rebirth nature of LOF that caused AOF to lose its significance across bureaucracy and ownership changed.

The relatively small number of cases (six) limits the generalizability of the findings by the authors. However, the authors are convinced that, given that the case companies are generally large and have long experience in China, the conclusions made are well grounded. In addition, there was the high level of coherence in the reported experiences of the interviewees, providing further support for the findings.

The experiences of these case study companies highlight that MNEs need to be vigilant and creative in constantly improving their FSAs so that the competitive distance between them and the local competitors remains substantial.

Very few studies have explored both assets and liabilities of foreignness in the host country regulatory context using a case study-based qualitative approach, especially in emerging markets.

The paper delves into the international expansion of luxury SMEs to investigate their internationalization pathways, namely how the internationalization process unfolds in terms of timing of entry into foreign markets, the geographic scope of operations and the scale. The paper examines also the determinants of the internationalization pathways as a set of factors that contribute to developing an asset of foreignness.

The paper adopts a multiple case study approach and reports findings from four cases of Italian SMEs operating in the luxury fashion industry.

SMEs’ specific characteristics at the firm and entrepreneurial levels (i.e. craftsmanship, quality, product creativity, entrepreneurial mindset), country of origin attributes (e.g. Italy’s positive image) and the inherently global nature of the luxury industry, can turn foreignness into an asset of foreignness that allows luxury fashion SMEs to pursue internationalization pathways of born globals.

The paper highlights that the global luxury market is not the exclusive domain of MNEs and sheds light on luxury SMEs, overlooked by extant literature. The paper also contributes to understanding early internationalization by highlighting a potential link between internationalization pathways and foreignness and discussed the asset of foreignness by extending it to SMEs.

The purpose of the paper is to explore the polarizing subject of immigration, from a business/economics perspective.

The paper adds to the theoretical discussion the concept of “liability of localness”; a concept associated with the negative repercussions suffered by indigenous firms, after a regional free trade agreement takes place.

The paper answers why despite the suggested net economic gains brought by immigrants, there is still a big negative sentiment regarding the issue of immigration. It is proposed that regional trade agreements force labor reallocation, and in so doing, negatively affect the unskilled labor force.

This paper does not consider other academic disciplines to explain the problem, as it would be beyond the scope and aim of this journal.

The advanced proposition suggests the need to have mechanisms in place to mitigate the negative consequences brought about by reallocation pressures (suffered mostly by unskilled labor).

This paper has social/policy applicability as it deals with the negative effect brought to local communities by foreign communities (at time 2), who lost their way of life (at time 1) after the implementation of a free trade agreement (at time 0).

In general, the negative consequences brought by free trade agreements do not garner the attention they deserve. By advancing the liability of localness concept into the immigration topic, this paper provides theoretical insights about the negative consequences originated by free trade agreements.

Prior studies of competitive dynamics in emerging economies restricted their attention to how the multinational enterprise (MNE) initiates actions against the domestic firm in the market environment with no regard for the home-host relations. By contrast, this study aims to investigate how the domestic firm challenges the MNE in the non-market environment when there is home–host political hostility.

The authors conducted a case study of non-market rivalry between an MNE from the Taiwan region and a domestic firm on the Chinese mainland in the period 2004–2008.

Riding the home–host political hostility, the domestic firm mounted political tactics against the MNE on two fronts. It lobbied the government for identity-targeted policy changes, which demanded state-funded clients buy only from domestic suppliers. It also unethically spread identity-targeted political rumors to vilify the MNE in the local society. The MNE defended itself against the unfavorable policy by engaging in identity work of restructuring its distribution channels to conceal its “foreign” (non-domestic) identity. To fight off the rumors, it built a corporate citizen identity by identity work of aligning corporate social responsibility and research and development with local policy priorities.

The authors broaden the concept of competitive aggressiveness to include non-market actions, particularly unethical ones targeting a rival’s identity. The authors contribute to identity work scholarship by pinpointing an unrecognized phenomenon – high-effort identity work, used by the MNE as a defensive response. The emergent findings develop a moral perspective on non-market rivalry.

The paper discusses networking through brand affiliation/endorsement as an increasing mode of internationalisation. Brand affiliation or brand endorsement involves a form of franchising, whereby local services take on a global reach. Whereas conventional theories on the internationalisation process explicitly or implicitly assume that internationalisation is a matter of tapping a new geographical market, mired with risk and uncertainty due to its “foreignness”, brand affiliation means that the offerings of a local business take on the global features associated with the global brand. The global brand endorses or vouches for the locally bound business, thereby providing it with a global recognition and reach. In spite of the global explosion in the practice of affiliation and franchising, there has been little concern with this form of internationalisation, or with the issues and the challenges posed for the franchisees, which are most often SMEs, in managing two brands, two identities and two cultures. The present paper seeks to explore this business relationship and its inherent contradictions, mainly from the franchisee's perspective, and asks whether the dictates of global requirements for efficiency, functionality and consistency can be reconciled with social and cultural values associated with localisation, and what the theoretical and practical implications of this internationalisation process are.

With rising industry consolidation in the banking industry, it is unclear whether community banks may find more or less market opportunities. This paper aims to investigate how industry consolidation may affect community banks’ market share outcomes. The second goal of this paper is to establish the ways in which community banks may successfully manage market share growth goals that may be antithetical to the principles of being a local brand.

The empirical analysis is on the US banking industry, spanning the years from 1994 to 2018. This comprehensive panel data set includes county-year level granularity for more than 15,000 banks. Panel regression models that include bank-, county- and year-specific fixed effects are deployed.

It is found that local brands, operationalized as community banks in this study’s empirical context, are having the most success in consolidated market contexts. When pursuing market share growth, a distribution strategy to saturate a local market is found to be advantageous while expanding across geographies is less advisable for community banks.

The findings shed empirical light on the challenges and opportunities for community banks, thereby contributing to the banking industry literature and to an emerging stream of research on local brand management. By demonstrating the means of which growth can be successfully managed by local brands, the important and largely unanswered question of how a local brand can effectively grow is addressed.

This paper aims to clarify the challenge of emerging countries’ firms regarding their brand policy. The purpose of the paper is to examine the branding options offered to emerging countries companies when expanding internationally.

After having clarified the two paradoxes faced by emerging countries’ brands by way of synthesizing various works, the author formulates a model that provides a representation for the possible brand strategy choices of emerging country companies.

The authors formulate a framework with four brand management options which may be put into practice in emerging countries’ companies and suggest how an emerging country’s company could create and develop the best-adapted international brand policy depending on its specific situation regarding localness emphasis and customers’ risk reduction acceptance.

Results lead to the conclusion that the notion that only global brands are associated with higher product quality or prestige (in relation to local brands) is not a universal truth and thus needs to be interpreted with caution. The research provides support for a branding strategy embedded in the local emerging countries context and tally with research showing that more and more firms from emerging economies are using foreign image association strategies as important components of their branding and marketing strategies.

The proposal reinforces the contingency perspective of international marketing according to which brand policy may depend on company criteria, as well as foreign market specificities. The research confirms the competitive capacity of emerging countries’ companies’ brands, broadens the scope of international branding knowledge by shifting the focus to under-researched regions of the world.