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1 – 10 of over 2000Aim of the present monograph is the economic analysis of the role of MNEs regarding globalisation and digital economy and in parallel there is a reference and examination of some…
Abstract
Aim of the present monograph is the economic analysis of the role of MNEs regarding globalisation and digital economy and in parallel there is a reference and examination of some legal aspects concerning MNEs, cyberspace and e‐commerce as the means of expression of the digital economy. The whole effort of the author is focused on the examination of various aspects of MNEs and their impact upon globalisation and vice versa and how and if we are moving towards a global digital economy.
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This essay uses three of Pope John Paul II’s encyclicals, Laborem Exercens, Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, and Centesimus Annus to articulate principles that may be useful in…
Abstract
This essay uses three of Pope John Paul II’s encyclicals, Laborem Exercens, Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, and Centesimus Annus to articulate principles that may be useful in evaluating public oversight of multinational enterprises (MNE). These encyclicals are challenges to the prevailing socio‐economic order by an institution that cannot be dismissed as “knee‐jerk liberal” carping. On the contrary, the fact that a conservative institution asserts these principles repeatedly and over time may mean that they should be included in our public consideration of the global resonance of MNEs. Insofar as MNE expansion can mean pervasive improvements in the standard of living of the earth’s population, the writings of Pope John Paul II lead to the conclusion that MNE expansion should be encouraged as long as all of the participants, especially the citizens of developing countries, participate in the benefits. MNE expansion and the expected socio‐economic dislocations accompanying the expansion will require institutional arrangements to minimize conflict, promote cooperation, and encourage solidarity. An organization for multinational enterprises (an OMNE) could fill this need by reducing MNEs’ fears about adverse host country policy changes and simultaneously providing assurances that the citizens of the MNE‐host country will share in the rents generated by the MNE’s expansion.
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Alain Verbeke, Rob Van Tulder and Sarianna Lundan
This chapter provides an overview of various new streams in international business (IB) research that will have an important impact on IB studies in the years to come, both from a…
Abstract
Purpose
This chapter provides an overview of various new streams in international business (IB) research that will have an important impact on IB studies in the years to come, both from a conceptual and a methodological perspective.
Methodology/approach
The authors discuss a set of 18 chapters, all included in this research volume, and highlight both the key intellectual contributions and the challenges identified that will need to be taken into account in future research.
Findings
The findings of the studies discussed are manifold and profound. Some of the main findings include the following: (1) multinational enterprise (MNE)-centric empirical research studies should be avoided. Resource recombination typically requires taking into account the resource base and the strategies of at least two economic actors. (2) IB studies, almost by definition, need to take into account “distance,” but most prior empirical research has not done a particularly good job in including relevant distance parameters in a methodologically sound way to assess their impact on MNE strategy, operational functioning or performance. (3) Nonbusiness institutions can be very helpful in promoting MNE expansion but include “dark side” institutions that sometimes appear very effective in particular situational contexts. (4) Institutional diversity matters: it can make international knowledge transfers difficult, it can lead to discrimination against firms from specific nationalities, it certainly suggests that there is no generalizable multinationality–performance relationship, and it raises the question whether new theory is needed to accommodate previously neglected institutional contexts.
Practical implications
This overview of several recent IB studies confirms that managing the international innovation chain in its entirety is fraught with difficulties. MNE senior management must economize on bounded rationality (meaning: improving information quality and information processing) and bounded reliability (meaning: making sure that economic actors make good on open-ended promises, whether implicit or explicit). Any IB transaction by definition entails new resource recombination. Doing so effectively requires correct information, reliable partners and a recombination outcome that supports value creation for the MNE. Multiple, practice-driven puzzles in the IB context are proposed to the reader, and the outcomes are often unexpected.
Originality/value
A variety of new concepts and methodological approaches are proposed to improve the quality of future IB research.
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Considers the role of multinational enterprise in the determinationof relative wages. Multinationality of the firm is incorporated in awage‐bargaining model with asymmetric…
Abstract
Considers the role of multinational enterprise in the determination of relative wages. Multinationality of the firm is incorporated in a wage‐bargaining model with asymmetric information. Indicates that the impact of multinational enterprise on wages depends on the profitability and structure of production of individual firms. Presents empirical evidence in support of the predictions which follow from the theory.
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Margaret B. Takeda and Marilyn M. Helms
After a thorough literature review on multinational learning, it is apparent organizations “learn” when they capitalize on expatriate management, a “learning strategy”…
Abstract
Purpose
After a thorough literature review on multinational learning, it is apparent organizations “learn” when they capitalize on expatriate management, a “learning strategy” (international work teams, employee involvement and other human resource policies), technology transfer and political environment and cross‐cultural adaptation. This suggests learning is possible when control mechanisms are relaxed or reduced, resulting in an ambiguous relationship between multinational learning and control. There has been no research on the relationship between learning and control largely due to this assumption of ambiguity and this paper attempts to overcome this gap by presenting a holistic approach to multinational learning and control. This paper posits that focusing on optimizing learning and control through flexible IHRM policies is a globally sustainable approach to MNE management. The purpose of this paper is to present a conceptual framework designed to address two major issues in international management: organizational learning and managerial control.
Design/methodology approach
Multinational organizations are often faced with a perceived ambiguous choice of promoting learning throughout the organization in a way that facilitates local adaptation of corporate knowledge, while maintaining control over subsidiary corporate culture (control). This paper presents a new model designed to facilitate a balanced approach to learning and control in the multinational enterprise.
Findings
The proposed model is one of sustainable management focusing on dynamic IHRM learning and control. The pillars of the proposed model thus include: National Culture, HRM policies and practices and IHRM strategies of the parent MNE; National Culture, locally developed HRM policies and practices, and transferred IHRM policies and practices in the affiliate unit; sharing of learning oriented IHRM policies and/or among MNE affiliates only; and global IHRM control and learning IHRM policies and practices (uniform across MNE units).
Originality/value
While the literature in this realm addresses these issues separately, managers are faced with a delicate balancing act of promoting learning among multinational units while maintaining corporate control over key aspects of the company's core competencies.
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Christopher Williams and Wendelien van Eerde
Prior research into multinational enterprises’ (MNEs) entrepreneurial initiatives has drawn from various theoretical bases, including entrepreneurial cognition, knowledge-based…
Abstract
Prior research into multinational enterprises’ (MNEs) entrepreneurial initiatives has drawn from various theoretical bases, including entrepreneurial cognition, knowledge-based view, and management control theory. Empirical studies and cases have consistently pointed to the temporal dimension, highlighting the dynamic elements of learning, capability development and evolution, and consequences of conflict. By incorporating theory on time use into the analysis, we develop a new theoretical insight regarding the temporal dimension of MNE entrepreneurial initiatives. Our analysis offers a basis for a more explicit focus on time use in studies of entrepreneurial initiatives in MNEs than has been offered to date. Implications for research and practice are discussed.
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Alan M. Rugman and Alain Verbeke
The capital budgeting decision for a multinational enterprise needs to take into account concepts of business policy and competitive strategy. From the modern theory of the…
Abstract
The capital budgeting decision for a multinational enterprise needs to take into account concepts of business policy and competitive strategy. From the modern theory of the multinational enterprise, i.e., the theory of internalisation, it is recognised that proprietary firm specific advantages yield economic rents when exploited on a world‐wide basis. Yet the multinational enterprise finds these potential rents dissipated by internal governance costs of its organisational structure and the difficulty of timing and sustaining its foreign direct investment activities. This paper examines these issues by a focus upon parent‐subsidiary relationships and the strategic nature of the capital budgeting decision for a multinational enterprise.
Rebecca Piekkari and Susanne Tietze
In this chapter, we align two approaches on the multinational enterprise (MNE), that is, research on languages and international business, and micropolitics, in order to establish…
Abstract
Purpose
In this chapter, we align two approaches on the multinational enterprise (MNE), that is, research on languages and international business, and micropolitics, in order to establish the language-based underpinnings of micropolitical behavior in the MNE.
Design/methodology/approach
This theoretical chapter departs from a social, relational perspective on power relationships in the MNE. Power relationships are constituted in multilingual encounters between different language users.
Findings
Our analysis builds on the assumption that the mandated corporate language in the MNE, which often is English, results in a language hierarchy. This hierarchy creates inequality and tension between the languages in use in the MNE. However, language agents, that is, headquarters, foreign subsidiaries, teams, managers, and employees can – individually or collectively – change, challenge, and disrupt this hierarchical order. Their micropolitical behavior is essential for action as it redraws organizational structure, alters the degree of foreign subsidiary autonomy and control, redefines the privileged and the disadvantaged groups in the MNE, and reinforces subgroup formation and dynamics in multilingual teams.
Research implications
We highlight the important role played by language agents who sit at the interstices of organizational networks in the MNE. The interplay between their actions and motivations and their historical and situational contexts represents an underexplored and undertheorized area of study.
Practical implications
Senior managers in MNEs are frequently very competent or native users of the English language. Appreciating the continued existence of various languages has implications for how different MNE units can effectively connect and operate as an overall entity.
Originality/value
This chapter highlights the languages-based mechanisms that underpin power relationships in the MNE.
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Robert D. Pearce and Yuxuan Tang
The purpose of this paper is to evaluate multinational enterprises’ (MNEs) performance and impact in contexts beyond their own internal objectives.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to evaluate multinational enterprises’ (MNEs) performance and impact in contexts beyond their own internal objectives.
Design/methodology/approach
Based on an “eclectic” paradigm and the range of motivations, the framework is designed around three layers of evaluation: “efficiency” as static optimisation, “growth and development” as the dynamics of change on a purely economic view; political/economic sphere in terms of the outcomes of “distribution”, and “sovereignty” on the more purely political concern of how MNEs may undermine countries’ policy independence.
Findings
MNE and national economies have to use current sources of competitiveness efficiently while addressing the necessity to reinforce and refocus them through time. Within these broad agendas, significant interactions and outcomes reflect a range of contingencies conditioned by both MNE objectives and hosts’ competitive status.
Originality/value
The paper concerns economics and MNE role in globalisation. The paper defines a framework of four generic evaluative issues of MNE performance, which subsume a wider range of important but more niche concerns.
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Lars Matysiak and Andreas Bausch
The purpose of this paper is to summarize theoretical insights about key antecedents of multinational enterprise (MNE) performance and to review and synthesize empirically…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to summarize theoretical insights about key antecedents of multinational enterprise (MNE) performance and to review and synthesize empirically researched antecedents of MNE performance.
Design/methodology/approach
Dominant strategic management approaches to explaining the performance of firms in general are the market‐based view and the resource‐based view. The dominant theory of the MNE from the field of international business is internalization theory. Integrating these three perspectives, this paper elaborates where key antecedents of MNE performance can be expected. Furthermore, this paper reviews empirical research on antecedents of MNE performance published in three top business journals of major importance to the field of international business between 1976 and 2010, thereby synthesizing the most widely accepted knowledge about antecedents of MNE performance.
Findings
The paper reveals that theory suggests that key antecedents of MNE performance can be expected at the industry, country, and firm levels. Empirical research, however, hardly offers insights concerning antecedents at these three levels of analysis. Instead, empirical studies have predominantly focused on the intermediate variable of multinationality.
Originality/value
Previous research on antecedents of MNE performance has, by and large, been blinded by the obvious: multinationality has been researched innumerable times, without considering essential theories regarding performance and the MNE. This paper points out that there is much promise in going back to fundamental theories regarding performance and the MNE in order to advance our understanding of key antecedents of MNE performance.
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