Subsidiary strategy of emerging market multinationals: A home country institutional perspective

We examine the effects of home country institutional factors, namely, home country government support, domestic institutional weaknesses, and state ownership on the subsidiary-level strategy of global integration (I) and local responsiveness (R) of emerging market multinational enterprises (EMNEs). We draw upon the home country institution-based view and the I/R framework to develop our theoretical model. We empirically test our hypotheses using an original new survey data collected from Chinese multinational subsidiary managers supplemented with parent-level and country-level data. We find that home country government support and domestic institutional weaknesses have significant and negative effects on global integration strategy of Chinese multinational subsidiaries. On the other hand, domestic institutional weaknesses push foreign subsidiaries to pursue local responsiveness strategy. Nevertheless, those with greater degree of state ownership in their parent firms are neither willing to disintegrate from their parent firms nor motivated to pursue local responsiveness strategy in order to deal with home country institutional deficiencies and develop new sources of competitiveness in foreign markets. Our findings have advanced the literature on subsidiary strategy in the context of EMNEs, and provide important implications for subsidiary managers and policy makers.     

经济全球化背景下产业集群外部空间拓展的二维分析

全球化与本地化的关系是理解产业集群的出发点,产业集群区域的对外联系和外部空间运动规律是值得进一步挖掘的重要课题。目前从这一角度展开对集群探讨的国内文献还不多,而国外(主要是经济地理学和社会学方面)在该领域已获得不少的研究成果,本文从在地全球化与全球在地化二维视域对这些研究成果进行梳理和评述,以期对我国在相关领域的研究提供新的启示。     

比较优势、单位价值和本土企业竞争优势——中国运动鞋产业国际竞争力脆弱性分析

目前,中国运动鞋产业国际竞争力表现脆弱。尽管从传统的竞争力指标看,中国的运动鞋产业国际竞争力非常强,但1/2的贡献来自外资企业,本土企业竞争力相当弱;与此同时,无论是外资还是本土企业都倾向于出口低端产品,且本土的单位价值比外资更低。造成这种结构的深层次原因在于,本土企业被游离在领导品牌商构建的核心价值链之外而被边缘化。因此,在进一步扩大对外开放的同时,积极做大做强本土企业是根本之道。     

基于全球价值链视角的地方产业集群国际化发展研究

在经济全球化时代,对于大部分地方产业集群而言,通过嵌入全球价值链实现国际化发展是一个必然过程。本文以价值链理论为基础,以是否嵌入全球价值链为标准,将地方产业集群发展分为内源式和国际化两个阶段,并对地方产业集群国际化发展的类型、方式和程度等进行研究。为了分析转型期发展起来的中国产业集群的国际化发展情况,本文以浙江温州鞋业集群为例,对其进行了实证研究。     

The search for global competence: From international HR to talent management

This article describes the evolution of the search for global competence through a 50-year content analysis and review of published research in the field of International HR Management (IHRM), and more recently, Talent Management (TM), with special emphasis on the Journal of World Business. We present a detailed examination of the IHRM/TM content of the Journal of World Business from its inception in 1965 through 2014. To put the results of that review into perspective, we review key themes in global business and strategy from 1965 to the present, noting where IHRM/TM research and business trends correspond, diverge, and lag. Next, we present a brief history of IHRM and TM, showing how the emerging theme of TM offers challenges and promise for connecting future IHRM/TM research with emerging business, strategy, and social trends. We conclude with the implications of our findings for future research, and the importance of the search for global competence.     

Do International Cocurricular Activities Have an Impact on Cultivating a Global Mindset in Business School Students?

ABSTRACT

In today’s integrated global economy, business executives of multinational corporations are required to have a flexible global mindset in order to cope with the driving forces of globalization. Thus, the global market forces stress the importance for business schools to graduate students with skill sets pertinent to functioning competitively in the ever-changing business environment. In this article, we conducted a survey of 165 students in the Albers School of Business and Economics at Seattle University to examine whether international cocurricular activities help achieve the goal of cultivating a global mindset in students. The results suggest that international cocurricular activities enhance students’ global mindset. Short-term study tours and international internships do have a significant impact on students’ global mindset as other long-term cocurricular activities, which may cost more time and money. We recommend that short-term study tours be used as an alternative cost-effective way to engaging business students in the internationalization of the business curriculum at their institutions.     

Getting what we wish for: The realities of business education for a global economy

Business schools around the world have embraced globalization and, as a result, attempted to attract international students to their programs. Teaching diverse student groups has many advantages, but is not without its challenges, including cultural differences in educational expectations and student self-efficacy. The goal of this article is to suggest that we can create plans and activities capable of helping Asian students adapt more quickly to the expectations of Western education. We herein describe Rotterdam Business School's experiences in working with a diverse—mainly Asian—population of students, focusing on strategies that may assist them in adapting to the expectations of the global business school classroom.     

Transforming business education to produce global managers

In recent years, globalization of businesses has occurred faster than the internationalization of business schools—in terms of faculty, students, and curriculum. Indeed, there is now a disconnect between global economic realities and the ability of business schools to produce global managers. This article discusses mission-based strategies for international business education and proposes opportunities that increase global awareness, global understanding, and global competence through student and faculty engagement and development. These changes will advance business schools’ mission of producing global managers.     

What determines MNC subsidiary performance? Evidence from China

The paper challenges the view that MNC dictates a subsidiary's business strategy and operations in accordance with the integration-responsiveness (IR) framework. The paper integrates the IR framework with contingency theory to argue that a subsidiary needs discretion to craft its own effective business strategy in light of the environmental exigencies facing the subsidiary in the host country. It may do so at variance with the MNC's strategy. Evidence from China supports that subsidiary managers should take strategic initiatives in response to specific host country environment.     

Understanding professionals' reactions to strategic change: the role of threatened professional identities

This article develops and demonstrates the utility of a framework for understanding professionals' reactions to strategic change in professional service firms as an interplay between a strategic intent, its manifestation in organizational roles and practices and its fit with existing professional identities. The application of the framework with three case studies shows that strategic changes may threaten different aspects of professional identities (self-enhancement, self-continuity and self-distinctiveness) which in turn tends to lead to different kinds of resistance from the professionals (exit, voice for opposition or voice for renegotiation). The article also links these different reactions to the locus of identification of professionals, which may be either ‘local’ or ‘cosmopolitan’.     

Business models and market entry mode choice of small software firms

So far the critical choice of the entry mode for a target country has been examined ignoring the special features of firms. Particularly, the impact of the wide variation of business models of software firms has been ignored. This multi case study investigates the relation between the business model and the entry mode, of eight software firms. The results imply that the product strategy and the service and implementation model of a software firm are closely connected to the entry mode choice, while the distribution model of intangible software products does not seem to have an impact on the operation mode.     

Managerial routines in professional service firms: transforming knowledge into competitive advantages

This paper is about managerial routines in professional service firms (PSFs) and takes a resource-based perspective. It describes how managerial routines can be used to transform capabilities into competitive advantages. The empirical data explore three PSFs facing dilemmas concerning the management of their human resources and their professionals, and show how new managerial routines have been established. It further shows that PSFs' innovations are routine and are mainly reactive. Most routines are directed towards exploration, which is caused by the need to focus on projects for clients who in the daily routines supersede the need for developing HRM routines. Due to the importance of the projects and the markets the PSFs operate in, we will also look at the relations between PSFs and their markets. The concept of managerial routines is seen in relation to exploration and exploitation, which are subsequently used in an empirical analysis. In doing this, the analysis reveals a conflict between external demands from the clients and the internal utilization of the capabilities within the firms.     

Subsidiary-specific advantages for inter-regional expansion: The role of intermediate units

This paper explores the distinctive deployment of resources and capabilities by subsidiaries in order to develop an intermediate role within the MNC. Based on the regional management perspective, we focus on a specific intermediate role—the springboard subsidiary—that helps overcome the liability of inter-regional foreignness. Our results, which are based on a dataset covering 188 subsidiaries, show that the probability of taking on this role is contingent upon experiential knowledge about the target region, as well as a rich knowledge base derived from a wide range of activities and a broad geographical scope. Our findings also show that possession of slack resources does not necessarily mean that a subsidiary will take on this role, as such slack must be combined with experiential knowledge. This paper serves as a first step in helping MNCs plan resource allocation to handle inter-regional expansion.     

SME internationalization: How does the opportunity-based international entrepreneurial culture matter?

We employ the opportunity-based international entrepreneurial culture (IEC) comprehensive notion that draws upon the opportunity-based view (OBV). The OBV supports the idea that entrepreneurs mold the organizational behavior and characteristics of their firms to pursue opportunities abroad. We set out to explore possible attitudinal differences as regards exploitation of opportunities within firms in each of three internationalization dimensions that are previously identified in the literature, notably time to internationalization, country market presence and international mode. We perform eighteen case studies on high-performing internationalized small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in knowledge intensive sectors. The evidence refines the OBV as it manifests how three IEC characteristics (namely risk attitude, market orientation and networking propensity) matter for firms in the three internationalization dimensions. The study further adds to the international entrepreneurship literature that has until now myopically focused on international new ventures as if they were the sole opportunity-driven group of internationalized SMEs.