International Business Versus International Management? International Strategic Management from the View of point of Internalisation Theory

This article examines the theoretical bases of both international management and the internalisation approach to international business. Similarities include: attention to the ‘make or buy’ decision, interaction between locational and organisational variables and attention to internal control mechanisms. International management pays particular attention to the specific constraints on the firm's strategy arising from its history, dominant culture and leadership and to the process of management. The two approaches are used to analyse a single problem: the management of research and development, and it is found that important differences in emphasis remain. The approaches contrast but do not conflict.     

The Strategy of foreign-invested manufacturing enterprises in China: Export-orientated and market-orientated FDI revisited

This paper examines export-orientated and market-orientated foreign direct investment (FDI) in China's manufacturing industry. Based on Fung's () survey estimation of China's market-orientated FDI in 1992 and China's Third National Industrial Census in 1995, we quantify the proportion of market-orientated FDI in China 1992–2002. By combining and verifying various data sources, our estimation shows that market-orientated FDI accounts for the majority of China's total inward FDI in manufacturing industry and has grown faster than export-orientated FDI over the period 1992–2002. Our industry level analysis suggests that Overseas Chinese investors are more export-orientated than Western investors. The study suggests that many inward investors follow a dual market strategy. The coexistence of export-orientated and Chinese domestic market-orientated FDI is a reflection of the flexibility of MNEs to adjust and adapt ownership attributes to the local market context. The study offers insights into the evolutionary development path taken by foreign-invested manufacturing enterprises in China.     

Towards an understanding of international city break travel

This paper explores city break tourism and, in particular, the distinctive characteristics of this form of travel. The city break is examined and compared with other types of trips. The research follows a sequential mixed methods approach involving both a visitor survey and in‐depth interviews. The findings show the international city break trip to have a number of distinctive characteristics. These are summarised into five main areas (5 Ds) — duration, distance, date flexibility, discretionary nature and destination travel party. These distinguishing features provide a useful insight into one of the most important yet least examined travel segments in tourism research. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Place,space, and foreign direct investment into peripheral cities

Perspectives drawn from the economic geography literature are increasingly used to generate insights into locational issues in international business. In this paper, we seek to integrate these literatures further by investigating the locational determinants of foreign direct investment (FDI) into peripheral cities within an emerging economy. Peripheral cities in emerging economies are attracting a growing proportion of global FDI flows, but the international business literature lacks a framework for understanding subnational determinants of FDI, particularly into non-core locations. We draw on the core-periphery model to build and test theory on how spatial interdependencies between subnational locations impact on the distribution of FDI inflows into a large and heterogeneous country China. Our results show that whilst peripheral cities tend to have a negative effect on FDI, this effect is positively moderated by proximity to core cities. The results highlight the importance of considering interactions between place and space when investigating locational issues in international business.     

Host–home country linkages and host–home country specific advantages as determinants of foreign acquisitions by Indian firms

This paper examines the complementarity of country-specific linkages with country-specific advantages in explaining the foreign acquisitions by Indian MNEs by testing and extending further the Eclectic Paradigm. The approach to internationalisation dominated by the Eclectic Paradigm has constantly faced challenges in gaining acceptance as a holistic framework in explaining outward foreign direct investment (OFDI). In 2006 Dunning acknowledged that the role of networks and linkages (Dunning, 2006a). In this paper we explore the view that linkages between host and home country should be included in the Eclectic Paradigm as institutional assets. Country-specific linkages add to richness and improve explanatory power of the Eclectic Paradigm. Linkage variables are shown to be an adjunct to the Eclectic Paradigm, not an alternative to it.     

Exports in the strategy of multinational enterprises

Using data from a sample of 329 multinational firms, this paper analyses the impact of increases in foreign production on exports from the parent firm. The relationship between internal exports and foreign production is positive at all feasible levels of foreign production, although the impact on extra-group exports may be negative. These effects may be swamped by changes in relative international competitiveness between firms of the same nationality and industry group. The importance of these findings for multinational firms is that anticipation of these effects can reduce costs of reallocation of resources for the parent, firm and the results illustrate the wide remaining scope for further internationalization even among the world's largest firms. The impact of foreign production on home country employment is likely to remain positive so long as the firm's international competiveness can be improved.     

Foreign direct investment by small and medium sized enterprises: The theoretical background

This paper is an attempt to give a theoretical background to research on foreign direct investment by small and medium sized enterprises. Section 2 examines alternative theoretical approaches to SMEs investing abroad. Section 3 outlines the special issues which arise from SME foreign ventures and ends with an attempted synthesis of the theoretical approaches. In Section 4, a brief discussion of the nature of foreign direct investment by SMEs takes place. The paper ends with a short conclusion.