Drawing on organizational learning theory and taking an institutional perspective, this study investigates (1) the dynamic relationship between internationalization and innovation in emerging market enterprises (EMEs), and (2) how state ownership moderates the focal relationships. Using a panel dataset of listed Chinese firms from 2007 to 2018, we find that internationalization encourages innovation input in EMEs, which in turn transforms into more innovation output. Higher innovation output leads to further international commitment, creating a dynamic upward spiral of internationalization and innovation. Interestingly, state ownership positively moderates the innovation input-innovation output link but negatively moderates the relationship between innovation output and internationalization. Our paper enriches and refines our understanding of the dynamic relationship between internationalization and innovation in EMEs by integrating the knowledge exploration, transformation, and exploitation perspectives, with the institutional perspective of state ownership.

This study aimed at investigating the interplay between internationalization and digitalization using a social media platform during the early phases of the internationalization process of new ventures from an emerging economy. The research adopted the longitudinal multiple-case study method of investigation. All the firms that were studied had operated on a social media platform (Instagram) since their inception. Data collection was based on two rounds of in-depth interviews and secondary data. The research used thematic analysis, cross-case comparison and pattern-matching logic. The study contributes to the extant literature by (a) proposing a conceptualization of the interplay between digitalization and internationalization during the early phases of the internationalization trajectory of small new ventures from an emerging economy using a social media platform; (b) detailing the role of the diaspora during the outward internationalization of these ventures and outlining the theoretical implications of this phenomenon; and (c) providing a micro perspective on how entrepreneurs exploit platform resources and face platform-related risks during their enterprise's early domestic and international phases.

Mergers and acquisitions (M&As) are often dubbed as a market for lemons because of the extent of information asymmetry embedded in M&A transactions. A country's institutional environment influences the quality and overall reliability of formal disclosures, thereby altering the extent of information asymmetry affiliated with an M&A transaction. We argue that the caliber of the host country's institutionsformal and the informal cultural institution of affects the of M&A transactions, i.e., the phase in which firms attempt to resolve issues related to information asymmetry. We test our hypotheses using a sample of 3376 foreign acquisitions completed by U.S. firms between 2006 and 2016. Our results indicate that formal institutions lower arbitration duration. But, while high uncertainty avoidance lowers duration as expected for countries with low market-supporting institutions, it more strongly raises the duration for countries with high market-supporting institutions.

This study measures and ranks the performance of nations and academic institutions based on a 45-year analysis of international business (IB) publications, including 5853 academic authors from 1542 affiliated institutions. Examining authors' academic origin and university of affiliation, and with a focus on the European nations that participated in the production of IB research, we make several novel contributions to the field: (1) identifying a unique internationalization process of IB research that consists of three distinct stages driven by international collaboration, (2) highlighting the role of international collaborations in overcoming publication barriers at the regional and country level, and (3) highlighting the role of both scale and scope of international collaborations in achieving a top-ranked position in the production of IB research.

It is increasingly clear that China's economic and political power rivals that of the US. This is potentially a serious problem for multinational companies, since China's rise could lead to more US-China trade conflict and disruption of supply chains, threatening new and ongoing foreign direct investment, and drawing other countries into the jostling for power. However, we argue that globalization is not necessarily endangered by China's emergence as a comparable power to the US. The US and China both have vested interests in maintaining the open economic order, and these two countries are each providing the global public goods that incentivize economic openness among other countries of the world. In this paper, we develop a theory corresponding to this argument and provide evidence that globalization has not declined even as the global distribution of power has shifted. While global integration is likely to persist, disruptive skirmishes between the US and China will occur with some regularity. Therefore, we suggest that international company strategies today should focus more on risk management related to policy shifts stemming from China's rise and less on achieving least-cost global supply chains. We present a risk management framework for this purpose.

The () celebrated its 60th anniversary in 2020. In commemoration of this event, we use a bibliometric analysis to present a retrospective on the journal by analyzing its content for the years between 2006 and 2020. We find that the collaboration culture in has risen over time with the increase in the median size of author teams. Moreover, the collaboration network has become more global over time. The methodology used in the journal is predominantly empirical and quantitative with archival data sources most commonly used. The bibliographic coupling of the corpus reveals that the major themes in the journal revolve around "culture," "emerging economies," "innovation, knowledge transfer, and absorptive capacity," "internationalization process," "culture and entry modes," and "internationalization and performance." A comparison with other leading international business journals provides distinct pathways in which may continue to grow. Finally, it is important to note that while the share of conceptual studies has decreased significantly in the last 15 years, the editors want to see more novel and theoretically grounded conceptual articles in the journal.

This study explores accelerated internationalization among inexperienced digital entrepreneurs who lack resources such as prior experience, knowledge, and networks, which previous research regards as prerequisites for such growth. Following an in-depth qualitative research methodology, the findings reveal three theoretical mechanisms through which inexperienced entrepreneurs can make international commitment decisions with regard to the internationalization of their digital firms. The first is a novel mindset-based approach through which an entrepreneur can make an affective commitment to the international stakeholders within a digital community. Entrepreneurs do that by applying pull-based tools in digital communication to build interest among potential network contacts. The second mechanism is a means-based approach following effectuation logic resulting in an effectual form of commitment to international stakeholders in the digital community. The mechanism relies on applying push-based tools for digital communication to facilitate interactions with known network contacts. The third mechanism is continuance commitment to international business that entrepreneurs can foster over time in tandem with accumulated international experiential knowledge. This research provides an entrepreneurial decision-making model that extends effectuation theory and integrates it with extant research. The resulting holistic entrepreneurial decision-making model explains the accelerated internationalization of digital firms.

The rise of digitization and information and communication technologies (ICT) is playing a vital role in facilitating global trade and business activities and in overcoming cross-border transaction costs. In so doing, it offers firms significant benefits and opportunities to compete on a global scale, as witnessed during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The growth and widespread diffusion of internet-enabled technologies and platforms have created numerous opportunities for firms to provide products and services across both developed and developing markets. Yet, limited research has been conducted in the international business domain to explore the rise of ecommerce and its implications for international business scholarship. In this focused issue, we present an examination of the role played by e-commerce in international business, paying particular attention to the policy aspect of e-commerce and issuing a call for a greater integration of e-commerce policy in international business research.

Drawing on institutional theory, this study investigates how institutional pressure can affect digital platform risk. Specifically, it examines whether two types of institutional pressure - domestic market e-commerce policy uncertainty and foreign market e-commerce policy uncertainty - affect the perceived digital platform risk for international new ventures (INVs) and its relationship with their scope of internationalization. The recent crisis caused by the Covid-19 pandemic has further impacted this new phenomenon, thus we examine its effects on the relationships between/among domestic and foreign market e-commerce policy uncertainties, digital platform risk, and the internationalization scope of INVs. We conduct four waves of a survey to test the Covid-19 effects as well as to minimize common method bias, analyzing the final sample of 394 responses from 260 Chinese INVs using structural equation modeling. The results show that domestic and foreign market e-commerce policy uncertainties positively affect the digital platform risk for INVs, with foreign market e-commerce policy uncertainty having a stronger positive impact. Moreover, we find that the Covid-19 pandemic interacts asymmetrically with the relationship between domestic vs. foreign market e-commerce policy uncertainty and the digital platform risk for INVs. In addition, the pandemic strengthens the negative relationship between digital platform risk and the internationalization scope of INVs. This research broadens and strengthens our understanding of e-commerce policy and international business in the context of INVs' internationalization.

Governments are recognizing anticompetitive concerns and market distortions associated with the rise of e-commerce platforms. Thus, policies are being crafted to level the playing field between large platform operators and small platform sellers. In addition, policies mitigating barriers to internationalization associated with using e-commerce platforms are also being developed. This study aims to explore these policy actions impacting the platform-based internationalization of small and micro enterprises (SMEs). The case study method is adopted to provide rich insights into the Indian Government policy actions impacting the e-commerce platform-based internationalization of Indian SMEs. More specifically, this investigation analyzes the extent to which the Indian Government policy actions have mitigated the home market and industry-level barriers to export for SMEs leveraging e-commerce platforms for their internationalization efforts. Study findings provide rich policy implications and fodder for future empirical testing of key qualitative insights uncovered in this study.

Despite the exponential growth of crowdfunding in recent years, research on the role it plays in business internationalization is still embryonal. Building on the Resource Based View (RBV) and Knowledge Based View (KBV), this study explores how SMEs can use equity crowdfunding (ECF) and reward crowdfunding (RCF) to internationalize and the related potential limitations. Using an inductive qualitative research design, based on multiple case studies of Italian SMEs, our study showed that ECF and RCF models help SMEs in acquiring the financial resources needed to internationalize and, at the same time, offer significant added value to their internationalization. Our findings support the idea that ECF and RCF play a key role in helping companies to overcome their resource limitations in regard to internationalization, not only in terms of the provision of financial resources but, above all, by compensating for any lack of knowledge on aspects relevant to the internationalization process. Furthermore, our results show the limitations of SMEs use of crowdfunding in order to internationalize (i.e., a lack of ad hoc e-commerce policies in relation to equity crowdfunding and to the regulation of the pre-ordering mechanism in the reward model). This paper concludes by discussing the theoretical and managerial contributions to the international business domain, and highlighting fruitful avenues for future studies.

Attracting a qualified workforce is a challenge for all companies but in particular for foreign subsidiaries of emerging market MNEs (EMNEs) in developed countries due to their double disadvantages of liability of foreignness plus liability of emergingness. Based on signaling theory, this study investigates whether corporate social responsibility (CSR) contributes to overcoming these liabilities. A web-based experiment with realistic recruitment webpages, involving 490 potential applicants from Germany, Switzerland and Austria, reveals that potential applicants in developed host countries have lower job-pursuit intention to EMNEs than to developed market MNEs, but that good CSR helps mitigate this negative effect. Nonetheless, we find that applicants are not intensively searching for CSR information on a recruitment webpage, constituting an impediment in EMNEs' attempts to reap maximum benefits from their CSR engagement.

Building on the resource-based view, we propose conceptualizing a foreign multinational's country of origin as a resource, an asset tied semi-permanently to the firm, and analyze how this resource affects its host country investments. We argue that the country of origin provides an advantage or disadvantage in the host country depending on its positive or negative view among the host-country government and consumers. This results in four alternative configurations of host country investment dynamics based on the alignment of their views. First, when a multinational's country of origin generates a government-based advantage and a consumer-based disadvantage, the multinational is more likely to make larger initial investments to benefit from incentives and larger subsequent localization investments to disassociate itself from the country of origin. Second, when the country of origin creates a government-based disadvantage and a consumer-based advantage, the foreign firm is more likely to make smaller initial and subsequent investments to maintain its association with the country of origin. Third, when the country of origin leads to government-based and consumer-based advantages, the foreign multinational is more likely to make a large initial investment to benefit from government incentives and smaller subsequent investments to maintain its association with the country of origin. Finally, when the country of origin leads to government-based and consumer-based disadvantages, the foreign multinational is more likely to make smaller initial investments to minimize risk and larger subsequent investments to localize.

Drawing from the literature on institutional pressure, we argue that firms with different ownership types have different strategic options in domestic and overseas markets, namely the zone of conformity. State-controlled enterprises (SCEs) have a broader range of acceptable actions than do private-controlled enterprises (PCEs) in a domestic market but face more sanctions and stricter conformity requests in an overseas market. The concept of the zone of conformity predicts SCEs have a higher probability of deal failure overseas than in domestic markets and strategically seek less equity ownership of target firms in cross-border deals. The autocracy level of target country moderates the M&A behaviors difference between SCEs and PCEs. Our analysis of 12,497 Chinese mergers and acquisitions supports the study hypotheses.

The impact of institutional environments on sustainability is well documented in the international business literature. However, how multiple and occasionally conflicting institutional logics shape sustainability as it is practiced by individuals across countries remains undertheorized. Our study contributes to this line of research by examining how multiple institutional logics inform the comprehension of sustainability practices in two high-hazard organizations in the Republic of Serbia and Canada. In doing so, our findings explicate three multi-level mechanisms - pulling down (1st level), relating (2nd level), and aligning (2nd level) - through which individuals in these organizations across two countries construct a localized understanding of sustainability. In both countries, individuals elements of the state and organizational logics to construct meso-level logics they use to comprehend sustainability practices, albeit differently. In Serbia, due to the conflict between the current state logic and dominant high-hazard organizational logic, individuals pull down elements of the high-hazard organizational logic and the enduring legacy state logic to construct a community logic and sustainability practices with it. In Canada, the state logic complements the high-hazard organizational logic, resulting in individuals pulling down elements of both logics to construct the professional logic and their practice with it. In both countries, due to the dominance of the high-hazard organizational logic, individuals their practices to the well-being of others. Based on our comparative case analysis, we create a general model and a country-specific model depicting how individuals embed multiple institutional logics into their sustainability practices.

Despite the well-acknowledged benefits of global sourcing (e.g., location specific advantage) in the international business literature, research driven mainly by the transaction cost economics and resource based view has cautioned about its potential negative effects (e.g., hidden costs, hollowing out effect) which might offset its potential gain, leading to a failure to achieve expected outcome and capture the value created in global sourcing activities. We argue that this issue is primarily explained by the misalignment between a firm's global sourcing strategy and value expected from its global sourcing activities. This study examines the role of global sourcing strategy on financial and innovation performance of global sourcing activities. Using a fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis on 235 firms engaging in global sourcing of business service activities, we identify configurations of global sourcing strategy-concerning (1) disaggregation, (2) dispersion of activities and (3) governance structure-that lead to high financial and innovation performance. The findings suggest that global sourcing strategy leading to high financial performance differs largely from global sourcing strategy leading to high innovation. While most studies selectively focus on one or two components of global sourcing strategy, our study highlights the need for firms to jointly consider the combined effect of degree of disaggregation, degree of dispersion of business service activities and governance structure as well as taking into account the expected outcome when crafting their global sourcing strategy.

This study investigates the drivers of pressures from various institutions in the nonmarket environment and the responses of MNEs to these pressures in a host country. By taking a broad institutional perspective, this study pairs and integrates the economic perspective of new institutionalism and the sociological perspective of neo institutionalism with the corporate political strategy perspective. This research provides a systematic review of the drivers underlying pressures from various types of nonmarket institutions that explain the preference of firms to use a transactional or relational strategy to deal with these pressures. The evidence is based on research involving MNEs in the Netherlands. The nonmarket institutions that exert the greatest pressures at the national level pushing MNEs to use transactional more than relational strategies and tactics are regulatory and standards agencies. The pressures of political institutions, interest groups, and the media, in contrast, trigger MNEs to employ relational rather than transactional strategies and tactics.

The advancement of digitalization is gradually transforming the existing structure of the global economy. According to the McKinsey Global Institute, almost all cross-border transactions had a digital component in 2016. This is also reflected by the growing literature on digitalization and E-commerce. Yet, studies specifically focusing on E-commerce policy are scarce compared with other areas in this domain. By going beyond academic articles and including policy documents in our analysis, this study takes stock of the issues as well as the policy recommendations identified in these publications. Our analysis reveals that to promote an inclusive E-commerce participation, it is imperative to design policies that improve countries' formal institutions, facilitate the inclusion of less-developed countries in the E-commerce space, and enhance E-commerce adoption by small- and medium-sized enterprises. We highlight the significance of collaboration between and solidarity among governments and other stakeholders.