Abstract: When entering international markets, manufacturers of consumer products are expected to adapt their products in order to meet local consumption practices. Doing so is particularly challenging for producers of culturally-specific products—that is, products that are little known, understood, or valued outside their original cultural milieu—whose operations are often deeply embedded in local conventions and traditions. To examine how SMEs navigate tensions between the cultural specificity of products and the cultural embeddedness of operations when expanding internationally, we conducted a multiple case study of Japanese producers of heritage craft located in Kyoto. Our findings reveal three strategies available to address these tensions—namely, selective targeting, cultural adaptation, and cultural transposition—and highlight the pivotal role played by local distributors and foreign designers, serving as cultural intermediaries, in bridging systems of domestic and foreign cultural practices and meanings. Our findings portray product adaptation as an ongoing process that unfolds along with a firm’s international expansion, as producers and intermediaries explore ways to bridge cultural differences. They illuminate the lengthy processes of learning and unlearning, adjusting, and rethinking that underlie managers’ efforts to strike a balance between standardization and adaptation as they internationalize.
论文原文：
Sasaki, I., Nummela, N., & Ravasi, D. 2021. Managing cultural specificity and cultural embeddedness when internationalizing: Cultural strategies of Japanese craft firms. Journal of International Business Studies, 52(2): 245-281. DOI: 10.1057/s41267-020-00330-0
Abstract: This paper harmonizes the business group literature in international business and across relevant fields within a unified theoretical framework. Business groups (firms under common control but with different, if overlapping, owners) are economically important in much of the world. Business groups’ economic significance co-evolves with their economies' institutions and market environments, patterns of particular interest to international business scholars. The vast literature on business groups raises discordant perspectives. This paper first proposes a unifying definition and provides a list of stylized historical observations on business groups across different parts of the world. It then develops a Coasean framework to harmonize seemingly disparate views from the literature by building on recent surveys and the stylized historical patterns of business groups. We enlist two concepts – fallacies of composition/decomposition and time inconsistency – to harmonize these perspectives. This yields a theoretical framework for understanding business groups that mobilizes concepts long-used to understand multinational enterprises: the economy's market and hierarchical transaction costs, openness, and their dynamic interactions. We then apply this framework to globalization and business group internationalization. This work leads to an overarching research agenda encompassing seemingly inconsistent prior work.
论文原文：
Dau, L. A., Morck, R., & Yeung, B. Y. 2021. Business groups and the study of international business: A Coasean synthesis and extension. Journal of International Business Studies, 52(2): 161-211. DOI: 10.1057/s41267-020-00395-x
Abstract: Using a comprehensive dataset of firms from 34 countries, we study the effect of institutional investors’ investment horizons on firm valuation around the world. We find a positive relation between institutional ownership and firm value that is driven by short-horizon institutional investors. Accounting for the interaction between investors’ investment horizon and nationality, we show that foreign short-horizon institutions, which are more likely to discipline managers through the threat of exit rather than engaging in monitoring made costly by the liability of foreignness, are the investor group with the strongest effect on firm value. Reinforcing the threat of exit channel, we find that the value-enhancing effect of short-horizon investors is stronger in the presence of multiple short-horizon investors, who are more likely to engage in competitive trading. The positive valuation effect of short-horizon investors is stronger when stock liquidity is high, which makes the exit threat more credible, and in firms prone to free cash flow agency problems. Overall, our results are consistent with short-horizon institutional investors, especially foreign institutional owners, affecting firm value by disciplining managers through a credible threat of exit.
论文原文：
Döring, S., Drobetz, W., El Ghoul, S., Guedhami, O., & Schröder, H. 2021. Institutional investment horizons and firm valuation around the world. Journal of International Business Studies, 52(2): 212-244. DOI: 10.1057/s41267-020-00351-9
Abstract: Multinational organizations increasingly face strong resistance to their market entry by some local audiences, reflecting growing ideological divisions and populism in societies. We turned to the organizational stigma literature for the conceptual tools and vocabulary to uncover why multinationals can simultaneously be praised by some audiences and tainted by others. Drawing on a longitudinal explanatory case study of an unsuccessful market entry, we develop a process model of organizational stigmatization in a foreign market entry. Our model explains how and why some local audiences may taint the core attributes of an entry-seeking organization and its market entry process, while others may embrace the foreign entrant. We also introduce the notion of cross-border stigma translation where negative audience evaluations are amplified across geographic contexts. A focus on competing local audiences is important for understanding the generative mechanisms of the liability of foreignness and liability of origin and how to manage them. Our study grounds a conversation on the processes and mechanisms of organizational stigmatization that may cause permanent liabilities to foreign organizations.
论文原文：
Ritvala, T., Granqvist, N., & Piekkari, R. 2021. A processual view of organizational stigmatization in foreign market entry: The failure of Guggenheim Helsinki. Journal of International Business Studies, 52(2): 282-305. DOI: 10.1057/s41267-020-00329-7
Abstract: Motivated by the international business literature that examines the interactions between organizations, corruption, and political forces, we examine whether and how government connections affect small and medium-sized enterprises’ (SMEs) credit access around the world. Using a sample of SMEs across 30 developing countries, we show that SMEs with government connections are significantly less likely to be discouraged from approaching banks for a loan as compared to SMEs without such connections. However, connected SMEs do not receive preferential lending from banks. Moreover, the nature of this effect depends on the institutional setting. Specifically, the effect becomes stronger in countries with high levels of corruption, suggesting that government connections are substitutes for poorly functioning formal institutions. Our findings have important implications for policies targeted at reducing corruption, improving access to financing, facilitating entrepreneurship, and attracting foreign investment.
论文原文：
Qi, S., & Nguyen, D. D. 2021. Government connections and credit access around the world: Evidence from discouraged borrowers. Journal of International Business Studies, 52(2): 321-333. DOI: 10.1057/s41267-020-00341-x
Abstract: The superior productivity performance of outward foreign direct investment (FDI) firms is attributable to both ex ante advantages gained within the home market and ex post learning, which emanates from MNE experiences in host markets. Learning is modeled as a function of firm-level R&D efforts, absorptive capacity, and host-country characteristics. Using a firm-level panel database on all firms in Canada, a large-scale econometric analysis is undertaken to show that the host-country environment is central to MNE learning. We also quantify results in the extant literature on the share of the superior productivity exhibited by FDI firms into that which emanates from the home market, and that which is linked to ex post learning, finding 79% attributable to the selection effect, and 21% to the learning effect. The implications of these results are that, since productivity is endogenous to FDI, firms which are below a threshold level required to be successful internationally ex ante can nevertheless succeed if learning can move these MNEs above the required threshold for success ex post. As such, this research provides insights into strategies and host-country environments which lead to ex post productivity improvements for firms undertaking outward FDI, and hence informs the FDI decision at the firm level.
