The bribery paradox in transition economies and the enactment of ‘new normal’ business environments

We develop a novel, sensemaking perspective on corruption in transition economies. Prior research has focused on understanding why some entrepreneurs are more likely to pay bribes than others. It typically assumes that paying bribes will lead to an intended – albeit unfair – competitive advantage. We challenge this assumption and uncover a bribery paradox: drawing upon sensemaking logic, we argue that beyond gaining an immediate benefit from bribing, entrepreneurs who frequently pay bribes may in the longer run be enacting a ‘new normal’ business environment perceived as high in obstacles, especially in transition countries. As sensemaking is grounded in identity construction and one’s social context, we argue that owners of family firms will be especially vulnerable to the dangers of perceiving greater obstacles over time and enacting an obstacle‐ridden ‘new normal’ business environment. We find empirical support for our framework on a sample of 310 privately‐held small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) from 22 transition economies

Economic Development and Marketing Strategies: a Comparative Lens

Go back We analyze two core models of economic development in emerging markets: socialism (i.e., the “visible hand” of the state in directing the country’s socio-economic life) and capitalism (i.e., the “invisible hand” of the markets implemented through pro-market reforms). We further distinguish between two types of socialist economic development: Soviet Communism (as experienced in the pre-1990s Central and Eastern European transition economies) and Fabian Socialism (as experiencedin pre-1991 India). We then suggest that companies can adapt to the evolution from socialism to capitalism in their countries through the implementation of more sophisticated marketing strategies that can ensure a sustainable competitive advantage. Thus, we study the marketing strategies of companies from emerging markets operating under both models of economic development. We analyze the opportunities and challenges that emerging market companies face under each model of economic development in terms of deploying various marketing strategies, and provide useful venues for future research

Communist footprint and subordinate influence behavior in post-communist transition economies

How does length of exposure to communism, the communist footprint, affect individuals' influence behaviors at work today? While imprinting theory has debated how exposure/lack thereof to communism—communist imprint—affects individuals, it has disregarded the exposure's length. We show that the shorter the communist footprint, the less negative professionals are toward organizationally constructive influence behaviors, and that individuals with longer communist footprints at higher-level position levels do not approve of organizationally destructive behaviors as much as their lower-level counterparts. We thus show that the continuous communist footprint provides a better understanding of work behaviors today than the dichotomous communist imprint

Family firms in the global economy: toward a deeper understanding of internationalisation determinants, processes and outcomes

Research on the internationalization of family firms has flourished in recent years, yet the mechanisms through which family involvement shapes the determinants, processes, and outcomes of internationalization remain little understood and largely undertheorized. We contribute to research at the intersection of international business and family business by examining the roles of different sources of family firm heterogeneity and the context in shaping the determinants, processes, and outcomes of business internationalization. Drawing on this analysis, we summarize the articles published in this special issue and set out an agenda for further research aimed at advancing a more fine-grained and contextualized understanding of internationalization in family firms

International and Product Diversification:Which Strategy Suits Family Managers

This paper explores the impact of family and professional managers on performance and how this relationship is affected by international and product diversification. Using a dataset of 262 German firms from 2000 to 2009, we find that an increasing proportion of family managers on the management board is associated with higher performance. This relationship is negatively moderated by higher levels of international diversification but reinforced by increased product diversification due to differences in the human and social capital between family and professional managers. Firms with a significant presence of family members on the top management team (TMT) face a choice of either adopting a corporate strategy that runs counter to “global-focusing” or adjusting the balance of family and professional managers in the TMT. Managerial summary Deciding the extent of family involvement on the executive team is a key strategic decision. While our research supports the general proposition that family managers will enhance performance we show they don't have the same positive impact in all situations. More precisely, we show that family managers are more suited to lead diversification than internationalization. If a family firm wants to go international it therefore is sensible to increase the proportion of professional managers on the executive team. Diversifying into new product markets, however, does not require outside expertise commonly associated with professional managers

Family firm internationalization: heritage assets and the impact of bifurcation bias

Research summary We develop a new conceptual framework to uncover governance-related determinants of family firms’ internationalization, building upon internalization theory. We assess how family firm governance features determine internationalization patterns on two key dimensions: location choice and operating mode. We focus on family governance characteristics that might drive sub-optimal internationalization patterns, and on removing such sub-optimality. We conclude that bifurcation bias, defined as the de facto differential treatment of family or heritage assets versus non-family assets, represents a critical family-firm specific barrier to achieving efficiency in international operations. In the short run, the key difference in international governance is between bifurcation-biased family MNEs and all other types of MNEs. In the longer run, inefficient, bifurcation biased decision making will make place for comparatively more efficient governance. Managerial summary Family firms are susceptible to bifurcation bias – a default preferential treatment of family members and resource bundles that hold positive emotional meaning to the family, i.e., heritage assets. Such preferential treatment contrasts with that afforded to professional, non-family managers and other resources, with which the founding family does not entertain a positive emotional connection. If left unremedied, bifurcation bias will lead to poor decisions in family-owned multinationals that undertake international expansion, in terms of the choices of which markets to enter and how to enter these. These types of dysfunctional decisions will lead to a decline in competitiveness as compared to non-family multinationals. Family firms should therefore identify and actively prevent bifurcation bias, by implementing the specific safeguarding strategies suggested in this study

Family involvement and firms’ establishment mode choice in foreign markets

Extant literature on foreign entry increasingly recognizes firms’ heterogeneity as a potential reason for inconsistency in results on the establishment mode choice, i.e. whether and under which conditions firms should choose to enter a new country through a greenfield investment or an acquisition. Our study contributes to this debate by identifying family ownership and family involvement in management as potential powerful sources of such heterogeneity. Integrating international business studies with both corporate finance literature on family firms and recent contributions from the Socio Emotional Wealth perspective on family ownership, we claim that, due to greater risk aversion and lower access to information, the family involvement either in the firm ownership and management leads to a higher propensity towards greenfield initiatives (vs. acquisitions). However, we also find that such a propensity decreases with international experience especially in family-owned firms given the greater ability of professionalized management to overcome family-related concerns on making acquisitions. Our analysis on 1,045 foreign initiatives undertaken by 311 Italian family and non-family firms between 2003 and 2013 confirms our expectations – indicating family ownership as a significant driver of international business choices

Bank Value and Geographic Diversification: Regional vs Global

This paper analyzes the impact of geographic diversification on bank value by employing a data set comprising the largest banks across the world, originating from both developed and emerging countries. The findings suggest that the value impact of international diversification depends on a bank’s home country: higher levels of diversification are associated with changes in valuations only for banks originating from emerging countries. In addition, the locus of destination of the diversification efforts matters for the direction of effects: while higher levels of intra-regional diversification lead to value enhancement, higher levels of inter-regional diversification seem to induce a negative (but statistically less robust) effect on the valuation of emerging country banks

Once bitten, not necessarily shy? Determinants of foreign market re-entry commitment strategies

We investigate foreign market re-entry commitment strategies, namely the changes in the modes of operation (commitment) undertaken by multinational enterprises (MNEs) as they return to foreign markets from which they had previously exited. We combine organisational learning theory with the institutional change literature to examine the antecedents of re-entry commitment strategies. From an analysis of 1,020 re-entry events between 1980 and 2016, we find that operation mode prior to exit is a strong predictor of subsequent re-entry mode. Contrary to the predictions of learning theory, we did not find support for the effect of experience accumulated during the initial market endeavour on the re-entry commitment strategies of MNEs. In turn, exit motives significantly impact on the re-entrants' decision to re-enter via a different mode of operation, by either increasing or decreasing their commitment to the market. We show that re-entrants do not replicate unsuccessful operation mode strategies if they had previously underperformed in the market. When favourable host institutional changes occur during the time-out period re-entrants tend to increase commitment in the host market irrespective of the degree of prior experience accumulated in the market

Which Regions Matter for MNEs? The Role of Regional and Firm Level Differences

This paper explores the impact of regional and firm level heterogeneity on MNE performance from an operational perspective. We find that the underlying economic growth of a region and the MNE’s overall product diversity significantly impact returns from downstream operations in specific regions. Based on a 10 year panel dataset of 1249 US based MNEs, results show that the incremental impact of the degree and speed of operations within a given region, is greater for regions exhibiting faster economic growth than for slower growing ones. For slower growing regions only, product diversity of the MNE becomes important and negatively moderates the link between operations and performance. Previous literature has shown that MNEs largely follow a regional strategy and has ignored the role of inter-regional differences, and how firm level characteristics interact with region specific ones. Once inter-regional heterogeneity is introduced, a more complex picture of the internationalization performance link emerges than has been addressed previously, with significant implications for the theory and practise of internationalization