Demystifying Misted Mirrors to Investigate Emerging People Issues in SMEs: Implications for Strategic Change

Although ‘mirroring’ has been studied within MNEs, the way SMEs deal with the challenges associated with implementing new products and services in change contexts remains a neglected area. By subsuming mirroring and change management theories under organisational theory, the author examines the impacts of these constructs on how four SMEs dealt with some of their challenges as they tried to launch new products, improve services and staff performance. The paper contributes to the organisation theory and strategy literature by initially identifying ‘organisations design products’ as a gap whose linkage to HRM architectural pairings produced the theoretical contribution referred to as ‘Contingent Misting’. The theory helps in identifying the structural, cultural and technical characteristics that SMEs are dealing with and deepens our understanding of some of the emerging mirroring architectures that SMEs face. A thematic categorisation approach to the analysis of the interview data led not only to the paper’s theoretical contribution of ‘Contingent Misting’ but also highlights individual and organisational-level characteristics whose combination help SMEs to better adapt to the complex challenges of product and service redesigns. The paper’s 85 semi-structured interviews in 4 UK/internationally-connected SMEs was used to successfully frame SMEs’ products, services, structures and people in a theory that highlights the contingent nature of people’s competence when SMEs implement changes to practically tackle their challenges. ‘Contingent Misting’ was previously missing in the architectural pairings and mirroring literature and is therefore proposed as the paper’s theoretical contribution. Its benefits, implications and future research directions are identified

"Courting the multinational": Subnational institutional capacity and foreign market insidership

peer-reviewedSignificant contemporary challenges face an internationalizing firm, including the non-ergodic nature of investment, and the liability of outsidership. Recent revisions to the Uppsala internationalization process model reflect these challenges, whereby “insidership” is represented as realized, successful foreign market entry. Drawing upon socio-spatial concepts from international business and economic geography, this paper demonstrates the endogeneity of subnational institutions in shaping foreign market insidership within an advanced economy. Employing a multi-method research design with almost 60 subnational actors, the role and interaction of subnational institutions within the internationalization process are explored. Our findings illustrate how customized coalitions of subnational institutions effectively initiate, negotiate and accelerate insidership of inward investment within the foreign market both prior to and during formal entry. Key aspects of this dynamic include communicating tangible and intangible locational resources, initiating functional and relevant business relationships, and facilitating access to codified and tacit knowledge. This paper embellishes the Uppsala internationalization process model by demonstrating the capacity of subnational institutions to participate actively with foreign market insidership, and in so doing advances understanding of how the risk and uncertainty associated with foreign market entry are currently navigated.ACCEPTEDpeer-reviewe

Multinationality and performance literature: a critical review and future research agenda

The literature on the relationship between the degree of multinationality (M) and performance (P) in the context of multinational enterprises (MNEs) has attracted a large volume of research in the past 50 years. Yet, the theoretical foundations and the empirical conclusions concerning the nature of M–P relationship vary greatly, thus call for a critical review and assessment. We examine 135 articles in 39 leading scholarly journals and classic books published during the period 1960–2015. We use an inductive approach and a qualitative content analysis methodology for our comprehensive and critical review of the literature. We incorporate international business, finance, and accounting perspectives in our analysis. We review the conceptualization and measurement of M, P, the findings on M–P relationships, methodologies, and geographic focus. We identify six key inconsistencies in the existing research, which cause ambiguity in the relevant findings. We make eight recommendations for future research to address these inconsistencies. Thus, our study contributes to the central debate in this research field

Global Cities And Multinational Enterprise Location Strategy

We combine the concept of location derived by economic geographers with theories of the multinational enterprise (MNE) and the liability of foreignness developed by international business scholars, to examine the factors that propel MNEs toward, or away from, global cities. We argue that three distinctive characteristics of global cities global interconnectedness, cosmopolitanism, and abundance of advanced producer services help MNEs overcome the costs of doing business abroad, and we identify the contingencies under which these characteristics combine with firm attributes to exert their strongest influence. Consistent with these arguments, our analysis of a large sample of MNE location decisions using a multilevel multinomial model suggests not only that MNEs have a strong propensity to locate within global cities, but also that these choices are associated with a nuanced interplay of firm- and subsidiary-level factors, including investment motives, proprietary capabilities, and business strategy. Our study provides important insights for international business scholars by shedding new light on MNE location choices and also contributes to our understanding of economic geography by examining the heterogeneous strategies and capabilities of MNEs the primary agents of economic globalization that shape the nature of global cities