Strategic Agility in International Business: A Conceptual Framework for “Agile” Multinationals

Strategic agility is a fuzzy concept that may be counter intuitive as well as confounding to some scholars in terms of the agile strategies' contextual issues. At the same time, the need to be agile is crucial for firms, especially for Multinational Enterprises (MNEs) that operate in culturally different host countries. Thus, a deep understanding of strategic agility is very intriguing for both academics and executives, as several gaps are apparent in the extant literature. In this paper, we review mainstream studies on agility in the international business context, discussing its relevance and proposing main aspects of strategic agility to clarify further this indistinct concept. Moreover, we provide a novel conceptual framework based on the integration of agility in different operational areas (e.g. Information Technology, supply chain and production) that organizations should foster to become an “agile multinational”. Our synthesis represents an innovative strategic direction for MNEs to understand better strategic agility, which clearly extends the concept of flexibility, while managing stakeholder relationships in order to develop key dynamic capabilities. Finally, we also discuss the main contributions of the other articles included in this special issue, thus providing specific examples of agility in well debated IB contexts (e.g., emerging markets). We also suggest some future research areas for this complex and ambiguous concept. © 2020 Elsevier Inc

Do we need to distance ourselves from the distance concept? Why home and host country context might matter more than (cultural) distance

We scrutinize the explanatory power of one of the key concepts in International Business: the concept of (cultural) distance. Here we focus on its effect on entry mode choice, one of the most researched fields in international business strategy. Our findings might, however, be equally be relevant for the field of International Business as a whole. Our analysis is based on a review of 92 prior studies on entry mode choice, as well as an empirical investigation in over 800 subsidiaries of MNCs, covering nine host and fifteen home countries across the world. We conclude that the explanatory power of distance is highly limited once home and host country context are accounted for, and that any significant effects of cultural distance on entry mode choice might simply be caused by inadequate sampling. Entry mode studies in particular, and International Business research in general, would do well to reconsider its fascination with distance measures, and instead, focus first and foremost on differences in home and host country context. We argue that serious engagement with deep contextualization is necessary in International Business research to pose new and relevant questions and develop new and innovative theories that explain empirical phenomena

The Effects of Consumption, Production and Temporal Migration on Global Markets

This article focuses on what we see and what we don’t see, how politics becomes the central focus of the failing economy although it is the not its underlying cause and how we as consumers play the primary role of economic recovery. When economists do not understand the behavior and temporal role of consumers, they risk prescribing the wrong cure for the new norm in mature economies of slow-growth GDP and fewer jobs

Trends and indications in international business: Topics for future research

Forecasting changes in business environments is critical for appropriate responses by policy makers and corporate decision makers. This article reports on a Delphi study which features three rounds of interchanges between experts on possible changes in the international business environment and practice in the next years. Results indicate that terrorism and corruption issues have risen in importance while trade negotiations have declined. Corporate strategies are seen to need significant reform to deliver on the promise of globalization. As trends are becoming more multidimensional, regular solicitation of stakeholder perspectives becomes more important