Multilateral Institutions and Policies

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas L. Brewer ◽  
Stephen Young
Keyword(s):  
International Business ◽  
Business Strategy ◽  
Multinational Enterprises ◽  
Political Environment ◽  
Transfer System ◽  
Bilateral Agreements ◽  
Business Studies ◽  
Multilateral Institutions ◽  
The World ◽  
Wto Agreements

The topic of this article — the multilateral regime for FDI — lies within the domain of international business studies that focus on multinational enterprises and their political environment. The topic is of increasing importance for MNEs' strategies and operations. Because of its centrality in the international trade–investment–technology transfer system, the World Trade Organization (WTO) is the specific focus of this article, though there is also some discussion of regional and bilateral agreements because they interact and overlap with WTO agreements. The relevance of the WTO to business strategy is evident in a variety of ways — in existing agreements, in negotiations to revise those agreements, in disputes, and in the expansion of its membership.

The Oxford Handbook of International Business Strategy

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
International Business ◽  
Business Strategy ◽  
Multinational Enterprises ◽  
Great Part ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
International Strategy ◽  
Firm Level ◽  
Long Run ◽  
Decision Making Processes ◽  
Made In

The present volume discusses the progress made in progress made in the theory and practice of international business (IB) strategy in the last few decades. The book captures the differences in motivations and decision-making processes between smaller and larger firms, private, family and state-owned, emerging or developed market multinational enterprises (MNEs). The book highlights how the increasingly uncertain conditions in the IB environment demand superior firm-level capabilities for MNEs to achieve and maintain long-run competitive advantages. We elaborate on the links between international strategy and the social responsibilities of the firm in its, often differing, host market contexts, including the deployment of effective and ethical human resource practices in international markets. Most importantly perhaps, this handbook lays out how the classic principles of international competitive strategy are transformed in today’s markets, in great part due to digitalization, and provides suggestions about how MNEs can develop IB strategies to respond to these transformations. The implications of such discussions for IB strategy and practice are becoming ever more profound and will likely influence the next generation of IB scholars and practitioners.

scholarly journals Business groups and the study of international business: A Coasean synthesis and extension

2021 ◽  
Vol 52 (2) ◽  
pp. 161-211
Author(s):  
Luis Alfonso Dau ◽  
Randall Morck ◽  
Bernard Yin Yeung
Keyword(s):  
International Business ◽  
Multinational Enterprises ◽  
Business Groups ◽  
Business Group ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Time Inconsistency ◽  
Dynamic Interactions ◽  
Economic Significance ◽  
Common Control ◽  
The World

AbstractThis 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.

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. xviii-7
Author(s):  
Kamel Mellahi ◽  
Klaus Meyer ◽  
Rajneesh Narula ◽  
Irina Surdu ◽  
Alain Verbeke
Keyword(s):  
International Business ◽  
Business Strategy ◽  
Multinational Enterprises ◽  
Strategic Behavior ◽  
Multinational Enterprise ◽  
Future Research ◽  
International Operations ◽  
Challenges And Opportunities ◽  
The Right ◽  
International Business Strategy

International business strategy is a field where theory continuously seeks to meet business practice. Increasingly, scholars of international business strategy are concerned with the uncertainties and complexities of international operations, especially when firms commit significant resources to foreign markets. Over time, multinational enterprises have evolved in order to manage the challenges in their environments. The contributions in this volume address key remaining challenges and opportunities for the modern multinational enterprise. These contributions include refinements of traditional ideas about the role of firm-specific and country-specific advantages as well as new knowledge around how the heterogeneity observed in international business strategic behavior stems from the size, origin, governance and other characteristics of the firm. Further, we invite the reader to explore new dimensions of international business strategy, in order to understand the strategic implications of digitalization or the increased social pressure placed on MNEs to “do the right thing” and manage international operations responsibly, in ever changing social, economic and institutional environments. Each chapter provides insightful future research directions and implications for management and policy. This collection is a complete Handbook of International Business Strategy that should serve as a knowledge repository for scholars and managers alike.

The Theory of International Business Strategy

2020 ◽  
pp. 9-36
Author(s):  
Rajneesh Narula ◽  
Alain Verbeke ◽  
Wenlong Yuan
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Framework ◽  
Bounded Rationality ◽  
International Business ◽  
Business Strategy ◽  
Multinational Enterprises ◽  
Behavioral Challenges ◽  
The Past ◽  
Bounded Reliability ◽  
International Business Strategy

Is there a unifying theory of international business (IB) strategy? If so, what might it look like? This chapter describes the key ingredients of such theory. These ingredients, we propose, constitute the foundation for further analysis of IB strategy. We incorporate both the traditional ingredients of IB strategy perspectives and significant extensions to theory developed in the past two decades. The chapter highlights the importance of multinational enterprises (MNEs) engaging in resource recombination—as opposed to simply utilizing extant reservoirs of resource bundles and capabilities, also called firm-specific advantages (FSAs)—to manage their operations in complex and often highly dynamic home and host environments. The chapter zooms in on the role played by generic behavioral drivers, such as bounded rationality and bounded reliability. Generic behavioral challenges are present in most, if not all, IB strategy decisions. Finally, the significance of a unifying conceptual framework for better understanding MNE strategy is discussed.

Friedman's Follies: Insights on the Globalization/Regionalization Debate

2008 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-14 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan Rugman ◽  
Chang H. Oh
Keyword(s):  
International Business ◽  
Regional Integration ◽  
Business Strategy ◽  
Multinational Enterprises ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
Global Strategy ◽  
Country Level ◽  
Popular Book ◽  
Special Cases ◽  
International Business Strategy

In this paper we deconstruct the popular book by Thomas Friedman which argues that the world is integrated through the advent of a new form of globalization based on the Internet. We use the logic of international business strategy to demonstrate that Friedman's examples of worldwide integration are special cases which ignore the empirical realities of multinational enterprises (MNEs). We provide empirical evidence to demonstrate that the world's largest MNEs do not operate globally, but sell and produce the vast majority of their output within their home region of the triad. We develop a new analytical framework to explain the limited nature of Friedman's thinking, and we contrast this with the more robust frameworks available in international business. The latter frameworks, which take into account country level and regional level barriers to integration, are better at explaining the activities of MNEs. We conclude that, from the viewpoint of international business strategy, the prescriptive thinking from Friedman is misleading if it is believed that a global strategy is feasible. Instead, MNEs need to develop strategies to accommodate the realities of intra-regional integration and to overcome the liabilities of inter-regional expansion across the triad.

Multilateralism and the Multinational Enterprise

2009 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-26 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas C. Lawton ◽  
Johan P. Lindeque ◽  
Steven M. McGuire
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
World Trade ◽  
Multinational Enterprises ◽  
Multinational Enterprise ◽  
Decision Making Process ◽  
Strategic Choices ◽  
Multilateral Institutions ◽  
The World ◽  
Enforcement Mechanisms ◽  
The Impact

How do multilateral institutions influence the strategic choices and actions of international managers? This paper addresses the question by exploring the impact of the World Trade Organization's (WTO) decision-making process on multinational enterprises (MNEs). We discuss the three phases of the WTO decision-making lifecycle - the formulation of trade rules, the implementation of those rules, and the enforcement of the rules – and propose a strategic adjustment framework for understanding how companies alter their strategies and structures in response to the WTO's rules and operations. We argue that the increased relevance of multilateral rules and enforcement mechanisms – embodied in the WTO - is an important influence on MNE strategies and structures because of the increasing embeddedness of the WTO in national levels of regulation. We illustrate this through examples taken from the pharmaceutical, textiles and sugar industries sectors that have witnessed substantial multilateral regulation.

scholarly journals Shifting Design Paradigms: Why Tomorrow's International Economic Law May Look More Like the Tax Regime than the WTO

AJIL Unbound ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 114 ◽  
pp. 270-274
Author(s):  
Wolfgang Alschner
Keyword(s):  
International Economic ◽  
World Trade ◽  
Third Party ◽  
Tax Law ◽  
Political Environment ◽  
Economic Law ◽  
Multilateral Institutions ◽  
International Economic Law ◽  
The World ◽  
International Tax

Rampant unilateralism, insistence on national sovereignty, a wariness of multilateral institutions and third-party adjudication—for international trade lawyers, this is the stuff of nightmares. For international tax lawyers, these are the normal operating parameters of the international tax regime. In fact, the same forces that are currently unraveling the World Trade Organization (WTO) are simultaneously enabling pragmatic and creative reforms of international tax law. Ruth Mason's account of the Transformation of International Tax invites us to draw broader lessons on how international economic law could adapt to survive and even thrive in a political environment increasingly hostile towards WTO-style multilateralism.

The Role of Multilateral Institutions in International Trade Cooperation

1999 ◽  
Vol 89 (1) ◽  
pp. 190-214 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giovanni Maggi
Keyword(s):  
World Trade ◽  
Bilateral Agreements ◽  
Multilateral Trade ◽  
Multilateral Institutions ◽  
Bilateral Trading ◽  
The World ◽  
Potential Benefits ◽  
Multilateral Institution ◽  
Reputation Mechanisms

The World Trade Organization (WTO) lacks the power to directly enforce agreements. It is therefore important to understand what role the WTO can play to facilitate international cooperation, and whether a multilateral institution can offer distinct advantages over a web of bilateral agreements. This paper examines two potential benefits of a multilateral trade institution: first, verifying violations of the agreements and informing third parties, thus facilitating multilateral reputation mechanisms; second, promoting multilateral trade negotiations rather than a web of bilateral negotiations. The model suggests that a multilateral approach is particularly important when there are strong imbalances in bilateral trading relationships. (JEL F13)

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