This study examines how the learning advantages of newness (LAN) emerge from organizational structures and strategic behaviours, and from entrepreneurs acting as learning agents. Despite extensive research on LAN, research on how formative childhood experiences shape the learning foundations of new ventures is limited. This study draws on imprinting theory to investigate how early experiences of autonomy leave enduring cognitive and behavioural imprints on entrepreneurs, fostering a disposition that supports the development of LANs. The study relies on an exploratory multiple-case study of ten early internationalizing technology firms, supported by 11 narrative-informed interviews with entrepreneurs and an abductive research strategy. Its findings identify childhood autonomy as an important antecedent of LAN development. Autonomy imprints operate through four organizational learning mechanisms: selective attention to novelty, distributed authority routines, psychological safety norms, and boundary-spanning searches. These mechanisms translate early-life experiences of autonomy into venture-level learning capabilities. The analysis further shows that resource slack strengthens those mechanisms by enabling broader exploration, experimentation, and knowledge development. This study extends imprinting theory by demonstrating that childhood autonomy constitutes a formative imprint with enduring consequences for organizational learning and international venture development. It also contributes to the learning advantages of newness literature by identifying a previously unexplored antecedent of LAN and revealing the organizational learning mechanisms through which founder imprints shape its emergence in international new ventures. Finally, this study offers practical insights for entrepreneurs by illustrating how formative experiences can be leveraged to cultivate sustainable learning advantages in global markets.
This study conducted an intra-disciplinary review exploring how multinational enterprises (MNEs) contribute to sustainability in local markets within the fields of international business (IB) and strategy. It comprehensively examines four key themes of corporate social responsibility, economic (regional) development, social performance, and environmental sustainability of MNEs. By doing so, it seeks to consolidate fragmented findings from existing independent studies while broadening understanding through problematizing assumptions made in research. In addition, it sheds light on the complexities that MNEs face to address sustainability challenges, and how to strategically integrate economic, social, and environmental goals while adapting to global and local pressures. In turn, we propose new research directions and draw implications for MNEs in addressing grand challenges. Overall, this study contributes to deepening sustainability research in IB and strategy fields, and provides valuable insights for MNEs’ sustainable business practice.
Shared moral vocabularies recur across the Arab world, yet senior executives enact them differently across institutional settings. Drawing on a comparative case study of 45 interviews with Muslim and Christian executives in Lebanon, Iraq, and Egypt, we ask how shared moral resources are re-coded across distinct institutional voids. We develop a mechanism-based account of virtue re-coding: virtue vocabularies such as reputation (sumʿa) and patience (sabr), and morally contested relational practices such as intermediation (wasta), acquire distinct functional meanings through void-specific legitimacy tests. Coordination, security, and procedural voids are associated with three recurring patterns of ethical bricolage, navigational, survivalist, and hierarchical, within which legitimacy calibration modulates enactment through relative legitimacy positioning. Actors also draw the ethics/corruption boundary around wasta differently across voids. The study contributes to IB ethics by explaining how shared virtues become context-specific moral practices, with implications for compliance design and mixed-method extension.
Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) has become a critical measure of multinational enterprises’ global competitiveness, yet emerging market multinational enterprises (EMNEs) face distinct legitimacy challenges due to weak home-country ESG regulations, known as the liability of home origin. Although prior studies have examined the relationship between internationalization and ESG, they have largely treated the two directions separately, leaving unclear whether they operate as competing explanations or as mutually reinforcing processes. Drawing on legitimacy theory, this study conceptualizes internationalization and ESG performance as exhibiting mutually reinforcing associations over time. Using longitudinal data from 2460 Chinese listed firms between 2009 and 2020, we examine the reciprocal relationship between internationalization and ESG performance, and the moderating role of digitalization. Findings indicate that internationalization is consistently associated with stronger ESG performance, suggesting EMNEs use ESG to mitigate liabilities of origin and build legitimacy abroad. The reverse association is weaker but most robust for foreign-country scope, indicating that ESG performance may support international expansion by signaling alignment with international sustainability expectations. The moderating associations of digitalization are uneven and are concentrated in visible foreign organizational and geographic presence, such as overseas subsidiaries and foreign-country scope, rather than overseas revenues.
Social enterprises that embed social innovations (SIs) play a critical role in advancing the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), representing an estimated US$12 trillion market opportunity. Yet, how SIs internationalize in the presence of institutional voids remains underexplored in international business research. Using a history-to-theory and history-in-theory approach, this study examines how dynamic capabilities and digitalization enable the international scaling of SIs. We find that international diffusion depends on capabilities such as boundary spanning, international sensing, legitimacy building, business diplomacy, and market shaping. Digitalization accelerates scaling, contingent on factors including timing, resources, intellectual property ownership, purpose, and technology scope. Our findings also suggest that traditional internationalization metrics—such as exports, FDI, subsidiaries, and foreign sales—do not adequately capture SI internationalization. Instead, internationalization is reflected in the cross-border diffusion of innovations and social impact, alongside the ability to attract international funding, partnerships, talent, and legitimacy while balancing social impact with financial sustainability.
