Although multinational mobile messaging applications, such as WeChat, have successfully introduced new mobile payment services into local markets where the application originated, it remains a challenge to penetrate foreign markets. This research examines the factors influencing foreign consumers to adopt different mobile payment services introduced by multinational mobile messaging applications. The preliminary study finds that foreign consumers are most likely to use e-ticket purchase applications and least likely to adopt personal loan applications. This guides us to further understand the factors causing consumers to either adopt or reject these discrete mobile payment services. The main study has found that perceived usefulness is the key factor influencing foreign consumers' when selecting such a service. Perceived ease of use increases the likelihood that a foreign consumer will identify the usefulness of the service, which consequently enhances adoption. More significantly, personal innovativeness and social influence can positively moderate such a mediation effect.
This paper examines the relationship between subsidiary initiative-taking and corporate social responsibility (CSR). We conducted a qualitative study of the CSR practices of Unilever PLC and Unilever Ghana to document the key features of this relationship. Our findings show that subsidiary mandates and initiative-taking occur in three phases: 1) identifying key and prominent stakeholder issues; 2) implementing subsidiary initiatives; 3) taking steps to bridge the feedback loop. This research shows that Unilever maintains a pragmatic perspective, with a preference for practical rather than theoretical interactions with stakeholders who form the basis of CSR strategy development and implementation. These findings have important implications for understanding how multinational enterprise subsidiaries in developing countries position themselves to achieve sustainable development at the firm level.
As artificial intelligence (AI) technologies play a key role in transforming Taiwan's manufacturing sector with the aim of upgrading to Industry 4.0, world-leading multinational technology companies have taken strategic actions to secure the market in Taiwan to take advantage of Taiwan's long-established, world-renowned manufacturing capabilities, especially for information and communications technology, semiconductors and precision machinery. This research employed the framework of the technological innovation system to analyse the technology promotion and development of AI in Taiwan, while the profound influences of multinational technology companies on the AI innovation system were recognised, including the system functions of 'knowledge development', 'knowledge diffusion', 'guidance of the search' and 'resources mobilisation'. Key characteristics of enabling technology were identified, while policy recommendations were also provided for further development.
A sample of firms active in the Spanish information and communication technology sector during 2003-2014 is analysed to assess whether foreign subsidiaries are likely to make a technological contribution to domestic innovative capabilities during expansive phases of the business cycle and during recessions. Domestic firms are used as a control group. Innovative foreign subsidiaries are more likely than non-innovative foreign subsidiaries to cooperate for innovation with local partners. However, the most advanced foreign subsidiaries seem reluctant to engage in local cooperation for innovation. Foreign subsidiaries have shown greater capability than domestic firms in increasing their collaboration with local partners during the 2008 crisis.
This study investigates how voice assistants' responses influence customer engagement with voice assistant providers. Voice assistants have been developed by different cultures and countries and include different cultural characteristics. Most voice assistant providers focus on language localisation, but this is not enough. In fact, customer engagement with a voice assistant provider will be significantly affected by different consumer purposes. Users expect voice assistants to provide different levels of media richness for different purposes. An experiment (327 participants from Taiwan and the UK) reveals that British people prefer low media richness when their intentions are transactional and high media richness when their intentions are non-transactional. On the other hand, Taiwanese people prefer high media richness when their intentions are transactional and low media richness when their intentions are non-transactional. Overall, the findings give media richness theory a new interpretation that is applied to voice assistants, and also gives voice assistant providers a cross-cultural insight.
With the deregulation and liberalisation of the Ghanaian financial sector, the Ghanaian banking sector has seen an influx of new foreign banks, which are competing very well in this market. However, there is limited research on the impact of the strategies and impact of these new bank's operations in the host country. Using a qualitative and the interview method, data was collected from a case of four foreign banks operating in Ghana and analysed using cross-case comparative analysis. The findings from the study reveal that the exposure of foreign bank strategies in domestic markets leads to both positive and negative impacts. The operations of these foreign banks impact positively on their performance with higher profits and a negative impact on domestic bank's profitability. This paper explores these empirical findings and presents its implications for foreign bank's operations in the domestic markets of an emerging economy.
The enduring nature of negative branding distorts Africa's image. This is emblematic of the problematic nature of brand Africa, albeit normalised and treated ahistorically and uncritically in extant literature. This paper analyses the origins, causes and effects of negative branding of Africa and proposes novel sovereign (self-determination-based) strategies for rebranding the continent. The study practices literature mapping and historical institutionalism as a two-pronged approach for probing and highlighting the important historical stages in marketing strategies that are partly responsible for relegating Africa to the bottom of a global caste-based branding system. We synthesise extant literature about the role of imagery, urban myths, deceptive marketing and pejorative media/academic portrayal of Africa as being dependent on the eleemosynary gestures of others. We analyse the extent to which these issues obfuscate our understanding of the institutional reforms, numerous positive macro-economic indicators and political changes which are favourable conditions for MNCs and diaspora entrepreneurship to thrive.
This study investigates the relationship between executive shareholding and firm investment decisions (FID) under circumstances of environmental uncertainty (EU). We posit that the implementation of equity incentive plans for executives could influence their decision-making behaviour towards underinvestment or overinvestment. Using data from a sample of 400 listed Chinese firms from 2009-2012, we find that the relationship between executive shareholding (ES) and FID is inverted U-shaped. Further, we find a negative relationship between environmental uncertainty and FID, but no evidence of a moderating effect of environmental uncertainty on the association between executive shareholding and investment decisions. We, therefore, outline the implications of these findings and advance a theory based on these findings.
The purpose of this article is to analyse sustainability information reported by two plant sites of a multinational mining firm operating in Ghana. It draws on institutional theory and firm characteristics to compare and contrast the sustainability reporting contents on the websites of two plants of a multinational mining company in the same country. The study uses case study approach with qualitative content analysis to benchmark the sustainability information found on the websites of the two plants of Newmont Mining Corporation, Newmont Ghana Gold Ltd. at Ahafo and Newmont Golden Ridge Ltd. at Akyem based on the Global Reporting Initiative and the United Nations Division for Sustainability Development models. It was discovered that even though both plants reported on all aspects of sustainability - economic, environmental and social, the plant sites vary in the contents and details of reports even though the websites had the same headings. These variations are arguably due to the institutional pressures and variations in the characteristics of the two plants. This article contributes to an understanding of how on sitespecific institutional pressures from stakeholders such as community and regulatory bodies and the size and age of subsidiaries may impact on sustainability reporting.
This study analysed the comprehensive competitiveness for multinational automobile companies (GM, Volkswagen, Toyota, and Hyundai). Based on Porter's (1990) diamond model, we selected the leading papers in the field of management and strategy, then extracted the key factors of comprehensive competitiveness for the automobile companies. According to the results, among factor conditions – the CEO characteristics, human resource management (HRM) system, and technological innovation capability – technological innovation capability positively influenced the comprehensive competitiveness for all four companies. Hyundai (Korea) showed that CEO characteristics also positively affected comprehensive competitiveness. With a moderating effect of government support, HRM system had a significant interaction for both GM (USA) and Toyota (Japan). Technological innovation capability also significantly interacted with government support for Toyota (Japan). In the case of open innovation, technological innovation capability significantly interacted with it for GM (USA), Volkswagen (Germany) and Toyota (Japan). Finally, the CEO characteristics and HRM system significantly interacted with open innovation for GM (USA).
Does foreign direct investment lead to higher performance? We address this long-standing question by using a novel research design. Using detailed panel data from China, we compare firms with foreign direct investment to firms with foreign portfolio investment within the narrow band around a threshold level of foreign direct investment designation. We find empirical evidence that firms with foreign direct investment outperform firms with portfolio investment. This is accomplished via more efficient production, more investment in research and development, more investment in physical capital, and more focus on the host market. We do not, however, find evidence that foreign direct investment firms introduce more new products or benefit from higher labour productivity.
While the notions of global integration (GI) and local responsiveness (LR) have been widely used to analyse an MNE's international human resource management (IHRM) strategy, the specific ways of conceptualising these constructs in the literature remain unquestioned.This paper reviews how the two important constructs have been conceptualised in the international HRM research and evaluates whether such conceptualisations are adequate to examine MNEs' IHRM strategies to address the fundamental strategic problem -managing the duality of GI and LR in HRM of MNEs.The extensive review of the literature reveals that the widely used constructs have been rather narrowly conceptualised on a single dimension -HRM practice orientation -in the international HRM literature based on the dualistic assumption on the relationship between the two constructs, which prevents the exploration of emerging broader IHRM strategies.Based on the insights from the emerging literature, it is argued that GI and LR should be conceptualised as meta-level constructs which encompass multiple dimensions so that IHRM strategies could be considered as various configurations of the ways of pursuing GI and LR across the dimensions to address the duality problem in MNEs.
Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) are still an important strategy for the expansion of business, but their success is highly dependent on the activities performed after the acquisition. The lack of consistency of studies been conducted in relation to the contributing factors for an M&A success can be imputed to an emphasis on the pre-M&A stages. This paper examines articles related to post-merger integration (PMI) from high impact factor journals specialised in international business from 1980 to 2014. Using bibliometric analysis, it was possible to identify the most relevant papers and areas of research. Our conclusion is that 'performance after post-merger integration', 'integration modes of PMI's' and 'organisational and cultural differences in post-merger integration' are the most relevant areas of research. This article contributes to the literature of the PMI by uncovering the trends of the researches and by pointing out the importance of PMI for international businesses.
MNCs acquire information and knowledge through benchmarking; thus, determining whom to benchmark is a critical concern. Although members in the same strategic group commonly serve as benchmarks, MNCs occasionally select their benchmark outside of their strategic group. Since benchmark selection is a cognitive and relational phenomenon, we explored when MNCs select their benchmark outside of their strategic group by focusing on cognitive and relational factors. Results confirm that a focal firm identifies a firm outside of its strategic group as its benchmark when the performance of the focal firm is better than that of the strategic group members and when the partnership density of the strategic group is high. The results further verify that structural equivalence between a focal firm and a target firm also influences benchmark selection. This study contributes to the literature on benchmarking and strategic groups by showing situations where strategic group members cannot serve as benchmarks.
It is widely accepted that a key driver of a firm's international growth is its knowledge about how to compete in foreign markets. Such knowledge is often accumulated through direct experience. Many firms, however, have attained substantial growth in foreign markets although they have had little prior direct experience there. Depending on the knowledge-based view and the organisational learning theory, we developed a model explaining and predicting the effects of indirect learning from the experience of other firms as well as the effects of direct learning of culture and economy in other countries on firms' success in foreign markets. Using a uniquely complied archival dataset regarding Korean firm's foreign direct investments, we empirically tested the model. We indicated that experiential knowledge of culture and economy positively moderates the effects of those drivers on the success. In addition, the importance of indirect learning is highlighted in explaining firms' international growth.
