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.
Organizational diversity practices are widely implemented to support the workplace integration of international migrants (IMs), yet their outcomes remain inconsistent. Little is known about why IMs respond differently to the same initiatives offered by their organizations or why these practices sometimes fail or backfire. Drawing on signaling and attribution theory, we argue that IMs interpret diversity practices through the lens of two key disadvantages: unfamiliarity with the destination country and exposure to discrimination within this context. We develop a dual disadvantage typology of IMs and theorize how resource and nondiscrimination practices differentially affect organizational commitment depending on migrants’ disadvantage configurations. This typology refines existing diversity frameworks by introducing a configurational view of migrant diversity and explaining why identical practices may produce divergent outcomes. Using survey data from 394 IMs working in Germany, we find that while nondiscrimination practices are consistently positively associated with commitment, the effects of resource practices vary: some IMs view them as empowering, while others interpret them as stigmatizing or misaligned with their needs. In particular, training initiatives can backfire for IMs who are already familiar with the labor market and face discrimination. Our findings demonstrate the importance of tailoring initiatives to different migrant groups. We contribute a theory-driven framework that explains how diversity signals are differentially interpreted across migrant disadvantage configurations and when diversity practices produce intended versus unintended effects.
In an era of intensifying geopolitical rivalries, emerging economy multinational enterprises (EMNEs) face unprecedented challenges in sustaining cross-border innovation, particularly as technological competition becomes increasingly entangled with national security agendas. Integrating the literature on geopolitics in international relations with EMNE subsidiary innovation, this study investigates whether and to what extent inter-country geopolitical tensions influence the innovation performance of EMNEs’ R&D subsidiaries in advanced economies. Using a sample of Chinese listed firms’ foreign R&D subsidiaries, we find that escalating geopolitical tensions between home and host countries significantly reduce the innovation output of these subsidiaries. Furthermore, the number of host-national innovation partners of a foreign R&D subsidiary can help mitigate the negative effect of geopolitical tensions on its innovation pursuits, while its local same-parent sisters can exacerbate this adverse impact. Our study enhances the understanding of how international politics affect EMNE subsidiary innovation and advances the political risk literature by revealing the role of subsidiary-level networks in shaping firm vulnerability to geopolitical disruptions.
