This paper examines cultural awareness in knowledge transfer to China. The concepts of guanxi and mianzi are fundamentally important in understanding cultural interactions in China. These concepts, generally analyzed at the personal level, are extended here to relationships between firms and...

Our contribution lies in explaining why inter-firm variations in the strategic decision to actively seek and acquire external scientific knowledge impact not only financial performance but also the effects of firms’ own R&D. We further demonstrate that the performance implications of using...

This study develops and tests a framework about the resource- and context-specificity of prior experience in acquisitions. Although extant research has explained why multinational companies from emerging countries (EMNCs) acquire companies in developed countries, we have an incomplete and...

This paper examines the theory of international business before 1960 when Stephen Hymer wrote his seminal thesis. It is shown that there existed a considerable amount of theory, but this was uncodified, unsystematic, fragmented and not institutionalised in a single academic discipline. Hymer...

The global factory is a structure through which multinational enterprises integrate their global strategies through a combination of innovation, distribution and production of both goods and services. The global factory is analysed within a Coasean framework with particular attention to...