Flexibility is identified as the hallmark of recent modelling of the multinational enterprise. The focus on flexibility is a response to the rationalization and restructuring of international business, which has occurred since the end of the “golden age” of Western economic growth....

This paper evaluates alternative explanations of the industrial structure of U.S. Direct Investment in the U.K. on a cross-sectional basis, using multiple regression analysis. The most successful approach, in terms of explanatory power, is that based on industrial organization theory, although...

This paper outlines a model of process organisation for the combination of different types of knowledge from spatially separated sources in the multinational enterprise. The model envisages an initiator-entrepreneur as the motor of the process, and identifies regularities in the types of...

This research note challenges international business researchers to think of their future work in terms of the past achievements of their discipline. It identifies three key research areas corresponding to attempts to tackle crucial empirical questions: the explanation of foreign direct...

The strategic choice between joint ventures, licensing agreements and mergers is analysed using eight key factors suggested by internalisation theory. The model explains the increasing role of international joint ventures in the 1980s in terms of the accelerating pace of technological innovation...

Many empirical examinations of foreign direct investment location choice have relied on the use of secondary data and surveys on the choices made by firms about the form and location of overseas investment. These studies have two inherent and related problems. First, they rely solely on the...

The paper presents a simple general equilibrium model that formalizes internationalization in the eclectic paradigm based on a reconfiguration of concepts taken from the new classical economics literature. The model enables us to address simultaneously the role of ownership, location and...