AbstractThe integration–performance link created during post‐acquisition integration has defied satisfactory theoretical explanation. To address this gap, we conduct a functional analysis to explore the intermediating mechanisms between the level of integration – which represents the extent of the target firm’s integration with the acquirer – and acquisition performance. We use six in‐depth acquisition case studies in the medical technology industry to develop an integrated model with which to untangle the integration–performance link. First, our model connects the level of integration to specific functional integration strategies, which refer to the approaches acquirers employ to manage functional resources. Second, we identify value creation and value leakage as the two routes through which functional integration strategies impact acquisition performance. Finally, we propose two qualitative measures of acquisition performance: value gap and time delay. Our study suggests that a functional analysis of the integration–performance link may help resolve long‐standing conflicts within the literature.

Recognizing the dearth of attention afforded to global cities in the international business and management journals, Goerzen et al. (J Int Bus Stud 44(5):427–450, 2013) chanced their hand at becoming pioneers. Their gamble paid off. Taking geographic scale down to the city level, questioning why multinationals choose to locate subsidiaries inside or outside of global cities, they jump-started their own conversation, sugaring the pill with the IB staple—liability of foreignness. So well was their inquiry crafted and executed that their insights into the way global connectedness attracts investment into these cities remains instructive. Since then, global cities and firms have undergone a transition. We visualize increasingly multifaceted cities interacting with firms accelerating towards adopting an “ecosystem approach”—characterized by extensive non-equity collaborations and partnerships. We explain why investigation à la Goerzen et al. (J Int Bus Stud 44(5):427–450, 2013) today must grasp multinationals’ diverse relationships to revivify theoretical insights from economic geography for a world of tensions heightened by geopolitics, but above all grappling with the sustainability agenda. We conclude that within an ecosystem of feedback effects, multinationals’ agency can be part of the solution. To deliver, IB must harness emerging novel geographic—“big”—data and techniques to match, in the spirit of the imaginative fusion a decade earlier.

This paper finds that the nationality of ownership of foreign investors significantly impacts upon productivity spillover effects, revealing a curvilinear relationship with foreign direct investment on data for overseas Chinese (Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan) multinational enterprises, but not for other (Western) firms. This relationship is most pronounced for low-technology host industries. These findings suggest that the curvilinear form is more appropriate to the future study of the spillover effects of foreign presence.

Using detailed cross-section data for 1995, non-Chinese MNEs are found to generate technological and international market access spillover benefits for Chinese firms, while overseas Chinese investors confer only market access benefits. State-owned enterprises reap no benefits, and indeed receive negative spillovers from overseas investors, in marked contrast to the positive spillovers gained by collectively-owned firms. These findings underline the importance of reform in state-owned enterprises to raise the absorptive capacity of the Chinese domestically-owned sector.

A distinguishing feature of emerging economy multinationals is their apparent tolerance for host country institutional risk. Employing behavioral decision theory and quasi-experimental data, we find that managers’ domestic experience satisfaction increases their relative risk propensity regarding controllable risk (legally protectable loss), but decreases their tendency to accept noncontrollable risk (e.g., political instability). In contrast, firms’ potential slack reduces relative risk propensity regarding controllable risk, yet amplifies the tendency to take noncontrollable risk. We suggest that these counterbalancing effects might help explain prior ambiguous findings on the relationship between experience, slack, and FDI decisions. The study provides a new understanding of why firms exhibit heterogeneous responses to host country risks, and the varying effects of institutions.

Our original 2007 Journal of International Business Studies article, “The determinants of Chinese Outward Foreign Direct Investment”, was the first theoretically based empirical analysis of the phenomenon. It utilised internalisation theory to explain the internationalisation of Chinese state-owned enterprises. This paper showed that we had failed to ask sufficiently challenging questions about the effects of home country institutions on outward foreign direct investment (OFDI). This Retrospective builds on the extensive subsequent research to show the importance of context in constructing satisfactory theoretical explanations of OFDI. Building on these foundations, we propose research challenges for the next decade on Chinese OFDI that transcend the Chinese context and have wider theoretical applicability. Examining alternative forms of social and economic organisation allows the creation of special theories of foreign direct investment nested within the general theory. Following such a strategy would enable International Business research to make a contribution across the social sciences.

This study investigates the determinants of Chinese outward direct investment (ODI) and the extent to which three special explanations (capital market imperfections, special ownership advantages and institutional factors) need to be nested within the general theory of the multinational firm. We test our hypotheses using official Chinese ODI data collected between 1984 and 2001. We find Chinese ODI to be associated with high levels of political risk in, and cultural proximity to, host countries throughout, and with host market size and geographic proximity (1984–1991) and host natural resources endowments (1992–2001). We find strong support for the argument that aspects of the special theory help to explain the behaviour of Chinese multinational enterprises.