Jennifer Oetzel

Private Provision of Infrastructure in Emerging Markets: Do Institutions Matter?

Governments in developing countries have encouraged private sector investment to meet the growing demand for infrastructure. According to institutional theory, the role of institutions is paramount in private sector development. A longitudinal dataset of 40 developing economies between 1990 and 2000 is used to test empirically how different institutional structures affect private investment in infrastructure, in particular its volume and frequency. The results indicate that property rights and bureaucratic quality play a significant role in promoting private infrastructure investment. Interestingly, they also suggest that countries with higher levels of corruption attract greater private participation in infrastructure.

Business responses to environmental and social protection policies: toward a framework for analysis

This conceptual paper seeks to advance neo-institutional work that has tradi- tionally portrayed environmental and social protection policies as constraints followed by businesses. Drawing from the policy sciences literature, we propose that in the United States, businesses tend to show increasing resistance as the protective policy process moves from initiation to selection and growing cooperation thereafter. Most importantly, we also contribute to the neo-institutional theory literature by positing that this inverted U-shaped policy process-business response relationship proposed for the U.S. context may be moderated by variations in the level of democracy, system of interest representation, regulatory approach, and national income.

Learning to Carry the Cat by the Tail: Firm Experience, Disasters, and Multinational Subsidiary Entry and Expansion

We investigate whether firm experience with discontinuous risks, particularly high-impact disasters that are episodic and difficult to anticipate, moderates the relationship between disasters, foreign entry, and expansion decisions. Using a panel data set with 57,500 observations from 106 large European multinational corporations and their subsidiaries operating across 109 countries from 2001 to 2007, we find that although discontinuous risk was negatively related to firm entry and expansion, firms that had experience with high-impact disasters were more likely to expand in countries experiencing disasters.

Differentiation Advantages in the On-line Brokerage Industry

Research across a variety of industries shows that the lowest-priced on-line sellers do not have the highest market share. This makes it important to identify the sources of differentiation advantage that can result in higher market share. Insights from the resource-based view are utilized to identify on-line brokerage services that may create value for consumers and result in higher market share for on-line brokerage firms. Ownership of process patents for on-line brokerage activities is positively correlated with differentiation advantage. Direct access to the trading floor, unlimited free real-time quotes, and 24/7 live customer service are also correlated with differentiation advantages. The identification of specific services associated with higher market share sheds light on how on-line firms differentiate themselves from their competitors.

Reconceptualizing the MNE–development relationship: the role of complementary resources

The Handbook provides an impressive state-of-the-art overview of the international strategic management field as an area of scholarly inquiry. The great strength of the work is the thoughtfulness of the messages conveyed by the expert team of authors.