Mike W. Peng

The resource-based view and international business

The resource-based view (RBV) of the firm has become an influential theoretical perspective in recent international business (IB) research. Tracking the evolution of the RBV literature in IB, this article has three objectives. First, it documents the extent to which the RBV has diffused to IB research. Second, it explains the rationale behind such diffusion. Finally, it provides a state-of-the-art review of the substantive work through a proposed organizing framework, focusing on multinational management, strategic alliances, market entries, international entrepreneurship, and emerging markets strategies. Overall, a broad, expanding, and cumulative knowledge base is emerging to connect IB and strategy research through the RBV. The article concludes with a discussion of the implications of such a development in the intellectual marketplace, with an emphasis on future research directions.

Organizational Slack and Firm Performance During Economic Transitions: Two Studies from an Emerging Economy

How does organizational slack affect firm performance? Organization theory posits that slack, despite its costs, has a positive impact on firm performance. In contrast, agency theory suggests that slack breeds inefficiency and inhibits performance. The empirical evidence, largely from developed economies, has been inconclusive. Moreover, little effort has been made to empirically test whether such an impact (positive or negative) is linear or curvilinear. This article joins the debate by extending empirical work to the largely unexplored context of economic transitions. Specifically, two studies, based on survey and archival data (N = 57 and 1532 firms, respectively), are undertaken in China’s emerging economy. Our results suggest (1) that organization theory generates stronger predictions when dealing with unabsorbed slack, and (2) that agency theory yields stronger validity when focusing on absorbed slack. Furthermore, we also find that the impact of slack on performance is curvilinear, which resembles inverse U-shaped curves. Overall, our findings call for a contingency perspective to specify the nature of slack when discussing its impact on firm performance.

Business strategies in transition economies

Business Strategies An Overview Economies in Transition Institutions, Organizations and Strategic Choices Strategies of State-Owned Enterprises Strategies of Privatized and Reformed Firms Strategies of Entrepreneurial Start-Ups Strategies of Foreign Companies Retrospect and Road Ahead

Towards an Institution-Based View of Business Strategy

This article focuses on a key question: Why do strategies of firms from different countries differ? Drawing from recent research on business strategies in Asian organizations, this article outlines the emergence of an institution-based view of business strategy which sheds light on why firms differ, reviews four streams of research in a broad range of countries, and critiques and extends some of the current work by suggesting a number of future research directions.

What Drives New Ventures to Internationalize from Emerging to Developed Economies

The internationalization of new ventures from emerging economies to developed economies remains an unfilled gap at the intersection of the literature between international entrepreneurship and strategy in emerging economies. What drives some (but not all) new ventures from emerging economies to enter developed economies? We address this question by developing a comprehensive framework based on the three leading perspectives on strategy—industry–based, resource–based, and institution–based views. A series of propositions are proposed to explore the underlying logic behind new ventures’ entrepreneurial entries from emerging to developed economies.

Emerging Multinationals from Mid‐Range Economies: The Influence of Institutions and Factor Markets

This paper revisits and extends our earlier work (in 2005) in the pages of this journal. We argue that there is a need for more fine-grained understanding of the country context along two dimensions: (1) institutional development and (2) infrastructure and factor market development. Specifically, we propose an enriched typology of emerging economies with a focus on mid-range emerging economies, which are positioned between traditional emerging economies and newly developed economies. Then we examine new multinationals from these mid-range emerging economies that have internationalized both regionally and globally. We outline directions for further research based on this typology in terms of (1) government influence, (2) resource orchestration, (3) market entry, and (4) corporate governance regarding the internationalization strategy of these emerging multinationals from mid-range economies.

Institutions Behind Family Ownership and Control in Large Firms

There is a major debate regarding the role of concentrated family ownership and control in large firms, with three positions suggesting that such concentration is (1) good, (2) bad, or (3) irrelevant for firm value. Why are there such differences? We theorize that the impact of family ownership and control on firm value is associated with the level of shareholder protection embodied in legal and regulatory institutions of a country. Data from 634 publicly listed large family firms in seven Asian countries (Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand) are used to test our hypotheses. Overall, this article sketches the contours of a cross-country, institution-based view of corporate governance, and leads to a more informed understanding of the crucial role of institutions behind family ownership and control in large firms.

Individualism, Collectivism, and Opportunism: A Cultural Perspective on Transaction Cost Economics

Researchers criticize the transaction cost economics (TCE) paradigm for over-generalizing the assumption of opportunism as human nature. We suggest that opportunistic propensity is affected by cultural prior conditioning of individualism-collectivism (I-C). Specifically, we propose that individualists have a higher opportunistic propensity in intra-group transactions, and collectivists in inter-group transactions. Our cultural specification of opportunism helps TCE to more effectively accommodate some criticisms and more realistically deal with problems of economic organization in today’s global economy.

Treasures in the China house: a review of management and organizational research on Greater China

Abstract Management and organizational research on Greater China, which not only includes mainland China but also Hong Kong, Taiwan, and overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia, has experienced rapid growth in the past 2 decades. Yet there is no comprehensive review of this literature mapping out the contributions and guiding future research. Intending to fill this gap, this article first examines publications in top-tier, academic journals during the period of 1978–1997 to identify leading individual and institutional contributors to this literature. Then we briefly review substantive research in organizational behavior, strategic management, and international management, highlighting key findings and pointing out future directions. The article concludes with a call for more sustained research in this area attempting to make larger contributions to the mainstream literature.

CEO Duality and Firm Performance during China's Institutional Transitions

Does CEO duality the practice of one person serving both as a firms CEO and board chair contribute to or inhibit firm performance? Agency theory suggests that CEO duality is bad for performance because it compromises the monitoring and control of the CEO. Stewardship theory, in contrast, argues that CEO duality may be good for performance due to the unity of command it presents. The empirical evidence, largely from developed economies, is largely inconclusive. This article joins the debate by extending empirical work to the largely unexplored context of institutional transitions. Our findings, based on an archival database covering 403 publicly listed firms and 1,202 company-years in China, offer stronger support for stewardship theory and relatively little support for agency theory. Finally, we also call for a contingency perspective to specify the nature of conditions such as resource scarcity and environmental dynamism under which CEO duality may be especially valuable.