Mohammad Bakhtiar Rana

Empirical Studies on Legitimation Strategies: A Case for International Business Research Extension

The paper focuses on legitimation and legitimation strategies applied by companies. Following the process of systematic review, we analyse empirical studies exploring legitimation and legitimation strategies from different theoretical perspectives. Using the key findings by reconnoitering and comparing the theoretical background, approaches, methodologies and findings of these empirical studies, we outline potential directions for research in the legitimation strategies of firms engaged in international business operations.

Tri-Space Framework for Understanding MNC Behaviour and Strategies: An Institutionalism and Business System Perspective

‘How do firms behave?’ has been a common question in strategic management (Rumelt et al., 1994), the answer to which leads to understanding firm strategies. Answering this question in international management (IM) is not as simple as it can be for domestic firms whose activities confine mostly in domestic context. Understanding MNC behaviour is complex because its behaviour is not shaped by the internal decisions of an MNC’s subsidiaries alone but also by external institutional factors and the MNC’s organizational network in which its headquarters (HQ) play dominant roles (Morgan et al., 2001; Collinson and Morgan 2009). The question ‘How do MNCs behave?’ is related to ‘What influences MNC behaviour?’ ‘How is this influence exerted?’ and ‘Where those factors lie?’ The third question — ‘Where those factors lie?’ — is important to understand in MNC strategy research, because an MNC has a complex organizational structure that extends across national boundaries and there is a multifaceted relationship between MNC organization and multiple exogenous factors from multiple spaces. Its HQ is located in one institutional space, while it operates in multiple institutional spaces, that is, across national borders and, it is even linked with and influenced by global institutional actors who lie at a global space, a space that is at least not located in a national institutional space. Thus, I want to present a framework using three different concepts that indicate three different spaces (a) institutionalism and business system (b) civil society (CS) and (c) transnational community (TC).

Sentiments that Affect Sociopolitical Legitimation of TNCs in Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan: Sustainable Strategic Management from an Institutional Perspective

The study focuses on TNCs’ sociopolitical legitimation in Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan with a view to ensuring sustainability in the greater institutional context. Taking an institutional perspective as a theoretical lens, using a grounded theory methodology, and employing nine cases as a methodological tool, the study explores and conceptualizes three types of sentiments. They are abbreviated as “REN-sentiments,” and cause tensions between TNCs and sociopolitical actors in the process of legitimation. The REN-sentiments comprise “religiosity and ideology,“”nationalism and patriotism,” and “ecological balance,” and suggest that tensions stemming from these sentiments can be managed and often turned into opportunities if appropriate strategies are applied. Eight types of strategic choices derived from the nine case studies are presented in order to mitigate, manage, and cash in on the REN-sentiments in South Asian markets. Such strategies include collaboration strategy, local development strategy, strategy of alignment with sociopolitical actors, local name and staffing strategy, hibernation strategy, sentiment-focused strategy, isomorphism strategy, and openness strategy.

Business Systems Perspective on Entrepreneurship

Rana and Allen focus on a relatively neglected research area: how business systems theory (BST) can help explain entrepreneurship. The authors employ this theory to understand: why a particular business model is developed; why entrepreneurs tend to make a particular type of decision, in a particular way, for a particular context; why firms or new ventures structures, strategies, and growth trajectory follow a particular path dependency in a particular institutional context; while complementarity and/or lack of complementarity present different types of opportunities, challenges, and growth patterns for new ventures or new industries in a society. The authors illustrate how BST can help to explain entrepreneurial decision-making, motivation, venture, and industry creation, social entrepreneurship, diaspora entrepreneurship, and, above all, institutional entrepreneurship in national and comparative institutional contexts.

Entrepreneurship in Institutionally Distant Context: Bangladeshi Diaspora-Entrepreneurs in Denmark

Extant studies have not highlighted how country of origin (COO) and country of residence (COR) in institutionally distant context shape diasporans’ behaviour, rationales, and capabilities, leading to the growth and success of entrepreneurial ventures in the COR; our paper contributes to this gap.