Rob van Tulder

Toward Effective Stakeholder Dialogue

Acompany’s license to operate and grow is no longer seen exclusively in terms of maximizing profits. Embedding an organization in society—in a sustainable manner—has become a condition for continuity and growth. Sustainable development requires that a company’s performance be valued positively by the stakeholders, in financial, environmental, and social terms. 1 The financial bottom line moves aside for the triple bottom line, 2 in which profits are linked to environmental (planet) and social (people) value. To an increasing extent, both primary and secondary stakeholders are calling companies to account directly for their triple bottom line. “Civil society is demanding greater accountability and transparency from business” according to the World Resources Institute and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development. 3 The number of international NGOs registered by the Union of International Associations has more than doubled since 1985, and now amounts to 40,000. 4 However, the public’s impression of how companies deal with issues of sustainability does not always seem to be positive. Research by CSR Europe in 2000 revealed that half the European population believes that insufficient attention is paid to socially responsible business practice. A study by the Conference Board showed that half the U.S. population said that, when making recent purchases, they had taken the social performance of the company into consideration. 5 In most countries, the government

International business-society management : linking corporate responsibility and globalization

Part I: Rivalry in a Changing Society Part II: International Corporate Responsibility Part III: The International Bargaining Society in Action

Reverse auctions or auctions reversed: First experiments by Philips

The electronic auction is one of the most highly-promoted forms of B2B e-commerce. However, since the e-commerce bubble burst, the effectiveness of this tool is in question. This article looks at how electronic auctions can be affected by various trade-offs in sourcing strategy. Using the case of an auction by Philips, it is shown that firms still mostly have to deal with the same tensions. Even when auctions are used, regional sourcing strategies rather than global ones are the norm for most European firms. To be effective, electronic auctions should be used as part of a wider strategy, and appropriate selection criteria should be set up in advance.

Cars, carriers of regionalism?

This highly topical book brings together some of the world’s leading specialists on the global car industry who discuss the ins and outs of the faster lane of regionalism at a time that the world is reassessing the ins and outs of globalization. It provides a thorough and up-dated mapping of the worldwide geography of the car industry, in the triad regions (Europe, North America and Japan), and in the emerging countries and regions.

Integrating Environmental and International Strategies in a World of Regulatory Turbulence

Companies operating in multiple countries face different and often changing regimes of environmental regulation. This regulatory turbulence raises the question of what environmental strategies multinational enterprises with a portfolio of divergent regulatory regimes should develop in relation to their international business expansion strategies. We argue that multinationals seeking to develop an effective environmental strategy should integrate relative regulatory stringency and international market interdependence. We discuss and illustrate four environmental strategies that match different regulatory/market configurations for multinationals from both developed and emerging markets, as well as the factors that drive strategic changes. We introduce a ‘regulatory turbulence tool’ that describes relevant regulatory/market configurations and prescribes contingently effective, dynamic environmental strategies.

Getting all motives right: a holistic approach to internationalization motives of companies

Purpose – This paper presents a framework for an improved understanding of actual internationalization motives. Answers to a key question in IB studies – why companies internationalize – contain considerable flaws. There are theoretical, disciplinary and methodological reasons for this state of affairs. In practice, the lacking attention for motivational constellations has serious repercussions for the theoretical sophistication of IB studies, lowering its managerial relevance. Design/methodology/approach – Managers are confronted with many internationalization considerations simultaneously and, therefore, often have difficulty in recognizing themselves in extant approaches. The abstractions that many textbooks and academic papers present on the why question of corporate internationalization defy reality in case the various motivational trade-offs that managers face are not adequately addressed. This contribution presents a framework that is based on the identification of a number of motivational tensions...

Toward a Renewed Stages Theory for BRIC Multinational Enterprises? A Home Country Bargaining Approach

The recent emergence of a number of high-profile multinational enterprises (MNEs) from emerging markets has triggered considerable research and debate on how to understand and appraise this phenomenon. This is notwithstanding the fact that in relative terms, measured as a share of total international foreign direct investment (FDI), the magnitude of the phenomenon remains relatively modest. The challenge for empirical research includes the question of whether the strategies and motives for the inter-nationalization of these MNEs can be considered fundamentally different from the strategies of firms from developed countries (Luo and Tung 2007), or whether their ownership advantages are fundamentally different from those of developed country MNEs (Mathews 2002; Luo and Tung 2007; Buckley et al. 2007; Li 2007). Increasingly described as “springboarding” (Luo and Tung 2007), the internationalization strategies of emerging market firms are characterized by their high-risk, aggressive, and “boom-and-bust” or radical nature, while targeting many customers in many foreign markets at once, in a strategy of entrepreneurial venturing (Yiu et al. 2007). Comparing developed country MNEs of the 1960s, with emerging market MNEs in the 2000s, Dunning, Kim, and Park (2008) identified a number of additional differences. These include forms of entry (alliances); motivation (asset augmentation); managerial approach (regional and geocentric); role of home governments (more active than in the past); regional destination; institutional triggers of internationalization rather than traditional motives related to neoclassical models; and the lack of firm-specific ownership advantages (177).

Peripheral Regionalism: The Consequences of Integrating Central and Eastern Europe in the European Automobile Space

Following the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, a breathtaking transformation took place in the Central and Eastern European (CEE) automobile space. Despite the formation of its own regional free trade area (CEFTA), the importance of the prospective integration of these countries inside the European Community/Union can hardly be overestimated. It made industrial development in those countries in general, and in the car industry in particular, subject to a process of ‘peripheral regionalism’. CEE countries swapped their previous dependence on a division of labour within the Warsaw Pact economy under the aegis of the former Soviet Union, for a position in the production networks of western producers under the aegis of the European Union. As a result, they gained considerable political autonomy, but partly lost (again) economic autonomy.

The past, present and future of managing distance: stakeholders and development

This paper explores whether and what kind of distance can be considered a relevant factor for managers of multinational enterprises (MNEs). In the so-called era of globalization, traditional measures such as geographical, cultural or psychic distance have become less relevant or surrounded by growing ambiguity. Instead, institutional distance, governance or administrative distance have been introduced as variables in understanding success or failure of MNEs. Relative institutional distance, thereby, proves more important than absolute distance. This paper argues that further advances in international management studies critically depend on whether it is possible to, first, move the study of internationalization from ‘factors’ to ‘actors’ and, secondly, add societal relevance to managerial relevance. Now and in the future, therefore, two final dimensions of distance are increasingly relevant: stakeholder distance and normative/development distance.

Internationalization and Performance: The Moderating Role of Strategic Fit

Recent research on the internationalization–performance (IP) relationship has suggested that many of the different results can be explained by the role of moderating factors. This paper explores the hitherto underemphasized role of strategic fit between organizational structure on the one hand and industry pressures towards integration and responsiveness on the other hand. We suggest a new way of measuring organizational structure (and consequently strategic fit), based on archival data rather than questionnaires, and include these measures in our regression analysis on a sample of 332 Fortune companies.We find that strategic fit positively affects performance and moderates the shape, size and direction of the internationalization–performance relationship.