Dear friends and colleagues,
We are delighted to share the third issue of Global Strategy Journal for 2025. It is available at
https://sms.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/20425805/current.
This issue contains papers accepted through the regular process and grouped around the topic of the role of managers and ownership in cross-border operations.
Marica Grego, Peter J. Buckley, Surender Munjal, Hinrich Voss and Elizabeth Yi Wang offer a systematic review of individual-level IB research and develop an affect-enacted model of internationalization decision-making, showing how affective cognition critically shapes IB decisions. Jiayan Yan, Ziliang Deng and Klaus E. Meyer shed light on the role of political performance as a major consideration in executive promotion in state-owned enterprises. Tao Han and Xavier Martin advance internalization research through corporate governance insights by suggesting that board effectiveness moderates the value-creating effects of intangibles in multinational enterprises' foreign expansion. The article by Punit Arora, Tanusree Jain and Ajai Gaur closes the issue. It extends property rights theory and shows that stronger ownership control can prompt owners to push for communalizing private environmental costs unless counterbalancing internal and external governance mechanisms are prevalent.
The papers are open access, and you can get them by clicking on their titles.
If you are interested in reading forthcoming papers accepted but not yet published in an issue, you can find them at onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/20425805/0/0.
We look forward to receiving your best work for consideration for publication.
Best wishes,
Gabriel R. G. Benito, Stewart Miller and Grazia Santangelo
Co-editors of Global Strategy Journal
Managers and internationalization decisions: An affect-enacted model
Marica Grego, Peter J. Buckley, Surender Munjal, Hinrich Voss, Elizabeth Yi Wang
This paper identifies a critical gap in foundational assumptions between traditional International Business (IB) theories (e.g., internalization theory and Uppsala model) and empirical individual-level research. Traditional theories, rooted in assumptions of bounded rationality, tend to overlook the influence of affective cognition in shaping managerial decisions. In contrast, our systematic review of individual-level IB research reveals that empirical studies recognize the influence of affective cognition in decision-making but have only extended mainstream theories in fragmented ways, leaving room for a comprehensive theoretical revision. We propose an affect-enacted model of internationalization decision-making, showing how affective cognition critically shapes IB decisions. Our findings have important implications for IB theorization, advocating for the integration of both affective and non-affective cognition into a unified framework.
Global expansion and executive promotion of state-owned enterprises
Jiayan Yan, Ziliang Deng, Klaus E. Meyer
Executives in state-owned enterprises (SOEs) are promoted differently from those in private firms due to the broader objectives of SOEs, which include non-economic considerations. Research on SOEs often attributes executive promotions to firms' economic performance, without sufficient attention to the role of political performance. We find that executives of SOEs aligned with a government's globalization mandate, especially those investing in countries with political affinity, are more likely to be promoted as these investments further the government's political objectives and enhance executives' legitimacy with the bureaucratic system. The study broadens the literature on executive compensation by arguing that political alignment with government objectives matters. It also enriches institutional theory by suggesting a state-firm-executive legitimacy transmission.
Board effectiveness and internalization benefits: Theory and evidence from value creation in cross-border acquisitions
Tao Han, Xavier Martin
We examine how the value created by technological and marketing intangible assets in foreign direct investment (FDI) varies with board effectiveness conditions. Synthesizing internalization and agency theories, we theorize that a firm can better leverage intangibles and create value through acquisitive FDI if its board setup enables effective monitoring and advising. Empirically, we operationalize the "quad" elements of board effectiveness-independence, expertise, bandwidth, and motivation-and account for multiple selectivity related to disclosure decisions and mode choice. Analyzing 675 cross-border acquisitions by U.S. public firms (1998–2016), we quasi-replicate and extend internalization results linking intangibles with abnormal returns upon FDI announcement. Advancing internalization research through corporate governance insights, our findings show that board effectiveness moderates the value-creating effects of intangibles in multinational enterprises' foreign expansion.
Communalizing private costs: Ownership concentration, institutions, and corporate environmental performance
Punit Arora, Tanusree Jain, Ajai Gaur
We extend the property rights theory to show that stronger ownership control incentivizes owners to push for communalizing private environmental costs unless counterbalancing internal and external governance mechanisms are prevalent. Using a sample of 16,286 observations for 3275 firms across 43 countries between 2008 and 2017, we find robust evidence for a negative effect of ownership concentration on corporate environmental performance (CEP). However, we find that ownership concentration has a diametrically opposite effect in strong and weak governance contexts. In the presence of strong external (regulatory institutions) and internal (high board independence) governance, ownership concentration improves CEP. In contrast, it has the opposite effect in the presence of weak regulatory institutions and low board independence. We contribute to the open system logic of corporate governance for environmental sustainability.
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Grazia Santangelo
Professor
Copenhagen Business School
Copenhagen
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