Characteristics of national cultures have frequently been claimed to influence the selection of entry modes. This article investigates this claim by developing a theoretical argument for why culture should influence the choice of entry. Two hypotheses are derived which relate culture to entry mode choice, one focusing on the cultural distance between countries, the other on attitudes towards uncertainty avoidance. Using a multinomial logit model and controlling for other effects, the hypotheses are tested by analysing data on 228 entries into the United States market by acquisition, wholly owned greenfield, and joint venture. Empirical support for the effect of national culture on entry choice is found.

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The Effect of National Culture on the Choice of Entry Mode

This paper examines the progressive development of the new institutional economics over the past quarter century. It begins by distinguishing four levels of social analysis, with special emphasis on the institutional environment and the institutions of governance. It then turns to some of the good ideas out of which the NIE works: the description of human actors, feasibility, firms as governance structures, and operationalization. Applications, including privatization, are briefly discussed. Its empirical successes, public policy applications, and other accomplishments notwithstanding, there is a vast amount of unfinished business.

The New Institutional Economics: Taking Stock, Looking Ahead

This article reviews some of the criticisms directed towards the eclectic paradigm of international production over the past decade, and restates its main tenets. The second part of the article considers a number of possible extensions of the paradigm and concludes by asserting that it remains “a robust general framework for explaining and analysing not only the economic rationale of economic production but many organisational and impact issues in relation to MNE activity as well.”

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The Eclectic Paradigm of International Production: A Restatement and Some Possible Extensions

Investment in research and development (R&D) affects a country's total factor productivity. Recently new theories of economic growth have emphasized this link and have also identified a number of channels through which a country's R&D affects total factor productivity of its trade partners. Following these theoretical developments we estimate the effects of a country's R&D capital stock and the R&D capital stocks of its trade partners on the country's total factor productivity. We find large effects of both domestic and foreign R&D capital stocks on total factor productivity. The foreign R&D capital stocks have particularly large effects on the smaller countries in our sample (that consists of 22 countries). Moreover, we find that about one-quarter of the worldwide benefits of investment in R&D in the seven largest economies are appropriated by their trade partners.

International R&D Spillovers

The Uppsala internationalization process model is revisited in the light of changes in business practices and theoretical advances that have been made since 1977. Now the business environment is viewed as a web of relationships, a network, rather than as a neoclassical market with many independent suppliers and customers. Outsidership, in relation to the relevant network, more than psychic distance, is the root of uncertainty. The change mechanisms in the revised model are essentially the same as those in the original version, although we add trust-building and knowledge creation, the latter to recognize the fact that new knowledge is developed in relationships.

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The Uppsala Internationalization Process Model Revisited: From Liability of Foreignness to Liability of Outsidership

Multinational Enterprises and the Global Economy.

This paper first sets out the main features of the eclectic theory of international production and then seeks to evaluate its significance of ownership- and location-specific variables in explaining the industrial pattern and geographical distribution of the sales of U.S. affiliates in fourteen manufacturing industries in seven countries in 1970.

https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1057%2Fpalgrave.jibs.8490593.pdf

Toward an Eclectic Theory of International Production: Some Empirical Tests

The main task of this paper is to discuss ways in which production financed by foreign direct investment, that is, that undertaken by multinational enterprises (MNEs), has affected our thinking about the international allocation of resources and the exchange of goods and services between countries. The analysis takes, as its starting point, the growing convergence between the theories of international trade and production, and argues the case for an integrated approach to international economic involvement, based both on the location-specific endowments of countries and the ownership-specific endowments of enterprises. In pursuing this approach, the paper sets out a systemic explanation of the foreign activities of enterprises, in terms of their ability to internalise markets to their advantage. It concludes with a brief examination of some of the effects which the MNE is allegedly having on the spatial allocation of resources, and on the patterns of trade between countries.

Trade, Location of Economic Activity and the MNE: A Search for an Eclectic Approach

This article first traces the changing world economic scenario for international business over the past two decades, and then goes on to examine its implications for the location of foreign direct investment and multinational enterprise activity. It suggests that many of the explanations of the 1970s and early 1980s need to be modified as firm-specific assets have become mobile across natural boundaries. A final section of the article examines the dynamic interface between the value-added activities of multinational enterprises in different locations.

/pdf/location-and-the-multinational-enterprise-a-neglected-factor-4wntsk77bg.pdf

John H. Dunning

Papers

Multinational Enterprises and the Global Economy.

The Eclectic Paradigm of International Production: A Restatement and Some Possible Extensions

Toward an Eclectic Theory of International Production: Some Empirical Tests

Trade, Location of Economic Activity and the MNE: A Search for an Eclectic Approach

Location and the Multinational Enterprise: A Neglected Factor?