Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to show how the institutional context in an emerging economy, Russia, moderates the “do or buy” decision of international firms operating in the country. This is examined through the influence of institutional voids on transaction costs and definition...

We analyze the internationalization of Russian firms based on a qualitative case study implemented in Finland. We empirically elaborate the concept of institutional arbitrage (Gaur and Lu, 2007; Boisot and Meyer, 2008), which refers to the situation where a firm is provided opportunities to exploit...