Increased international competition poses challenges to companies' organizational practices, including human resource management. For multinational companies operating simultaneously in diverse local conditions this challenge implies a decision between either opting for universal best practices...

This article examines the case of sustainable coffee as faced by Sara Lee’s International Coffee and Tea Division (SL), asking which strategic direction the company should take considering its regulatory, competitive and societal contexts. More than a decade after sustainable coffee became a...

The decision of companies to enter international markets, either via exports or foreign direct investment (FDI), has been postulated by the self-sorting model of Helpman, Melitz and Yeaple (HMY, 2004). In the strict sense, the theoretical predictions of HMY only apply to firms that become...

In an integrated global economy, multinational enterprises (MNEs) have more opportunities than ever to reap the benefits of broader markets and more possibilities for an extensive division of labour between different locations. In spite of this, the evidence on the spread of the activities of...

Much of the recent evidence on the internationalisation patterns of Finnish MNEs has come from analyses of the Top 30 firms. This paper uses newly available data from the Orbis database on the foreign affiliates of Finnish MNEs, and compares this to the existing sources of data from the Bank of...

This paper tests some of the predictions of recent advances in trade theory that have focused on different trade patterns of firms within the same sector. Helpman, Melitz and Yeaple (2005) develop a model in which innate productivity differences between firms determine the degree of...

This paper tests some of the predictions of recent advances in trade theory that have focused on different trade patterns of firms within the same sector. Helpman, Melitz and Yeaple (2005) develop a model in which innate productivity differences between firms determine the degree of...

The modern manufacturing firm competes with product quality improvements rather than cost efficient production of simpler products. R&D spending, marketing, availability of spare parts and service facilities, customs designs, etc. embody the product quality enhancing process, requiring...

The widening range of countries acting as home and host to MNEs, and the continuing growth in all forms of cross-border economic activity, have prompted a large literature on the effects of outward MNE activity on the host countries. A smaller body of work has examined the effects on the home...

The paper provides a summary of the existing literature on corporate parenting styles and discovers the missing elements in the theoretical constructs. New theoretical constructs fill the gaps. The paper presents a continuum of corporate parenting styles from pure predator's (Cronos style) to...