Management and Marketing - Research Publications

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    Digital Transformation and International Strategies
    Strange, R ; Chen, L ; Fleury, MTL (Elsevier, 2022-01-01)
    This paper reflects on the implications of digital transformation for international business (IB) theory and research. We briefly discuss its potential impact and stress that how digitalization affects traditional firms' international strategies remains under-studied. We provide an overview of the papers in this Special Issue which aspire to answer this important question through various angles. Finally, we shed light on avenues for future research, focusing specifically on how the Internet of Things and demand-side innovation in ecosystems offer opportunities to extend internalization theory.
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    Revisiting the Internationalization-Performance Relationship: A Twenty-Year Meta-Analysis of Emerging Market Multinationals
    Wu, S ; Fan, D ; Chen, L (SPRINGER HEIDELBERG, 2022-04)
    Abstract With the rapid growth of emerging market multinational enterprises (EMNEs), increasing interest has been focused on exploring the internationalization-performance (I-P) relationship of EMNEs. Yet findings on the relationship remain contradictory. Although researchers emphasize the home-country-bounded nature of EMNEs, less is known about how home-government features and the EMNEs’ political mindset affect their internationalization and performance. This study integrates and extends the literature on the I-P relationship of EMNEs using a meta-analysis covering a dataset of 218 effect sizes from 186 retrieved studies published between 1998 and 2021. Findings show that the I-P relationship is overall positive, yet it varies across diverse research designs and emerging markets and regions. Also, our findings indicate that home-country government quality and transformability exert significant positive impacts on the relationship, while nationalism negatively moderates the government’s impacts on the relationship. This study pushes the boundaries of EMNE literature through conceptualizing home-government features and incorporating consideration of nationalism in this research field.
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    Charting new courses to enter foreign markets: Conceptualization, theoretical framework, and research directions on non-traditional entry modes
    Brouthers, KD ; Chen, L ; Li, S ; Shaheer, N (PALGRAVE MACMILLAN LTD, 2022-12)
    Recent advances in digitalization and increasing integration of international markets are paving the way for a new generation of firms to use non-traditional entry modes that are largely marginalized in previous entry mode studies. While extant research revolves around the level of resource commitment and control in foreign activities, non-traditional modes are encapsulated by the extent of embeddedness required for exploring new and/or exploiting existing resources. In particular, we draw attention to four such categories of non-traditional entry modes the literature has touched on, i.e., capital access, innovation outposts, virtual presence, and the managed ecosystem. We explore the key attributes, antecedents, and strategic implications of these modes. Our paper highlights the need for enriching current entry mode research by considering a broader range of entry mode activities available to firms as well as employing new theoretical perspectives to understand the complex phenomena of internationalization.
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    Externalization in the platform economy: Social platforms and institutions
    Chen, L ; Li, S ; Wei, J ; Yang, Y (PALGRAVE MACMILLAN LTD, 2022-10)
    Abstract The growing platform economy has revived the debate on the applicability of internalization theory in contemporary contexts. In moving this debate forward, we draw on insights from hybrids research and property rights theory to complement the internalization school. Our core contribution lies in a reconceptualization of platforms as a hybrid organizational form enabling the exchange of property rights between platform owners and complementors. Using social platforms as an example, we propose that improvement in a host country’s intellectual property protection will increase the multinational platform’s (MNP) level of internalization, and that the platform firm’s governance capabilities may weaken the effect of institutions on its operation mode. Our theoretical analysis yields new insights beyond the received view of internationalization that builds on the assumption of internalized proprietary resources. We conclude that internalization theory, as an overarching paradigm in IB, remains adaptable to new organizational forms in the digital economy.
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    How Xiaomi Redefined What It Means to Be a Platform
    Tong, TW ; Guo, Y ; Chen, L (Harvard Business School Publishing, 2021)
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    Growing pains: The effect of generational product innovation on mobile games performance
    Chen, L ; Zhang, P ; Li, S ; Turner, SF (WILEY, 2022-04)
    Abstract Research Summary Strategy research advises firms to capture generative value by continually introducing generational improvements on their existing products. This article considers a potential dark side of such strategy. We argue that generational innovation can elicit a negative near‐term response from customers, as it distorts their ingrained behavioral patterns and imposes learning costs. Further, we propose that this negative effect of generational innovation will diminish when the product has a leading market position; and it will be more severe as the product's technological legacy lengthens. Using a difference‐in‐differences research design based on mobile game apps that multihome on two platforms, we find supportive evidence for our hypotheses and discuss the corresponding implications for strategy and technology innovation literature. MAnagerial Summary Firms are advised to capture the value in future innovations that are spawned from their existing innovation, and they can do so by releasing improved generations of current products. This article examines a potential dark side of such strategy—that generational innovation could alienate existing customers by unsettling their ingrained behavioral patterns. Utilizing a unique dataset of mobile game apps, we find evidence of this negative effect, which tends to be weaker for market leaders but more damaging for those having already experienced numerous generational changes.
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    Governance and Design of Digital Platforms: A Review and Future Research Directions on a Meta-Organization
    Chen, L ; Tong, TW ; Tang, S ; Han, N (SAGE PUBLICATIONS INC, 2022-01)
    The burgeoning digital-platforms literature across multiple business disciplines has primarily characterized the platform as a market or network. Although the organizing role of platform owners is well recognized, the literature lacks a coherent approach to understanding organizational governance in the platform context. Drawing on classic organizational governance theories, this paper views digital platforms as a distinct organizational form where the mechanisms of incentive and control routinely take center stage. We systematically review research on digital platforms, categorize specific governance mechanisms related to incentive and control, and map a multitude of idiosyncratic design features studied in prior research onto these mechanisms. We further develop an integrative framework to synthesize the review and to offer novel insights into the interrelations among three building blocks: value, governance, and design. Using this framework as a guide, we discuss specific directions for future research and offer a number of illustrative questions to help advance our knowledge about digital platforms’ governance mechanisms and design features.
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    Platform Governance Design in Platform Ecosystems: Implications for Complementors' Multihoming Decision
    Chen, L ; Yi, J ; Li, S ; Tong, TW (SAGE PUBLICATIONS INC, 2022-03)
    Extant platform research focuses on how platform owners’ governance behaviors directly affect complementors. This study explicates the multilateral interdependence among different groups of producers within a platform ecosystem. We theorize about how platform owners’ governance design may create frictions between platform providers and complementors. While open governance grants greater autonomy to platform providers, it also cultivates a more complex ecosystem for complementors. Since ecosystem complexity raises the cost of product customization, complementors will be less willing to port an existing complement to a more complex ecosystem, that is, less likely to multihome. The negative effect is weakened as the complementor has greater experience with the destination ecosystem or when the complement exhibits a greater level of modularity. Our analysis of newly launched apps in Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android smartphone ecosystems finds supportive evidence. We discuss implications for the burgeoning literature on platform ecosystems and complementors.
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    Experience base, strategy-by-doing and new product performance
    Chen, L ; Wang, M ; Cui, L ; Li, S (John Wiley and Sons, 2021-07-01)
    Strategy research views firms’ diverse experience base as critical to new product success. It also champions strategy-by-doing in entrepreneurial settings. This study juxtaposes and bridges these two perspectives to better understand product development. We propose that while a firm’s product portfolio diversity contributes to new product success only to a certain degree, design iteration—a post-launch strategy-by-doing approach—is positively associated with new product performance. Our core contribution points to a complementary relationship: strategy-by-doing helps mitigate the capacity constraints problem that prevents firms from successfully adapting product development capabilities to a dynamic market. Our analysis of a sample of 2,182 nascent mobile apps from 564 top producers in the US market supports our hypotheses. We discuss implications for product development, strategy-by-doing, and technology innovation literature.
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    Who are the most inclined to learn? Evidence from Chinese multinationals' internationalization in the European Union
    Chen, L ; Li, Y ; Fan, D (Springer (part of Springer Nature), 2021-03-01)
    While it is widely recognised that an asset-augmenting rather than asset-exploiting strategy drives emerging multinationals’ (EMNEs) internationalization, current research focuses on the motivations behind knowledge seeking FDI. What remains less clear is why latecomer firms can engage in learning in advanced countries. Conjoining the “Linkage-Leverage-Learning (LLL)” framework and knowledge seeking literature, this study shows how Chinese investment in the European Union reveals the preconditions for foreign knowledge sourcing. We follow a set-theoretic approach, utilizing fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA), to identify equifinal configurations of linkage and leverage conditions leading to high learning propensity of EMNEs. Our analysis extends the LLL framework and complements the recent debate on the theory of the EMNE. We develop propositions based on distinct constellations of learning