Skip to main content

Digitalization

The multinational enterprise, capabilities, and digitalization: governance and growth with world disorder


This essay revisits my 2014 JIBS article about the potential for integrating international business internalization theory with a strategic management capabilities perspective. It recaps the capabilities framework with an emphasis on the learning required of emerging market multinationals and illustrates this with the case of Hyundai Motor Company’s internationalization and growth.

It also discusses two aspects of the global economy that have become more prominent since 2014 in shaping international business: geopolitical uncertainty and digitalization. A rise in geopolitical tensions appears to be rebalancing the relationships between multinationals and home/host governments. Digitalization facilitates international business; but it adds new vulnerabilities by (further) accelerating competition, enabling new rivals, and introducing systemic risks into digital supply chains. Implications for managers, board members, and international business scholars are drawn.

I will end by repeating the call in my 2014 paper for a serious rethink of our textbook theories of the MNE. Its major contribution was to highlight the importance of technological and organizational capabilities, which has been expanded on in this paper to encompass capability development and deployment. I encourage IB scholars to analyze the forces and processes behind the dynamic reallocation of resources within MNEs in response to geopolitical tensions and other stressors.

In this paper, I’ve also highlighted the importance of digitalization and broken global governance. These two new factors have equally profound implications for theory building within a capabilities framework. I hope the brief analysis above will stimulate others to take up the task.

The era of unbounded globalization based on comparative advantage and cost efficiencies is over. Escalating geopolitical tensions and the compression of time and space in the digital economy affect MNEs everywhere. Companies and countries need to adjust to the new, still-emerging economic order; and scholars need to incorporate these new issues into their research. For IB scholars, this means looking to other disciplines, such as international relations, for applicable geopolitical insights

network, data transmission, cloud networking, 5G connectivity, cybersecurity, wireless technology, IoT integration, SDN, communication efficiency, network infrastructure, scalability, automation, artificial intelligence, machine learning, reduced latency, data security, real-time analytics, hybrid networks, edge computing, VPNs

#NetworkTechnology, #DataTransmission, #CloudNetworking, #5GConnectivity, #CyberSecurity, #WirelessNetwork, #IoTIntegration, #SDNInnovation, #NetworkInfrastructure, #DigitalTransformation, #NetworkAutomation, #AIinNetworking, #MachineLearning, #EdgeComputing, #HybridNetworks, #VPNConnection, #DataSecurity, #NetworkOptimization, #SmartConnectivity, #TechInnovation

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

 How Network Polarization Shapes Our Politics! Network polarization amplifies political divisions by clustering like-minded individuals into echo chambers, where opposing views are rarely encountered. This reinforces biases, reduces dialogue, and deepens ideological rifts. Social media algorithms further intensify this divide, shaping public opinion and influencing political behavior in increasingly polarized and fragmented societies. Network polarization refers to the phenomenon where social networks—both offline and online—become ideologically homogenous, clustering individuals with similar political beliefs together. This segregation leads to the formation of echo chambers , where people are primarily exposed to information that reinforces their existing views and are shielded from opposing perspectives. In political contexts, such polarization has profound consequences: Reinforcement of Biases : When individuals only interact with like-minded peers, their existing beliefs bec...
Post a Comment
Read more

Quantum Network Nodes

An operating system for executing applications on quantum network nodes The goal of future quantum networks is to enable new internet applications that are impossible to achieve using only classical communication . Up to now, demonstrations of quantum network applications  and functionalities   on quantum processors have been performed in ad hoc software that was specific to the experimental setup, programmed to perform one single task (the application experiment) directly into low-level control devices using expertise in experimental physics.  Here we report on the design and implementation of an architecture capable of executing quantum network applications on quantum processors in platform-independent high-level software. We demonstrate the capability of the architecture to execute applications in high-level software by implementing it as a quantum network operating system-QNodeOS-and executing test programs, including a delegated computation from a client to a server ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Global Lighthouse Network

Smart, sustainable manufacturing: 3 lessons from the Global Lighthouse Network Launched in 2018, when more than 70% of factories struggled to scale digital transformation beyond isolated pilots, the Global Lighthouse Network set out to identify the world’s most advanced production sites and create a shared learning journey to up-level the global manufacturing community. In the past seven years, the network has grown from 16 to 201 industrial sites in more than 30 countries and 35 sectors, including the latest cohort of 13 new sites. This growing community of organizations is setting new standards for operational excellence, leveraging advanced technologies to drive growth, productivity, resilience and environmental sustainability. But what exactly is a Global Lighthouse and what has the network achieved? What is the Global Lighthouse Network? The Global Lighthouse Network is a community of operational facilities and value chains that harness digital technologies at scale to ac...
Post a Comment
Read more