Internationalization and Sectoral Diversity: The Roles of Organizational Capabilities and Dominant Institutions in Structuring Firms’ Responses to Semiglobalization

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Abstract

The ways in which national institutional frameworks shape the development and competitiveness of industries and firms in different countries have long been a focus of research (Hall and Soskice 2001; Hollingsworth and Boyer 1997; Gerschenkron 1962; Shonfeld 1965; Whitley 1992, 1999). Recently, however, the increasing internationalization of product, capital and some labour markets since the collapse of the Bretton Woods System (BWS) has been seen as heralding a significant reduction in the importance of national institutional regimes governing economic activities for firm governance and behaviour, and hence of nationally specific business systems and forms of capitalism (Höpner and Jackson 2002; Jackson 2003; Lane 2005). In particular, the growth of foreign direct investment (FDI) has contributed to a decline in the national homogeneity and specificity of prevalent patterns of economic coordination and control relative to those established in the period dominated by the BWS in two ways. First,the more that leading firms invest – or, at the very least, gain access to – significant resources and strategic assets abroad, the more they are able in principle to develop new kinds of capabilities and strategies.Second, the more that foreign companies establish or takeover major subsidiaries within a political economy, the weaker the authority of domestic institutions and interest groups over strategic managers of the companies operating within a country may become (Morgan 2009).

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