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History Special Issue in the Journal of International Busienss StudiesIntegrating historical approaches in international business: Moving beyond "history matters"
Being a guest editor in one of the top journals in the field is quite an experience. Together with my excellent fellow guest editors — Klaus Meyer, Catherine Welch, Geoff Jones and Rebecca Piekkari — we worked hard to compile a truly special “special issue” that brings you a wide array of historical research in international business. Below, as a reader service, are all ten articles with their abstracts and link back to the journal page for download of the full papers. EditorialReclaiming history in IB research: expanding interdisciplinary inquiry through historical contextualization
History is not merely prologue to International Business (IB) research—it is a constitutive element of how we understand multinational enterprises, foreign market entry, institutional change, and cross-border value creation. Despite increased recognition of interdisciplinary collaboration, IB scholars remain unclear about how to rigorously integrate historical methods and insights from Business History. In this special issue introduction, we address the impediments to closer interdisciplinary collaboration between the two disciplines. We identify three critical points of clarification: temporal distance, archival sources, and historical contextualization. We propose integrative research designs that embed historical analysis directly into IB theorizing. Such research designs enable IB scholars to address causal questions, explore legacy effects, and develop time and context-sensitive theories. Historically-contextualized IB research can explain why standardized theories fail in specific contexts, reveal path-dependent sequences that quantitative snapshots miss, and develop theories that account for deep institutional and temporal variation. We establish evaluation criteria for rigorous historical research and create bridges between IB and Business History scholarship. By clarifying concepts, providing research designs, and modeling best practices, this special issue expands IB’s explanatory capacity for the time-embedded, context-sensitive phenomena that define international business.
Research ArticlesIndigenization as a distinct path of expropriation: French and US investments in Spain, 1870s–1959
This study examines why and how multinational corporations (MNCs) may see their local assets transferred to or absorbed by their host-country partners. Drawing on transaction cost economics, we argue that factors beyond the traditional ones proposed by international business research—e.g., entry mode, country risk, or elite ties—can help explain this indigenization of MNC subsidiaries. Using a comparative historical analysis of French and US MNCs operating in Spain from the 1870s to 1959 and an in-depth analysis of the French Banque de Paris et des Pay-Bas (Paribas) and US International Telephone & Telegraph (ITT), we examine why similar investment strategies and partnerships with the local elite led to divergent outcomes under increasing political instability and economic nationalism in Spain. French subsidiaries became more likely than their US counterparts to be indigenized by local partners, due to their operations in maturing sectors and the local partners’ growing ability to substitute foreign capabilities, shifting asset complementarities. Our findings advance the international business literature by conceptualizing indigenization as a distinct mechanism through which an MNC may see its assets expropriated by its local partners, often via strategic and discretionary transfer shaped by shifting complementarities, maturing industries, and persistent relational ties. Success and failure in family firm internationalization: The case of Rothschild
In this study, we examine over 100 years of Rothschild’s international activity: we analyze this multinational enterprise’s (MNE’s) cross-border transfer of family-derived firm-specific advantages (FSAs) and the challenges of recombination thereof with novel resources. Family-derived FSAs hinge on the resources and features of the owning and controlling family. During the period of Rothschild’s international success in 19th-century Europe, the family itself served as a recombination mechanism for linking family-derived FSAs with complementary resources across borders. However, deploying family-derived FSAs in the American market and recombining these with nonfamily resources was hindered by bifurcation bias (a dysfunctional, affect-based heuristic characterizing family firms). We trace the manifestations of bifurcation bias over time and investigate its multifaceted impact on Rothschild’s internationalization. We suggest that effective resource recombination in host markets can be constrained by a two-stage authentication process. Here, the bifurcation bias in a first stage can influence which complementary resources in foreign markets will be accessed and how these will be integrated inside the firm. In a second stage, bifurcation bias can affect the functioning of the very actors supposed to be linking the complementary resources to be utilized and the extant, family-derived FSAs. When does historical context matter? Explaining the emergence of competence-creating subsidiaries
Despite thorough attention to how context shapes subsidiary behavior, very little IB research has explored the dynamic impact of disruptive changes in historical context on organizational innovations in MNEs. Existing IB theory has robustly theorized the growth of competence-creating subsidiaries from the 1980s to the 2000s. However, our historical research demonstrates that this body of existing theory fails to explain an equally significant growth in subsidiaries with protean competence-creating characteristics from 1945 to 1970. We show that the introduction of the U.K. National Health Service in 1948 precipitated a major upgrade of research capabilities among a near majority of the population of subsidiaries in U.K. pharmaceuticals by 1970. Synthesizing from both IB and literature on historical methods, we analyze the impact of this disruptive transformation in context, identifying the specific mechanisms that produced the rapid growth in what we identify as proto-competence-creating subsidiaries. This occurred in response to a dramatically new context, in ways that differ from those predicted by current theoretical explanations, and led to an institutional innovation hitherto unknown to IB. The implications of this are significant in a contemporary moment of rapid institutional disruption, when existing conceptualizations of subsidiary behavior may increasingly fail to capture real-world dynamics. How does colonial history matter for expatriate adjustment? The case of Brazilians in Portugal
The literature on expatriation typically assumes that cultural and institutional familiarity facilitates expatriate adjustment. This assumption underplays the role of the historical context, especially the influence of painful colonial pasts that often lie beneath such familiarity. In addition, seeking to capture expatriate adjustment as a single measure, such literature does not engage with the differences in the extent to which expatriates achieve cognitive, behavioral, and affective adjustment. Using a qualitative study addressing the work experiences of Brazilians living in Portugal, we argue that to fully understand expatriate adjustment, we must pay attention to the historical colonial relationship between the expatriate’s home and host country. Specifically, we discuss the importance of social representations of history for how expatriates narrate, interpret, and act in response to their experiences. Our research makes two theoretical contributions. First, we explain how historical colonial relationships affect expatriate adjustment and how this leads to adjustment only being partial. Second, we develop a nuanced understanding of expatriate adjustment by drawing attention to its three interdependent dimensions (cognitive, behavioral, and affective), showing that an expatriate may be well adjusted in one dimension but less adjusted in another. We call for organizations to engage more, and more critically, with history. Artificial states, ethnicity, and the survival of private participation infrastructure projects in Africa
Despite increasing interest, research within the context of Africa, particularly in relation to its unique historical dynamics, remains relatively underexplored in international business (IB). Our paper explores how colonial-era historical legacies continue to shape the outcomes of present-day private participation infrastructure (PPI) projects in Africa. By analyzing 301 PPI projects across 102 ethnic groups in 32 African countries, we offer insights into how borders misaligned with pre-colonial ethnic boundaries contribute to conflicts that undermine project viability. The findings reveal that ethnic partitioning, defined as the division of ethnic groups across artificial national borders, negatively impacts PPI project survival, with conflict mediating this relationship. While higher institutional quality mitigates these adverse effects, its impact remains marginal. We incorporate historical perspectives and highlight the importance of considering the path dependence of contemporary institutional environments. It also addresses the growing demand for Africa-focused IB research. By incorporating ethnicity into institutional analyses, our study also challenges the traditional IB assumption regarding the primacy of national borders in business activities. Our study points to the importance of understanding historical backgrounds when doing business in Africa. The spirit of the times: historical conditions and market-seeking FDI strategies by U.S. alcohol firms
Market-seeking foreign direct investment (FDI) remains central for firms to expand their global presence and seize opportunities abroad. However, existing research often focuses on immediate or near-term drivers related to firms’ market-seeking FDI strategies, and thus neglects the valuable insights a historical perspective can provide. To address this gap, we draw insights from imprinting theory and propose a framework theorizing the dual-layered imprinting of historical conditions stemming from both extreme historical experiences and founding conditions. Using the U.S. alcohol industry as a research context, we employ a mixed-methods approach, integrating quantitative and qualitative techniques. Our findings reveal that firms’ experiences during extreme anti-alcohol conditions, such as Prohibition, positively correlate with regulation-driven market-seeking FDI, while firms founded in more pro-alcohol periods prioritize speed-driven market-seeking FDI. Moreover, we identify how unrelated diversification, a strategy consistent with the anti-alcohol imprint but inconsistent with the pro-alcohol imprint, affects the relationship between historical imprints and FDI strategies through imprint amplification or decay. Our qualitative analyses elucidate the role of founders’ and leaders’ strategic decision-making in reinforcing the mechanisms through which historical conditions shape FDI strategy. This longitudinal framework provides insights into imprint formation, transmission, and manifestation, accounting for contextual variations and implications for FDI strategy. Revisiting the Uppsala model from a history-to-theory perspective: New lessons on network positioning from a global electric company
A firm cannot internationalize on its own. Rather, a network of multiple firms is critical. Accordingly, the Uppsala model has been reformulated in recent years to account for the role of networks in the firm internationalization process. Still unclear, however, is how a firm’s network position evolves—both within individual foreign market entries and across successive entries—under changing firm, industry, and macro conditions. This study utilizes the historical case method to address this gap. Specifically, it examines the birth, rise, and global dominance of Sofina, a Belgian electric company, as it entered various foreign markets from the turn of the 20th century until the start of the Second World War. Our analysis highlights network positioning as a dynamic process that unfolds both within and across market entries. Importantly, these processes are facilitated by ongoing firm commitments of financial, managerial, and physical resources, and are linked to different sources of organizational learning. They are also shaped by global events as well as firm- and industry-level factors. The explanatory model that emerges from this analysis suggests that firms may need to be more agile than previously acknowledged by continuously repositioning themselves within networks to successfully expand their global footprints. Manufacturing national consent for industrial policy: a microhistorical analysis of Finnish shipbuilding
Industrial policy, the use of state power to influence the development of industries, has become increasingly influential in international business, yet its firm-level dynamics remain understudied. Through a history-to-theory approach and microhistorical analysis, we investigate how the Finnish shipbuilding industry employed nonmarket strategies (NMS) to influence outward-oriented industrial policies that supported its international expansion. Grounded in New Institutional Economics, we identify two key industrial policy shifts – in the mid-1950s and early 1980s – that reduced cross-border transaction costs for Finnish shipbuilders to enhance their international competitiveness. Before each shift, the industry proactively aligned its business interests with national policy priorities, engaging in what we term “manufacturing national consent” – positioning the sector as critical to national interests to legitimize supportive policies. We critically assess the double-edged role of NMS in industrial policy, demonstrating that while it creates regulatory capture and hinders alternative economic pathways, it also fosters government–business collaboration, improving the prospects of effective policy design. We further account for country-specific factors and broader inter-country dynamics to analyze policy implications for home-country firms. In all, our study contributes to the revitalization of industrial policy as a topic in the IB discipline by uncovering the active role of firms in shaping policy outcomes. Parallel internationalization during radical industry transformations: the case of Telecom Finland
We examine how radical industry transformations shape firms’ internationalization, addressing the limited theorization of how industry-level dynamicsinfluence internationalization processes. Drawing on a historical case study of Telecom Finland’s internationalization during two radical transformations in the European telecommunications industry (1987–1998), we show how industry transformation simultaneously orients firms toward parallel internationalization and constrains its execution through systemic industry uncertainty, leading to two contributions. First, we offer an industry-driven explanation for why firms internationalize into multiple markets in parallel. Industry transformation enables parallel entries by creating simultaneous opportunities and actively orienting firms toward parallelism, as industry conditions shape what managers interpret as viable responses. Second, we expand understanding of uncertainty in internationalization processes by introducing the concept of systemic industry uncertainty, a form of transformation-driven uncertainty originating at the industry level, shared across actors, interdependent across markets, and irreducible within the relevant decision windows. Distinct from the market-specific uncertainty emphasized in internationalization process literature, systemic industry uncertainty impedes established uncertainty-reduction mechanisms—learning, network-based knowledge, and diversification—showing that uncertainty shapes internationalization in previously unrecognized ways. Our findings suggest that managers should closely follow industry-level developments, as these play a more central role in shaping internationalization than existing models assume. You're currently a free subscriber to History in Organizations. For the full experience, upgrade your subscription.
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