Abstract: Prior research has identified entrepreneurial orientation (EO) as a culturally universal concept that serves as a basis for a sustainable competitive advantage and is positively associated with business performance. Despite a multitude of investigations on the relationship between EO and performance in different national contexts, hardly any studies have provided cross-national comparisons and there is a dearth of research on which contingencies on a country-level may influence this relationship. Our study proposes and tests such a contingency framework. Based on a sample of 2,495 firms from 7 national contexts, we show how differences in the regulative institutional framework and cultural performance orientation serve as contingencies for the relationship between EO and performance. The study thus contributes to our understanding of the interplay between strategic orientation and national context differences, and extends our knowledge on the universality of the EO-performance link.

Abstract: We argue that small subsidiaries are outsiders in the MNE and host-country social networks and as a result tend to be less innovative than small domestic firms. However, we also propose that because their skilled employees are less socially embedded than those employed by domestic firms and thus less are relationally and cognitively constrained by social networks, they are better at new knowledge search and, as a result, small subsidiaries generate more innovations from their skilled employees than small domestic firms. The empirical analysis of 540 manufacturing firms supports our arguments.

Abstract: We examine how early vs. late internationalization to developed countries affects the survival of entrepreneurial firms from an emerging economy. Our context is the Indian software industry and we show how the geographic strategies of these firms are not independent, but intertwined with their ability to obtain a quality certification, which jointly affect their survival. We test our arguments with a sample of 798 firms from the Indian software services industry. We find firms that internationalize early are more likely to have a quality certification and vice-versa, supporting our argument that there are significant interrelationships between these strategies. And both quality certification and early internationalization increases firm survival.

Abstract: This proposal posits that venture capital as an institution serves to smooth some of the differences across national legal regimes, but not all. I ask whether the positive effects of VCs on the innovative performance of U.S. startups are present abroad, and explore the extent to which these effects depend on the startup’s legal environment, which is the external environment where the startup’s innovative processes unfold. I focus on two distinct facets of the startup’s legal environment—regulatory quality and rule of law—and I leverage the context, which provides two innovative outcomes—scientific publication and patents—that are affected by the legal environment in different ways.