Peter James Williamson

Research Summary: Understanding the sources of firm performance is central to global strategy research, with home country differences traditionally viewed as critical. However, empirical evidence on home countries' evolving influence remains limited. Using variance decomposition techniques, we analyze 43,304 firms (589,149 observations) across 102 countries from 1993 to 2022. While home country effects remain significant, their importance has consistently decreased alongside rising firm effects. Supplemental analyses reveal variation in the magnitude and pace of change across contexts. Our findings nuance assumptions about stable home country‐level influences, demonstrating that country characteristics increasingly operate through firm‐specific channels rather than providing uniform advantages. This evidence suggests the need to reconceptualize how global strategy research theorizes country effects, moving beyond an emphasis on direct country‐level advantages toward understanding heterogeneous, firm‐mediated processes. Managerial Summary: For decades, firms have relied on their home country's advantages to compete globally. Our analysis of over 43,000 firms across 102 countries from 1993 to 2022 explores this evolving reality. Home country advantages now explain less than half the performance variation they did 30 years ago, while individual firm‐specific resources and capabilities have become substantively more important. This shift accelerated following major global events. We suggest that firms can no longer count on inherited national advantages for success. Instead, they proactively develop firm‐specific advantages that transcend domestic constraints. While home country characteristics remain relevant, firms now bear a greater responsibility for crafting competitive positions that are independent of their national origins.

Research Summary: This article examines how different international diversification strategies impact the legitimacy challenges multinationals face and the way they manage their corporate and social responsibilities. Analyzing these questions in a sample of companies in extractive industries, we find that those who pursue resource‐seeking investments that involve locating extraction operations overseas respond with the largest improvement in their corporate‐level social performance (CSP). Those pursuing efficiency‐seeking by establishing processing subsidiaries abroad increase their CSP less, with the smallest increase for those pursuing market‐seeking through marketing and sales operations overseas. For each type of activity established overseas, the increase in CSP becomes greater the more developed the company's home country and the larger its international footprint, but is not dependent on the host country's level of development. These findings suggest that, in today's globalized world, the legitimacy challenges that result from subsidiaries' activities increasingly need to be managed at a global, corporate level.Managerial Summary: This article investigates the relationships between different international diversification strategies, the different legitimacy challenges they create, and corporate‐level social performance (CSP) responses. For multinationals operating in the extractive industries, we find important legitimacy spillovers from different types of subsidiary activities on the corporation, but these also vary, leading it to respond with differential increases in global CSP. These increases are greatest for resource‐seeking diversification, involving the location of extractive activities abroad, moderate for efficiency‐seeking diversification, involving the location of processing activities and least for market‐seeking diversification, involving the location of marketing and sales activities. For each type of subsidiary activity, we also find that the increases in CSP are larger the more developed the company's home country and the larger its international footprint, but are not dependent on the host country's level of development. We show how these results extend existing theory and draw implications for management practice.

Editorial - Author: Abby Jingzi Zhou, Peter J. Williamson, Rosalie L. Tung

Many multinationals continue to see the China market as a major contributor to their global growth over the medium term. With the rising capabilities and competitiveness of local Chinese players, however, how real are the opportunities for multinationals in China? This chapter begins by reviewing the evidence on the performance of multinationals versus their local competitors in the Chinese market. The chapter then analyzes the changing strategies and evolution of sources of competitive advantage of both Chinese companies and multinationals competing in China. It compares the differential success of these competing groups in accessing the “country-specific advantages” available in China. The chapter also examines the evidence on “catch-up” by Chinese companies in building their own firm-specific advantages. This includes an analysis of internal investment and learning by Chinese companies with the aim of building new capabilities, improving their absorptive capacity, and accessing strategic assets through foreign partnerships and cross-border acquisitions. The chapter then examines the changing role of Chinese companies in global value chains. This leads the chapter to address the question of whether, in addition to narrowing the capability gaps with multinationals, Chinese companies have also developed new and distinctive dynamic capabilities and sources of competitive advantage. The chapter concludes by examining how multinationals have responded to increased competition from local players in China and the options open to multinationals as they seek to secure future opportunities in China in the face of a rapidly changing market environment.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to re-assess the concept of ownership advantages in the light of successful international expansion of multinationals from emerging economies (EMNEs) and explore how these advantages are built.Design/methodology/approach: The paper presents a viewpoint based on analysis of the successful international expansion of a sample of Chinese EMNEs where success is measured their ability win share in overseas markets. This allows us to identify their ownership advantages, the antecedents of these advantages and how they were built using dynamic capabilities.Findings: EMNEs have “non-traditional” ownership advantages that have been built by finding innovative ways to leverage the locational advantages of their home countries. The conversion of locational advantages into ownership advantages requires that firms build dynamic capabilities that enable them to innovate in the use of the locational advantages they enjoy.Research limitations/implications: The study is limited to a small sample of EMNEs from China who have succeeded in winning market share in the initial phases of their international expansion. In the light of these limitations, the authors discuss the question the sustainability of their competitive advantage as well as the likely applicability of our findings to EMNEs from other EMNEs.Originality/value: The authors revisit the paradox that despite the growth and success of multinationals from EMNEs in the past decade they are assumed to lack ownership advantages. The authors show that EMNEs’ ownership advantages differ from the traditional advantages such proprietary technologies and brand equity that are enjoyed by incumbent multinationals.