Jeoung Yul Lee

This study investigates how global city characteristics shape the acceptance of non‐mainstream cultural goods—focusing on K‐pop—as they diffuse across digital platforms. While prior research emphasizes fandom, soft power or media strategies, this research highlights the role of urban infrastructure in cultural globalization. Global cities, with their high levels of connectivity, digital infrastructure and cosmopolitanism, serve as hubs for transnational cultural flows. Drawing on international business, marketing and media studies, the study theorizes that four urban factors—Korean foreign direct investment (FDI), diaspora presence, ICT infrastructure and educational attainment—positively influence K‐pop popularity. It furthers proposes that these effects vary by platform: YouTube's visual, algorithm‐driven environment may amplify the effects of FDI and ICT, while Spotify's audio‐focused, user‐curated model may be more influenced by diaspora and education. Using rare‐event logistic regression on data from 3786 K‐pop hits across 710 US cities (via YouTube and Spotify), the study finds robust support for these hypotheses. Overall, it offers a new perspective on the intersection of urban infrastructure and digital platforms in facilitating the global spread of cultural products, with K‐pop servicing as a revealing case of how emerging‐market content circulates in the contemporary media landscape.

This introduction paper for our special issue on Chinese multinational enterprises (CMNEs) situates the important theme of CMNE growth within the context of rapid technological innovation, intensified geopolitical tensions, and trade wars in the global business environment of the mid-2020s. Using this context as a backdrop, we discuss the growth of CMNEs to derive implications for international business (IB) theory. We review key theoretical perspectives that inform prior research on CMNEs and outline the key challenges confronting CMNEs’ international expansion, as gauged against prior research. We summarize key theoretical insights from the eight papers included in this special issue. We then illustrate how future research can be informed by an explicit consideration of the international sanctions and geopolitical tensions in which CMNEs operate, as well as by the growing technological, linguistic, and ideological distance between China and European and North American countries, which influences CMNEs’ international strategies. We conclude by noting that at this critical juncture in CMNEs’ development, there are substantial opportunities for the IB community to broaden research and challenge existing theories by capturing the latest trends in the international expansion of CMNEs.

We extend the business group (BG) literature by combining the knowledge-based perspective and the dynamic capabilities view to explain the benefits of group affiliation. In the BG context, group affiliates can use not only their own firm-level knowledge-based assets (KBAs), but also group-level KBAs. While prior research examines the efficiencies of BG affiliation by comparing BG affiliates to non-affiliated firms, we ask to what extent affiliate-specific rents from group-level KBAs vary among affiliate firms and why. To explain this variation, we identify affiliate-specific rents generated by the complementarity between firm- and group-level KBAs. Drawing from the dynamic capabilities view, we developed a framework to explain the sources of such complementarity and tested a series of hypotheses. This study provides empirical evidence using firm-level data on 524 affiliates of keiretsu groups in Japan from 1985 to 2015. To measure KBAs and their characteristics, we use data on 11.5 million patents matched to the sample firms. This study provides a knowledge-based perspective to explain BG affiliation benefits and the persistence of BGs as an organizational form of economic activity.

The concept of social innovation has garnered increasing attention across various disciplines, driven by a growing recognition of the need to address complex societal challenges. However, despite the thorough examination of traditional innovation forms and their influence on global business practices, the scrutiny of social innovation within the realm of international business (IB) remains relatively nascent. This introduction delineates the scope of this focused issue and emphasizes the critical need to expand research on social innovation within IB, a field dedicated to enhancing social value and engagement among diverse stakeholders. This focused issue explores the catalysts and impacts of multinational corporations' (MNCs’) social innovation endeavours in emerging markets. Departing from the profit-centric focus of conventional innovation studies, social innovation emphasizes the redistribution of knowledge, the encouragement of discovery, and the facilitation of co-creation, thus posing a challenge to the traditional paradigms and logics of innovation theory. This introduction provides a concise review of current social innovation literature in IB, highlights the contributions made by the articles in this focused issue, and concludes by outlining directions for future research in the domain of social innovation in IB.

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of technological diversification (TD) on enterprise innovation performance, meanwhile focusing on the moderating effects of various organizational slack (i.e. absorbed and unabsorbed slack) and ownership types (i.e. state-owned or privately-owned) in the context of Chinese listed firms.Design/methodology/approach: This study formulates five hypotheses based on organization and agency theories. Our empirical analysis employs a fixed-effect regression estimator with a unique panel dataset of Chinese-listed manufacturing firms and 13,566 firm-year observations over 9 years from 2012 to 2020.Findings: Our findings show that an inverted U-shaped relationship exists between TD and innovation performance, varying with different types of organizational slack and ownership. In state-owned enterprises (SOEs), unabsorbed slack negatively moderates the inverted U-shaped relationship; however, in privately-owned enterprises (POEs), this relationship is positively moderated. Although absorbed slack has negative moderating effects in both SOEs and POEs, its impact is only significant for POEs.Practical implications: Our results imply that organizational slack has a contrasting impact on the relationship between TD and innovation performance when the type of ownership varies. Therefore, the managers that intend to achieve optimal innovation performance through TD should understand how organizational slack can be leveraged.Originality/value: This study contributes to the existing literature by applying the relationship between TD and innovative performance to the transition economy, as well as examining the double-edged sword impact of state ownership on firm innovation performance.

This study examines how the characteristics of innovation knowledge exchanged among affiliate firms affect the ownership strategies adopted for their foreign subsidiaries. This study employs a cross-classified multilevel model to examine a sample of 185 Korean manufacturing affiliates derived from 49 Chaebols engaged in international diversification, along with their 1,110 foreign manufacturing subsidiaries. While exploratory innovation knowledge exchange lowers the affiliate's level of ownership in its foreign subsidiary, exploitative innovation knowledge exchange rather increases the affiliate's level of ownership in its foreign subsidiary. This study advances the literature on intrafirm knowledge exchange by highlighting it as a determinant of ownership strategies. The study further shows that the characteristics of knowledge exchanged at the affiliate level not only determine the ownership structure but also have the potential to shape the direction in which the subsidiary develops its competencies. This study has practical implications for the managers of business group affiliates. The results suggest that managers should adapt their ownership strategies according to the type of knowledge exchanged at the affiliate level to achieve a balanced and synergistic effect on intraorganizational knowledge exchange. Previous studies have extensively explored the performance implications related to knowledge exchange. However, there is a notable gap in understanding the mechanisms through which the value of knowledge transferred within an affiliate is realized. To address this gap, this study focuses on ownership strategy as a crucial factor and empirically examines how the characteristics of innovation knowledge exchanged among affiliate firms influence the ownership strategies adopted for their foreign subsidiaries. By investigating this relationship, this study provides valuable insights into the complex dynamics of knowledge exchange and its effect on ownership decisions within business group affiliates.