Jie Wu

Multinational enterprises (MNEs) sit at the center of global climate mitigation, ranking among the largest contributors to greenhouse gas emissions while possessing the reach and capabilities to advance decarbonization at scale. International business research has examined firms’ environmental strategies and national institutions largely in isolation, leaving unexplained why the same MNE may comply merely symbolically in one institutional setting while advancing substantive mitigation in another. This introductory article develops a comparative-institutional account of MNEs and climate change, showing how varieties of capitalism, geoeconomic competition, and deglobalization pressures shape corporate climate action. Drawing on this account and the six articles in the focused issue, we advance a mechanism-based framework in which MNEs simultaneously perform three functions, driving carbon-intensive globalization, mediating climate governance across borders and value chains, and mitigating emissions through innovation and capability building. We specify the institutional, ownership, and capability conditions under which each function becomes most prominent. We conclude with a research agenda that treats climate change not as context for international business but as a force reshaping multinationality itself.

This Point introduces algorithmic status inequality that is, enduring disparities in social position, influence, and resource access reinforced by AI systems, as a critical lens for understanding technological stratification in organizations. I develop an integrative model showing how computational beliefs (i.e., cultural assumptions embedded in algorithmic design) interact with computational inequalities (i.e., disparities in technical capabilities) to produce persistent status hierarchies through self‐reinforcing feedback loops. Illustrative cases in recruitment, healthcare and legal assistance demonstrate these mechanisms in practice, producing three consequential patterns: status schisms within minority‐serving AI systems, status tensions between dominant and specialized algorithms and status disparities between AI systems and human experts. Unlike the Counterpoint perspectives that either emphasize market‐based dynamic capabilities as self‐correcting mechanisms for algorithmic disparities or locate the primary source of inequality in biased training data amenable to technical debiasing , I argue that neither purely technical approaches (such as diversifying training data) nor purely market‐based approaches (such as relying on competitive dynamics) are sufficient to address algorithmic status inequality. This sociotechnical perspective explains why isolated interventions typically fail and provides a theoretical foundation for developing comprehensive strategies that simultaneously target embedded cultural beliefs and material inequalities in AI development.

A dominant axiom in the study of innovation holds that creative breakthrough requires freedom: open contestability, inclusive institutions, and liberation from coercive constraint. East Asia confronts this axiom with a double anomaly. Taiwanese and South Korean firms reached and now hold the semiconductor frontier on which the entire artificial-intelligence economy depends, under illiberal, state-dominated, resource-scarce, and existentially coercive conditions; yet the same societies exhibit demographic collapse, youth withdrawal, and innovation stagnation, as though the very force that forged their capabilities had turned to consume them. We argue that both faces are products of one underlying mechanism and develop a Generative Constraint Theory to specify it. Constraint, we contend, is not the antithesis of innovation but, under specifiable conditions, its generative source; whether coercive constraint forges or consumes capability depends not on its intensity but on its coupling: the structural relation between the coercive principal and the innovation core. Where the core is decoupled from the principal and recoupled to an external selection environment that disciplines and rewards it (decoupling), constraint is transmuted into frontier-defining capability; where the coercive apparatus persists but is redirected onto a captive population for performance extraction, severed from existential justification and external selection (recoupling), it consumes the capability base. We render this bifurcation through the metaphor of the crucible: the same heat that forges under containment consumes when containment fails. Against the axiom that frontier innovation requires freedom, the theory holds that coercive constraint, properly coupled, is an alternative generative route to frontier capability, and the same constraint, differently coupled, consumes it. The theory stands in a relationship of complementarity, not subordination, to the catch-up-cycle framework: it supplies a firm-level political microfoundation for the window-response that the catch-up framework treats as given, addresses the formation and holding of frontier capability that lies beyond the closing of distance, and identifies a social-reproduction mechanism for the post-catch-up stall that the catch-up framework brackets. We elaborate the theory abductively through two documented, structured cases (the Korean and Taiwanese semiconductor ascents and the post-catch-up educational-demographic crisis), disciplining it where the evidence resists, and we set out the theory’s scope conditions and falsifiable predictions.

This study examines how parallel innovation ventures (PIVs), ventures characterized by parallel innovation pathways, shared technological foundations, and adjacent yet non-substitutable market segments, innovate and develop in an early-stage, fragmented industry without direct competition, deep cooperation, or centralized orchestration. Drawing on a multiple-case study of seven assistive technology ventures, we conduct phenomenon-based research to develop a framework that explains how PIVs advance their own innovation efforts while collectively contributing to market emergence through: (1) independent capability deployment, (2) innovation resonance activation, and (3) differentiated business model enactment. In particular, we theorize innovation resonance as a relational reinforcement mechanism rooted in PIVs’ structural alignment, amplifying their innovation efforts and collective momentum while anchoring relational proximity. We further show that innovation resonance is activated through reciprocal PIV-engagement, which, as a foundational relational capability in the PIV context, also enables the deployment of other capabilities and shapes PIVs’ business models. Together, these insights offer a novel perspective on relational innovation dynamics in emerging industries, with useful implications for innovation, policy, and practice.

Chinese biotech companies are licensing billions in drug patents to Western pharmaceutical giants. This seismic shift reveals both the maturation of China's innovation ecosystem and the precarious economics forcing many promising startups to sell their crown jewels. In May 2025, something remarkable happened in the pharmaceutical world. Pfizer agreed to pay $1.25 billion upfront, with potential milestone payments reaching $6 billion, for a single experimental cancer drug from 3SBio, a company based in Shenyang, China. Two months later, GlaxoSmithKline struck an even larger deal: up to $12 billion to license a dozen innovative medicines from Jiangsu Hengrui Pharmaceuticals. These weren't isolated transactions. They were the leading edge of a pharmaceutical revolution that is fundamentally reshaping how the world's medicines are discovered and developed.

Despite the growing importance of corporate environmental strategies (CES), limited attention has been paid to the dynamic interplay between emphasis differentiation—prioritizing unique environmental initiatives—and scope conformity—aligning with industry norms—and how the market evaluates this interplay within the CES context. Drawing on the literature on optimal distinctiveness and social role theory, this study examines how the market responds to firms’ CES emphasis differentiation and scope conformity, considering their prior strategic positioning and CEO gender. Specifically, we hypothesize that firms maintaining consistency in their CES practices (e.g., continuing to emphasize differentiation or conformity) are rewarded by the market, whereas strategic shifts (e.g., transitioning from emphasis differentiation to scope conformity, or vice versa) are penalized due to perceived uncertainty. Furthermore, firms led by female CEOs face heightened skepticism for both consistent and shifting strategies, reflecting gender biases in market evaluations. Using a dataset of Chinese publicly listed firms, our empirical findings support these hypotheses. This study contributes to the literature by emphasizing the critical role of consistency in CES practices for favorable market outcomes and revealing how gendered perceptions influence the evaluation of corporate environmental practices.

Multinational corporations (MNCs) are encountering real challenges in a post-COVID-19 world to find suitable locations for channeling their investments. However, how can two locations be compared? A new index for the logistics capability of countries or within-country regions is presented as a tool to assist managers in location-related decision-making. A survey among MNC managers in Asia reveals that MNCs investing in locations with higher regional logistics capability tend to perform better, suggesting that logistics capability is vital in foreign direct investment (FDI) location choices.