Jintao Zhang

We examine the question, “What is the effect of internationalization on the CSR performance of firms in service sectors compared to non-service sectors?”. Drawing on a stakeholder and institutional theory-based perspective, we hypothesize: (1) in non-service firms, their social performance increases steadily with increasing internationalization, while the relationship between internationalization and their environmental performance follows an S-shape pattern; (2) in service firms, internationalization has little effect on both social and environmental performance at low to medium levels of internationalization but strong positive effects at high levels of internationalization. We tested our hypotheses with panel data on 4,693 publicly listed MNEs in 41 economies from 2002 to 2021. The results supported our hypotheses.

The environmental performance (EP) of multinational enterprises (MNEs) has attracted increasing attention amid rising concerns over environmental problems such as climate change. However, questions remain about the relationship between the internationalization of MNEs and their EP. In this paper, we show that the relationship varies depending on the home country's economic development level. For MNEs from an advanced economy, there is a U‐shaped relationship between the level of internationalization and EP of MNEs such that there is a negative relationship at low levels of internationalization but a positive relationship at high levels of internationalization. For MNEs from a less advanced economy, there is an inverted U‐shaped relationship such that there is a positive relationship at low levels of internationalization but a negative relationship at high levels of internationalization.