ABSTRACT

Globalisation has been a key topic in recent decades with many scholars, politicians and economists predicting that the world would become increasingly integrated on a global basis (cf. Friedman 2005, Ghemawat 2005, Economist 1997). Nonetheless, a renewed interest in the phenomenon of regionalisation and increasing scepticism about globalisation can be observed in the international business (IB) literature (cf. Rugman and Hodgetts 2001, Dunning et al. 2007). In fact, the world is not as global as previously believed. For example, many multinational corporations (MNCs) operate regionally rather than globally. Prominent studies by Alan Rugman and his peers (cf. Rugman and Hodgetts 2001, Dunning et al. 2007, Flores and Aguilera 2007, Rugman and Verbeke 2004) largely build on the argument that firms’ operations are not scalable beyond regional boundaries. These studies show that MNCs manage their businesses regionally. For example, more than 70 per cent of large European MNCs’ sales and assets are concentrated in Europe (Oh and Rugman 2012). Other scholars, who postulate that MNCs seek a form of ‘semi-globalization’ (Ghemawat 2003), propose an intermediate version of MNCs’ global integration in which global and national strategic advantages are balanced (Yip 1989). Consequently, the call for more research into the more common type of MNCs – home-region-oriented MNCs – has become louder (Sammartino and Osegowitsch 2013).