Moving Beyond the Internationalization-Performance Relationship: Emerging Complexity, Institutional Asymmetries and Regional Dyads

By combining the regionalization and institutional perspectives we examine emerging inter-regional linkages in the context of internationalizing strategies of MNEs. Using a multi-level approach, we show that a MNE’s home country and home region have a significant impact on the returns from operations in specific host regions. Further, the returns from regional operations are positively associated with greater levels of asymmetry in economic institutions between the home and the host regions. Our analysis uncovers a complex set of uni-directional relationships between different supra-national regions, which shows that the internationalization-performance (I-P) relationship is a multifaceted phenomenon. We propose a regional dyadic approach as being more suitable for capturing the complexity in the I-P relationship, with implications for MNEs’ internationalizing strategies.