When geography matters: International diversification and firm performance of spanish multinationals

F. Mendoza Mayordomo, Christian Espinosa-Méndez*, Luis Araya-Castillo

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Indexed journal article Articlepeer-review

8 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

This paper studies how the nature and shape of the relationship between inter-national diversification (ID) and performance (P) may vary according to a firm’s geographical focus of internationalization. Using a sample of Spanish multinational firms for the 2004—2012 period we find an M-shaped relationship. However, significant differences are found when the different geographical foci of internationalization are considered. Strong support is found when firms adopt a regional focus (an inverted S-curve when the ID measure refers to the number of foreign countries and an M-curve when it refers to the size of the network of foreign sub-sidiaries), a biregional focus (an S-curve) and a semiglobal focus (an inverted S-curve but also an M-curve with foreign subsidiaries). These findings and their pattern suggest the critical impor-tance of the country of origin and the geographical focus of internationalization in explaining the relationship between ID—P.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1-17
Number of pages17
JournalBRQ Business Research Quarterly
Volume23
Issue number1
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Jan 2020
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • Firm performance
  • Geographical focus
  • International diversification
  • M-curve
  • Multinational firms
  • Spain

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