Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/309032 
Year of Publication: 
2022
Citation: 
[Journal:] Management International Review [ISSN:] 1861-8901 [Volume:] 62 [Issue:] 5 [Publisher:] Springer [Place:] Berlin, Heidelberg [Year:] 2022 [Pages:] 681-710
Publisher: 
Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Abstract: 
In a widely acclaimed contribution to Management International Review, Hennart (2007) challenged one of the mainstream theories of International Business, the S-curve relationship between multinationality and performance, by arguing that there is no positive impact on performance aside from the scale enhancing effect resulting from increasing multinationality. We examine his arguments by analyzing 3876 firms from Canada, Germany, Japan, the UK and the US over the period from 2002 to 2016. We find that the empirical evidence for a direct positive impact of multinationality on performance is not convincing. However, increasing multinationality leads to a significantly higher firm performance via the economies of scale-channel. Multinationality seems to be more important as a means to increase scale for firms from small home markets compared to firms from large domestic markets. Intangible assets appear to amplify the impact of scale on performance much more than the impact of multinationality on performance. In the end, it's size that matters.
Subjects: 
Multinationality
Performance
Economies of scale
Intangible assets
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Creative Commons License: 
cc-by Logo
Document Type: 
Article
Document Version: 
Published Version

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