TY - JOUR
T1 - THE FORMATION OF AN MNE IDENTITY OVER THE COURSE OF INTERNATIONALIZATION
AU - Fortwengel, Johann
N1 - Funding Information:
I would like to thank Mary Teagarden for her editorial guidance and the three anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful and constructive comments, which have helped improve the paper. Funding for this research was provided by two separate grants from the German Research Foundation (DFG), under grant numbers GRK 1012 and FO 1024/1-1. I am grateful to the Darla Moore School of Business at the University of South Carolina for having hosted me, and to Charlotte Cloutier, Michael Etter, Gabriela Gutierrez Huerter O, Aimee Hamilton, Ahmed Hassan, Arne Keller, Michael Pratt, Juliane Reinecke, Thomas Roulet, and Luda Svystunova for their feedback. The paper has also benefited from comments I received during a workshop at Griffith University in 2017, the ‘Cognition in the Rough’ workshop of the Managerial and Organizational Cognition Division of the Academy of Management in 2018, and presentations at the Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management in 2019 and Newcastle University Business School in 2020.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021, Academy of International Business.
PY - 2021/8/1
Y1 - 2021/8/1
N2 - Organizational identity describes how members of an organization think about ‘who we are.’ But how exactly does a multinational enterprise (MNE) form an identity revolving around its key feature – that it is a globally operating organization with subsidiaries across several countries? Tracing the evolution of AutoCorp, a German MNE, over almost 30 years, I develop theory on how an MNE identity is formed over the course of internationalization. Focusing on the relational evolvement of the pair comprising headquarters and the first major foreign subsidiary, my data reveal how the formation process of an MNE identity involves awareness, aspiration, and assimilation as key steps, and sensemaking, storytelling, and standardizing as process mechanisms. I unpack how the process of MNE identity formation unfolds along a set of discrete events, which constitute inflection points marking the transition from one stage to the next: from multiple identities via identity reflection and identity envisioning to an MNE identity. By introducing the notion of an MNE identity, this paper enriches the way international business scholars think about classic questions around the coordination and organization of MNEs.
AB - Organizational identity describes how members of an organization think about ‘who we are.’ But how exactly does a multinational enterprise (MNE) form an identity revolving around its key feature – that it is a globally operating organization with subsidiaries across several countries? Tracing the evolution of AutoCorp, a German MNE, over almost 30 years, I develop theory on how an MNE identity is formed over the course of internationalization. Focusing on the relational evolvement of the pair comprising headquarters and the first major foreign subsidiary, my data reveal how the formation process of an MNE identity involves awareness, aspiration, and assimilation as key steps, and sensemaking, storytelling, and standardizing as process mechanisms. I unpack how the process of MNE identity formation unfolds along a set of discrete events, which constitute inflection points marking the transition from one stage to the next: from multiple identities via identity reflection and identity envisioning to an MNE identity. By introducing the notion of an MNE identity, this paper enriches the way international business scholars think about classic questions around the coordination and organization of MNEs.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85101447037&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1057/s41267-020-00397-9
DO - 10.1057/s41267-020-00397-9
M3 - Article
SN - 0047-2506
VL - 52
SP - 1069
EP - 1095
JO - Journal of International Business Studies
JF - Journal of International Business Studies
IS - 6
ER -