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Research shows that emerging market multinational enterprises (EM-MNEs) increasingly use corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting as a global legitimation strategy. Less is known about when their CSR reporting is decoupled from their CSR performance. Drawing on neo-institutional theory, we argue that EM-MNEs’ CSR decoupling is shaped by their dual embeddedness in their home countries and the global institutional environment. We then examine how EM-MNEs’ home country institutional voids and degree of internationalization affect their tendency to engage in such decoupling. Our model receives partial support in a study of 93 MNEs from 15 emerging markets between 2005 and 2012.

This article examines the link between the condition of institutional voids in emerging markets and the use of the practice of corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting by emerging market multinational enterprises (EM-MNEs). Based on neo-institutional theory and in light of the specificity of emerging markets, we propose a positive relationship between institutional voids and CSR reporting. Home-country institutional voids push companies to internationalize as a way to escape the institutional constraints and inefficiencies in their own markets, but at the same time create legitimacy challenges for these companies abroad. In particular, EM-MNEs from less institutionally developed countries are likely to face liabilities of origin - negative perceptions in host countries about these firms' willingness and ability to conduct legitimate business. CSR reporting is an effective strategy to overcome such liabilities and barriers to legitimation as it conveys to host countries and global stakeholders alignment with global meta-norms and expectations. Internationalization, listing on developed country stock exchanges, and time, further magnify EM-MNEs' legitimacy challenges and thus the use of CSR reporting to mitigate them. Our hypotheses are supported in a longitudinal study of 157 of the largest EM-MNEs ranked by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) between 2004 and 2011.

We review four decades of research about the corporate governance of multinational corporations (MNCs), which we label International Corporate Governance (ICG). We identify and discuss three main streams of research that draw on different conceptualizations and theoretical lenses of (corporate) governance. After synthesizing their respective findings, we propose several avenues for future research that integrate these three streams of research with the goal of developing a more nuanced understanding of ICG. We hope this review article will inspire international business scholars to continue examining how corporate governance can be an effective tool for MNC success.

We examine the relationship between women directors and corporate social performance (CSP) by considering the contingency effects of home-country culture. Drawing on upper echelons and social role theories, we hypothesize that greater women representation on boards positively affects CSP due to their distinctive expertise, perspectives, and knowledge in this area, which strengthen their firms’ attention and resources devoted to it. We then draw on the cultural perspective to explain how national culture moderates this relationship by shaping the salience of women directors’ views and boards’ openness to them. Based on data for 3175 firms across 38 countries between 2008 and 2015, our multilevel analysis provides support for most of our hypotheses.

Positive-sense single-stranded RNA (+ssRNA) viruses exert a profound influence on cellular organelles and metabolic pathway by usurping host processes to promote their replication. In this review, we present a portrait of selected cellular pathways perturbed in SARS-CoV-2 infection: the effect of viral translation, replication and assembly on the morphology and function of the ER, the remodelling of degradative pathways with a focus on the autophagic processes, and the alterations affecting cellular membranes and lipid metabolism. For each of these cellular processes, we highlight the specific viral and host factors involved and their interplay in this microscopic tug-of-war between pro-viral and anti-viral effects that ultimately tip the scale toward the propagation or the resolution of the infection.

Multinational corporations and their global suppliers are increasingly expected to employ sustainability practices throughout their supply chains. As such, the global scope of corporate sustainability – including the notion of ‘full-chain responsibility’ – is a concern for firms, governments, NGOs, and other stakeholders. We evaluate the state-of-the-art of sustainability research on multinational firms and global supply chains, bringing together insights from two literatures that have examined this topic: international business and supply chain management. The articles in the Special Issue advance the research frontier by highlighting both macro impacts of legal and societal pressures as well as micro-processes of bargaining power, managerial sensemaking, and transparency to inform the relationships between global firms and their suppliers. Collectively, the research included in this Special Issue reflects a notable shift in focus from the former (macro) to the latter (micro). We elaborate on the benefits of incorporating additional notions such as power, opportunism, and negotiation in global supply chain research against the background of cross-country variation in legal and societal pressures. This would allow a more in-depth understanding of the dynamic relationships between multinational corporations, their multi-tier supplier networks, and other stakeholders that jointly shape the sustainability agenda.

Numerous scholars have observed that the relationship between poverty and violent conflict is endogenous. As a result, the area of Peace Through Commerce argues as one of its central tenets that the institution of business may be able to contribute to sustainable peace by creating economic development where poverty is a critical issue. While this argument may be valid, it leaves the question open — what is the business case for engaging in poverty alleviation business strategies? Strategic Management scholars are addressing this question, arguing the general proposition that poverty is not only experienced by the people, but also impacts businesses operating in environments where the phenomenon is pervasive. By addressing poverty, businesses can help themselves. Yet, organizational theory justifying this proposition is still emerging, consisting of only a few studies that generally suggest that these strategies can help firms develop competitive advantage through the lens of the resource-based view. This article extends the theoretical application of the resource-based view, suggesting that conditions of poverty directly suppress the value of organizational resources and capabilities that are or could be contributed by people affected by it. In addition, it characterizes poverty alleviation strategic capabilities as dynamic capabilities. Finally, it describes a framework of \"base of the pyramid dynamic capabilities\" that could guide both future discourse in the area and deductive-disconfirmatory research examining the efficacy of these strategies.

Purpose Despite agency theory and resource dependence theory suggesting that – albeit through different mechanisms – board independence positively influences firm internationalization, empirical evidence on this relationship has been mixed and inconclusive. Based on this, the purpose of the present study is twofold: first, to analyze and synthesize the existing empirical literature and, second, to develop new theoretical insights on the effect of board independence on firm internationalization. Design/methodology/approach The authors used advanced meta-analytic techniques that allowed them, first, to synthesize the existing empirical literature on the board independence–firm internationalization relationship and, second, to examine the effect of several contingencies on such relationship. This study relies on data from 87 primary studies (published and unpublished) carried out in multiple academic fields in the period 1998–2021 and covering 49 countries. Findings The results confirm the established agency and resource-dependence arguments, suggesting that higher board independence is associated with greater firm internationalization. Moreover, the results show that the focal relationship is moderated by home-country formal and informal institutional factors, and in particular, the legal protection of minority shareholders and family business legitimacy. The authors do not find evidence that CEO duality and board size moderate the focal relationship or that board independence has a stronger effect on breadth than on depth of internationalization. Originality/value This study lies at the intersection of the literatures on corporate governance and firm internationalization and on comparative corporate governance of the multinational firm, shedding further light on the role played by institutional environments in determining the effectiveness of corporate governance mechanisms.

This dissertation examines the role of firm embeddedness in its global business network, relative to the adoption of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) practices. Global business networks refer to the nexus of inter-firm and intra-firm relationships, in which focal actors are engaged. These networks are focal firm specific, span multiple countries and involve different types of economic relationships between the focal actor and its business partners. This study argues that global business networks affect a focal organization's CSR adoption decisions, since they provide access to resources and information and also channel CSR-related institutional influences from the various countries where the focal firm's business partners are located. The firm is exposed to a multiplicity of institutional forces concerning CSR because of its ties to business partners located in countries with varying CSR institutional requirements. Therefore, how should the firm prioritize these influences? In order to answer this question, this dissertation considers two aspects of the environment in which the firm operates, namely its institutional and its economic embeddedness in the global business network. In the context of this study, institutional embeddedness refers to the CSR-related norms rules, beliefs and the uniformity (or lack thereof) of these. Economic embeddedness is defined as the type and quantity of economic resources that flow through a network and determine the degree of dependence of the focal firm on a specific business partner. A firm's economic and institutional embeddedness are considered jointly because economic ties channel the institutional forces that are present within the global business networks. Based on their strength and nature they also contribute to shaping the intensity with which these forces are experienced by the focal actors. Therefore, an actor's economic and institutional embeddedness represent the building blocks of the main constructs of interest of this study. These capture the strength of the institutional requirements concerning CSR within the global business network, their heterogeneity, and whether the firm operates in contexts with more stringent requirements for CSR than those of its home country. Results indicate that these factors are all important drivers of a firm's decision to adopt CSR practices. They also show that a focal firm's foreign direct investment- (FDI-) based relationships are more effective channels for the diffusion of institutional influences than trade-based relationships. This dissertation makes several theoretical contributions. First, it contributes to the international business research area by expanding the conceptualization of the global space where MNCs operate. This has traditionally been analyzed in terms of its intra-firm network (Ghoshal & Bartlett, 1990). This work extends the conceptualization of this space to also include the organization's inter-firm ties. It also contributes to the emergent interest among international business scholars for considering both the \"constraining\" and \"enabling\" effects of institutional forces (e.g., Kostova, Roth & Dacin, 2008; Saka-Helmhout & Geppert, 2011). In addition, the dissertation contributes to organizational theory by narrowing the existing gap between institutional and network perspectives about organizational behavior, by making explicit the role that networks play as conduits for the diffusion of institutional practices (Owen-Smith & Powell, 2008). The second contribution to organizational theory focuses on the embeddedness research area, by answering recent calls to focus not only on the structure of network ties, but also on their content, which are here explored in terms of the firm's institutional and economic embeddedness. This work also provides a nuanced investigation of the firm's embeddedness, by measuring and modeling the intensity and types of economic exchanges between the focal firm and its business partners as constitutive elements of the intensity with which the focal actor perceives these institutional influences that emerge from the global business network. This dissertation also contributes to CSR research by expanding the analytical focus in order to make sense of the firm's CSR adoption decisions beyond the traditional firm and national boundaries and to also consider the complex composite of institutional forces that emerge from firm's embeddedness in the global business network. To conduct the study, longitudinal data was collected from a diverse range of sources. The sampling history extends from 2007 to 2011, and the number of sampled corporations is 710. In total, there are 2386 firm-year observations in the sample. The sample in this study consists of publicly traded U.S. firms listed on the Russell 3000 index, which includes the largest U.S. multinationals in terms of market capitalization, with matching information from the Kinder, Lydenberg and Domani (KLD), Port Import Export Report Service (PIERS), Corporate Affiliations and Compustat databases.

In acute myeloid leukemia (AML), the insertion site of internal tandem duplications (ITDs) within the FLT3 gene critically determines the sensitivity to tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs). Despite recent advances, patients harboring ITDs in the tyrosine kinase domain (TKD) still lack effective therapeutic options. To elucidate the molecular basis underlying the differential TKI sensitivity of FLT3 ITD cells, we integrated high-resolution mass spectrometry based (phospho)proteomics with subcellular fractionation. Our analysis revealed that midostaurin induces the subcellular redistribution of approximately 2500 proteins involved in crucial biological processes, including cell cycle control, autophagy, and metabolism. Functional analyses further demonstrated that the ITD insertion site determines the autophagy response to midostaurin and modulates mitochondrial metabolism, influencing organelle architecture and ATP production, even at steady state. Importantly, by integrating subcellular proteomic dataset with functional metabolic assays, we uncovered a lipid-dependent vulnerability of FLT3 ITD cells: lipid restriction enhances FLT3 trafficking to the plasma membrane, and markedly reduces cell viability, restoring midostaurin sensitivity of resistant FLT3 ITD cells. Together, our findings reveal that the FLT3 ITD insertion site orchestrates a coordinated remodeling of subcellular protein organization, autophagy, and metabolism, and identify lipid-mediated control of FLT3 compartmentalization as a therapeutically actionable mechanism to overcome TKI resistance in FLT3 ITD AML.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.Funder Information DeclaredItalian Association for Cancer Research, https://ror.org/02g2x7380, 28858, 21815Ministero dell'università e della ricerca, https://ror.org/0341vw408, E53D23004850006, P2022JRETW