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This study examines and extends the resource dependence logic of diversification for a better understanding of outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) activities by emerging market firms. We contend that the diversification logic is bounded by state ownership, an important but less considered component of interdependence. Our empirical results, based on panel data analysis of Chinese listed firms, suggest that the level of interdependence between Chinese and foreign firms in China in multiple forms, including symbiotic, competitive, and partner interdependencies, is positively associated with the level of the Chinese firms' OFDI activities. However, Chinese firms with higher levels of state ownership are less susceptible to the pressures imposed by foreign firms to invest abroad.

The resource-based view of the firm emphasizes the role of firm-specific resources, especially firm-specific knowledge resources, in helping a firm to achieve sustainable competitive advantage. However, the deployment of firm-specific knowledge often requires key employees to make specialized human capital investments that are not easily redeployable to other settings. Thus, in the absence of effective safeguards and trust building devices, employees with foresight may be reluctant to make such specialized investments. This study explores both economic- and relationship-based governance mechanisms that might mitigate this underinvestment problem. Effective use of these governance mechanisms enables a firm to obtain greater performance from its efforts to deploy firm-specific knowledge resources. Empirical results further support these key arguments.

We explain the mechanisms through which government impacts the internationalization of emerging-market enterprises (EMEs). Rather than merely viewing internationalization as the result of differences in resource positions, we demonstrate that an important source of variation is the idiosyncratic manner in which EMEs are affiliated with government agencies. Although government involvement has a strong effect on international expansion, this effect is contingent upon the level at which the firm is affiliated with government and the degree of state ownership. Different types and levels of governments have different objectives, exert different institutional pressures on EMEs, and impact their willingness and ability to internationalize differently. Government involvement influences the level of overseas investment, its location (developed vs developing countries) and its type (resource-vs market-seeking). These effects depend on firms' own resources and capabilities, suggesting that not all firms possess equal ability to internalize government-related advantages and respond to institutional pressures. By demonstrating that resource-based and institutional constructs are highly dependent on one another, we enhance understanding of how EMEs succeed in expanding overseas, and why governments matter.

The articles in this special feature challenge the presumption that scholars can make simple, predictive models of social-ecological systems (SESs) and deduce universal solutions, panaceas, to problems of overuse or destruction of resources. Moving beyond panaceas to develop cumulative capacities to diagnose the problems and potentialities of linked SESs requires serious study of complex, multivariable, nonlinear, cross-scale, and changing systems. Many variables have been identified by researchers as affecting the patterns of interactions and outcomes observed in empirical studies of SESs. A step toward developing a diagnostic method is taken by organizing these variables in a nested, multitier framework. The framework enables scholars to organize analyses of how attributes of (i) a resource system (e.g., fishery, lake, grazing area), (ii) the resource units generated by that system (e.g., fish, water, fodder), (iii) the users of that system, and (iv) the governance system jointly affect and are indirectly affected by interactions and resulting outcomes achieved at a particular time and place. The framework also enables us to organize how these attributes may affect and be affected by larger socioeconomic, political, and ecological settings in which they are embedded, as well as smaller ones. The framework is intended to be a step toward building a strong interdisciplinary science of complex, multilevel systems that will enable future diagnosticians to match governance arrangements to specific problems embedded in a social-ecological context.

We develop a resource security theory by examining the intent of acquisitions of scarce resources by multinational firms. Results suggest that owners of firms can shape the intent of resource acquisitions. Specifically, state-owned enterprises (SOEs) tend to acquire and pay more for resources for exploration rather than exploitation. This is because SOEs' owners-governments-are most concerned with securing their country's future. We contribute to the literature by suggesting that ownership influences resource acquisitions, that resource security is of importance to multinational enterprises, and that SOEs invest abroad to safeguard both their own and their home countries' future.

This paper informs the literature on the business value of information technology by conceptualizing a path from IT assets—that is, commodity-like or off-the-shelf information technologies—to sustainable competitive advantage. This path suggests that IT assets can play a strategic role when they are combined with organizational resources to create IT-enabled resources. To the extent that relationships between IT assets and organizational resources are synergistic, the ensuing IT-enabled resources are capable of positively affecting firms' sustainable competitive advantage via their improved strategic potential. This is an important contribution since IT-related organizational benefits have been hard to demonstrate despite attempts to study them through a variety of methods and theoretical lenses. This paper synthesizes systems theory and the resource-based view of the firm to build a unified conceptual model linking IT assets with firm-level benefits. Several propositions are derived from the model and their implications for IS research and practice are discussed.

Safe and effective conflict resolution is critical for survival and reproduction. Theoretical models describe how animals resolve conflict by assessing their own and/or their opponent's ability (resource holding potential, RHP), yet experimental tests of these models are often inconclusive. Recent reviews have suggested this uncertainty could be alleviated by using multiple approaches to test assessment models. The mantis shrimp Neogonodactylus bredini presents visual displays and ritualistically exchanges high-force strikes during territorial contests. We tested how N. bredini contest dynamics were explained by any of three assessment models—pure self-assessment, cumulative assessment and mutual assessment—using correlations and a novel, network analysis-based sequential behavioural analysis. We staged dyadic contests over burrow access between competitors matched either randomly or based on body size. In both randomly and size-matched contests, the best metric of RHP was body mass. Burrow residency interacted with mass to predict outcome. Correlations between contest costs and RHP rejected pure self-assessment, but could not fully differentiate between cumulative and mutual assessment. The sequential behavioural analysis ruled out cumulative assessment and supported mutual assessment. Our results demonstrate how multiple analyses provide strong inference to tests of assessment models and illuminate how individual behaviours constitute an assessment strategy.

International strategies vary in their potential to exploit and augment a firm's resources, especially its knowledge base. Resource-based analysis suggests clustering the diverse entry modes in terms of their exploitation and augmentation characteristics. We thus introduce a new categorization of entry modes based on their potential to augment the resources of an entrant. We then explore the antecedents of these modes, and advance testable propositions delimiting for which firms and in which circumstances each mode maximizes long-term value creation. Finally, we outline how our resource-based framework complements transaction-cost-based frameworks.

This paper analyses the relationship between the internationalisation strategies of SMEs and types of ownership. Different types of ownership affect firms, and this in turn will influence the internationalisation strategy adopted. Using a sample of Spanish SMEs, our results show that internationalisation is negatively related to family ownership and positively related to corporate ownership. We have also observed that the presence of a corporate blockholder in family firms encourages internationalisation. These results support the idea that ownership type influences the decision to internationalise.

Extant literature holds that firm acquisitions create value through innovation if the knowledge bases of the acquirer and the target complement each other. Little is known about the value that patents associated with a target's knowledge convey to the acquirer, i.e., their value in securing market exclusion and freedom to operate in R&D. We argue that such property rights hold preemptive power allowing firms to capture the value from combining complementary technologies and to realize gains from trade in strategic factor markets. Our results for a sample of 1,428 acquisitions indicate that—controlling for technological value—acquired preemptive power is an important determinant of the acquisition price, particularly when the acquirer is technology intensive and acquired patents are highly related to the acquirer's knowledge base.