The Limits to Globalization and the Regional Strategies of Multinational Enterprises

The papers in this Special Issue show that a new theory of international management built to explain regional-level strategy and structure is required. Internationalization is a well-understood concept at the macro-level: it refers to the increasing economic interdependence among nations. Unfortunately, in the past two decades, many authors from academia and the public policy sphere have made a conceptual quantum leap, equating internationalization with globalization, i.e., the idea that the world is a fully integrated market place. The problem with such a perspective on globalization is that it assumes away the necessity of selectivity in internationalization. Such selectivity is to some extent introduced at the macro-level, but even more importantly, selectivity in internationalization is mainly a firm-driven phenomenon.