2020, Merkestein, Wouter, Lindeque, Johan Paul

Demerged Multinational Enterprises (DMNEs) that emerge with an independent corporate status after a demerger from a parent multinational enterprise (MNE) are unique firms with a great variety of post-demerger strengths, weaknesses and international strategic responses. This paper adopts a firm-level internalisation theory approach to MNE strategy to empirically explore the characteristics and post-demerger strategies of four focal case DMNEs. Five years of post-demerger data from annual accounts, newspaper articles and databases were analysed. Analysis of the strategic responses of the four DMNEs has allowed a typology that distinguishes four DMNE types to be proposed. This typology explains the international strategies of DMNEs by the degree of post-demerger strategic dynamism that is possible and the need to address the quality of the firm specific advantages endowed to the DMNE in the demerger.

2018, le Duc, Niels, Lindeque, Johan Paul

This paper explores the role of proximity in strategic asset-seeking multinational enterprises’ (MNE) co-location in subnational knowledge/innovation intensive clusters. MNE co-location in three Dutch science parks is examined in terms of the perceived importance of geographic, cognitive, social, organisational and institutional proximity dimensions. While all five proximity dimensions are found to play a role, organisational proximity emerged as the most important factor influencing MNE co-location in the Dutch science parks. This paper argues, in contrast to expectations for a high degree of relatedness and reinforcing effects between the five proximities, that an ‘optimal’ proximity constellation of low organisational proximity together with high social and cognitive proximity fosters MNE co-location in knowledge intensive clusters, such as science parks.