In the 1990s, three Scandinavian news media companies, Bonnier, Kinnevik, and Schibsted, internationalized their newspapers. Despite doing this during the same period, competing in the same industry and institutional environment, being exposed to the same opportunities by the opening of the Eastern European markets, and all belonging to a smaller language area, they differed in their internationalization models as well as in their outcomes. Despite initial successes, Bonnier and Kinnevik eventually discontinued their newspapers in the new markets, in many cases following significant losses, while Schibsted fared better. The main explanation for using different internationalization models was differences in business models, basically striving to do business internationally in a similar way as domestically. That is, they did not choose a specific internationalization model but sought to simply expand their business models internationally. Consequently, this article finds that when researching internationalization, more focus should be placed on business models.

We examine how evolving FDI legitimacy in China influences two strategic choices (entry mode and expatriate staffing) of Japanese subsidiaries there over the period 1993–2000, based on data aggregated from Toyo Keizai and the National Bureau of Statistics of China (various years). As FDI legitimacy improves over time, we find that smaller subsidiaries tend to choose the wholly owned subsidiary mode and deploy a higher percentage of expatriates, whereas larger subsidiaries tend to choose the joint venture mode and use a lower percentage of expatriates; and that Japanese subsidiaries are more likely to have a local manager, and this tendency may be stronger for larger subsidiaries. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed from a density dependence theory perspective.

This study investigates how family control influences entry mode choice between joint ventures and wholly owned subsidiaries. Based on past studies revealing family-controlled firms’ unique concerns regarding the preservation of socioemotional wealth, the researchers posit that, firms with higher family control respond more drastically to perceived environmental uncertainty when choosing their entry mode. The researchers hypothesize that, when perceiving high environmental uncertainty, firms with higher versus lower family control are more likely to choose joint ventures. However, when perceiving low environmental uncertainty, firms with higher versus lower family control tend to choose wholly owned subsidiaries. The empirical results obtained from a sample of 1,644 investments undertaken by publicly listed companies in Taiwan support the hypotheses.