Multinational enterprises from emerging markets (EM-MNEs) have rapidly become powerful players in the global market over the past three decades. This study aims to reveal the strategy(ies) adopted by EM-MNEs for their dual internationalization, a distinctive feature in comparison with traditional MNEs. By conducting a case study on Alibaba, the representative Chinese multinational company, this study has revealed that, in emerging markets, EM-MNEs are likely to employ standardization strategy and their expansion has a strong resource-exploitation orientation; whereas in developed markets, they tend to carry out adaptation strategy, and their expansion is characterized with resource-seeking orientation.

This study estimates the impact of companies’ regional expansion on their global performance using the estimation model that incorporates firm heterogeneity. Many studies have examined the relationship between the regional expansion of multinational firms and their global performance. However, the results have not been consistent. They reported mixed results: positive, negative or non-linear effects. This inconsistency is partly because the previous studies ignore firm heterogeneity in estimating the impact of their overseas expansion.

To address firm heterogeneity, this study uses the hierarchical Bayesian model to estimate the impact of overseas expansion using the dataset of 453 Japanese manufacturing companies from 2012 to 2016. The data include information about firms’ regional assets, which serves as an indicator of firms’ operational experience in three regions: Asia, North America, and Europe.

The empirical results suggest that the effects of regional expansion result in the bimodal distribution in all regions, and depend on firm characteristics and other factors. The results also show that the effects of regional expansion differ across the three regions. North America is similar to Japan. Entering Asia leads to improved performance for a company only after its sales have grown, indicating that successful entry into the region is dependent on the operational expansion of the company.

This research clarifies “ (1) What are the interactions and (2) what are the promotion conditions in the transfer process of production technology systems and global information systems?” in multinational companies.

In the previous research on the transfer of global information systems, there is a discussion about whether to introduce the ERP system in a globally integrated manner or in a locally adapted manner. Especially in Japanese multinational companies, it has been pointed out that the Japanese management / production technology system and the ERP system are incompatible. Among them, the possibility of balancing the superiority of the ERP system with the production technology system such as on-site improvement, which is Japan’s strength, is discussed. Therefore, in this research, we conducted an exploratory case study of Japanese manufacturing companies in the transfer of these two production technology systems and the transfer of global information systems.

Existing research focuses on the direction of transfer between the parent company in the home country and the overseas subsidiary, and the discussion is limited to the transfer of the production technology system. However, in this research, the perspective of global information system was added as a new analytical framework to the discussion of the transfer direction of the production technology system, and the dynamics was analyzed. By doing so, we clarified the interaction between the global information system and the transfer of the production technology system. In addition, it can be said that it is an important contribution in this research that clarified the conditions that promote them.

Recently, some of the overseas factories building capabilities through local operations and carrying mother factory functions to transfer those capabilities to other overseas factories. However, there are various theories about why overseas factories can operate as mother factories, and further research is needed. This research explores what is the trigger of an overseas factory’s transformation into a mother factory. We reviewed the former research about the mother factory function of overseas factories. By doing so, we can confirm the current research situation and comparatively analyze the concepts proposed by each study. Next, to find a point of contact with theory, we saw the research about knowledge transfer between overseas subsidiaries. Finally, using these results, we present some hypotheses about the factors that lead to the conversion of overseas factories into mother factories.

Previous research has analyzed the importance of knowledge transfer and adaptation in dealing with cross-border business in a firm’s international alliance strategy using qualitative and quantitative methods. However, how firms manage knowledge to overcome the challenge caused by market changes from the perspective of dynamic capability in qualitative method has remained.

Therefore, the purpose of this article is to discuss how Hotai Motor (knowledge receiver) established a car retailing alliance business with the help of Toyota (knowledge sender) in Taiwan. Moreover, this article reveals what roles Hotai Motor played when the local market changed dramatically, and business growth decelerated significantly.

In conclusion, this article found that Hotai Motor implemented dynamic knowledge adaptation to tackle knowledge incompatibility to improve the competitive advantages. Besides, this article revealed the differences between knowledge adaptation process and dynamic knowledge adaptation process.