I don’t use this blog enough to promote my research output.  So I thought I’d draw your attention to a book chapter/paper that recently hit the streets:

Elizabeth Maitland & Andre Sammartino (2009) ‘Subsidiaries in Motion: Assessing the impact of sunk vs. flexible assets‘, Advances in International Management, Volume 22,pp.55–83

In good old academic jargon, we claim to be tackle the following:

“…an unresolved theoretical issue in international business: the impact of existing,committed assets in a host location on parent and subsidiary decisions regarding the configuration of future value-adding activities for the location.”

The paper adapts a framework proposed in the strategic management domain (by Ghemawat and Del Sol (1998)) to explicitly incorporate location issues.  This allows us to explore the level of commitment (or locked-in-ness) a firm has to operating in a particular location.  We believe this is an important addition to current IB theory which says a lot about entry and too little about reconfiguration.

We are currently working on a more manager-friendly take on this story, rich in examples and toolkit elements.  I’ll make sure to trumpet its arrival on your local newstand if and when that occurs.

Posted in International business, Strategic management