A Regional Perspective on Multinational Expansion Strategies: Reconsidering the Three‐stage Paradigm
研究发现，跨国公司的区域覆盖范围显著影响其绩效，多数企业聚焦本土区域可提升绩效，仅部分同时覆盖本土和海外区域的企业呈现国际化程度与绩效的S曲线关系。
Empirical studies on international expansion have shown only limited support for the three‐stage ( S ‐curve) hypothesis. Whilst the basic concept is intuitively acceptable, the very generality of the paradigm is its weakness in empirical studies. This paper takes a more fine‐grained theoretical and empirical approach by distinguishing between the regions covered by different multinational companies. The regional scope covered by a multinational firm makes a substantial difference with regard to its performance. We find that most firms can enhance their performance by focusing on their home region, whilst only a subset of firms operating in both the home and foreign regions show the overall S ‐curve relationship between multinationality and performance. Certain combinations of product diversification and regional coverage also enhance performance.