Rethinking Dunning's Ownership Advantages
本文重新审视邓宁折衷范式中的所有权优势，将其与公司特定优势和国家特定优势结合，提出二维矩阵，并区分了跨国公司理论与对外直接投资理论。
It is a privilege for me to dedicate this issue of MBR to the memory of John H. Dunning. In this special theory issue of MBR, we publish six original papers that analyze and debate the nature and influence of John Dunning's ownership advantages. The ownership (O) advantage forms part of Dunning's eclectic paradigm, in which the other components are location (L) advantages and internalization (I) advantages. The OLI framework is the most influential paradigm in the field of international business, and it was refined and developed into an all-encompassing explanation of outward FDI by Dunning over a 30 year period. It is a topic worthy of serious thought and debate, and we hope the discussion of it in this issue will provide a tribute to the intellectual memory of John Dunning. In the opening thematic paper, I use my distinction between firm-specific advantages (FSAs) and country-specific advantages (CSAs) to rework the OLI framework into a two-dimensional matrix. I argue that the L variable in Dunning is exactly replicated on the CSA axis, while the O and I elements can be transformed into the FSA axis. There is little disagreement about the former, but considerable debate about the latter, as the papers in this issue reveal. Briefly, it is demonstrated that, in a theory of the multinational enterprise (MNE), the strategic decision to internalize (or not) is inseparable from the nature of an ownership advantage. Only a firm can own an FSA. Thus, the internalized FSAs of an MNE are the basis for FDI. The non-equity types of FDI (licensing, joint ventures, alliances, etc.) need to be distinguished from wholly owned subsidiaries and exports (which are both fully owned and controlled by the MNE). In my related empirical work I use firm level data to make this distinction, finding that the world's largest firms average 77% of their sales in their home region of the triad. In contrast, Dunning is not focused on the core issue of strategic decision making by the firm; instead, his focus on OLI is to explain outward FDI. In short Dunning's OLI is not a theory of the firm, but a theory of FDI. In contrast, internalization theorists, such as Buckley and Casson (1976, 2009), Rugman (1981, 2005) and Hennart (1982, 2009), develop a theory of the MNE. While MNEs undoubtedly account for FDI, the field of IB needs to understand this distinction between a theory of the firm and a theory of outward FDI. Hopefully the papers in this issue will deepen our understanding of this distinction. Eden and Dai provide a clear and succinct summary of the development of Dunning's OLI framework over a 31 year period. They identify five versions of his eclectic paradigm, from Mark I in 1977 to Mark V (with Sarianna Lundan in their 2008 advanced textbook, Multinational Enterprises and the Global Economy). Eden and Dai state that O explains why there is FDI, L explains where it goes, and I explains how firms organize FDI (by internalizing rather than licensing or forming joint ventures). They argue that these three questions require three instruments and cite the Tinbergen rule of economic policy that matches instruments with targets. However, this is an invalid comparison since the Tinbergen rule requires that the instruments and targets be independent, whereas Dunning states that the O, L, and I conditions are interdependent. In retrospect, I agree with Eden and Dai that the best version of Dunning's OLI framework is Mark II, in which he distinguishes between ownership asset advantages (Oa) and transactional ownership advantages (Ot). To an extent the Mark V version, which introduces institutional ownership advantages (Oi), is potentially useful in answering the following question: do emerging market MNEs need a new theory of FDI? The answer is no, since the institutional factors driving Asian outward FDI (especially from China) can be fully analyzed using Oi factors as part of the basic OLI framework. …