International strategy and business groups: A review and future research agenda

Abstract

Motivated by the growth and internationalization of business groups, this paper reviews the business group literature and presents a future research agenda, highlighting their implications for international strategy. The paper identifies theoretical tensions and empirical ambiguities around three key business group features corporate governance, internal markets, and corporate strategy and three key outcome variables performance, economic impact, and innovation that have generated significant debate. We conclude with three methodological concerns relevant to these debates: generalizing business group research across countries, endogeneity in business group research, and performance measurement in business groups. (C) 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.