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This study tests for the relationship between internationalization and performance in the emerging market context using a sample of 719 firms from 12 emerging markets. This study also incorporates the quality of governance in the emerging market studied to test for the interactive influence of the environmental context on the internationalization performance relationship. Findings indicate support for an inverted U‐shaped relationship between internationalization and performance for manufacturing firms and a positive linear relationship for service firms. In explaining the relationship between internationalization and performance, the quality of governance of the home country of the firm was found to interact with internationalization.

Management of power distribution companies (discoms) in India has been historically criticized on the ground of inefficient management. Inefficiency in operations triggered management by private franchisees for promotion of managerial and technical expertise. However, franchise contracts have achieved mixed outcomes despite the business model being a decade old in the Indian power distribution sector. Therefore, this study sheds light on the drivers of discoms (principal) with the franchisees (agent) for the achievement of the common performance goals, highlighting the agency issues at multiple levels across the organizational hierarchies. The study seeks to acknowledge the commonalities and differences between and across varying levels.

A qualitative embedded single case study was conducted in an Indian state, namely Odisha. The study was built on archival analysis, personal observations and semi-structured interviews with the franchisors and franchisee officials across the organization's hierarchical levels. A conceptual model based on the review of prior literature formed the set of coding and presentation for the study.

The study provides insights on factors that play a role in effective power distribution management, operational efficiency and improved financial performance through the partnership of the principal and the agent.

The study is predominantly dependent upon interviews. This paved the way for the limitation of human biases. Additionally, deep insights were drawn from a single case study of a discom's decision to hire franchisees. However, this was at the cost of the number of organizations interviewed. The findings of the study could be built across other areas or nations.

There is adequate literature on franchising as a business model. However, literature is lacking in highlighting the commonalities and differences between different contracting parties and their impact on the performance of the contract. Additionally, there is a dearth of literature on franchising in the power distribution sector. Therefore, studying the model from multiple perspectives would contribute to the literature on the power sector and franchising.

The purpose of this paper is to show how to develop inhibition 57S aluminium in 2M NaOH solution.

The approach is used to measure gravimetric and polarization measurements.

The results of the paper clearly reveal that the 0.2 M ZnO with 700 ppm polyaniline in N‐methyl‐2‐pyrrolidone solution is found to offer inhibition up to 71.2 per cent.

The paper deals with the development of newer inhibitor based on polyaniline. Gravimetric and galvanostatic methods were employed to evaluate inhibition efficiency.

The previous decade has been characterized by emerging market firms expanding into international markets. This trend has led to scholars in the IB arena to grapple with the new phenomenon of emerging multinational enterprises (EMNEs), specifically the relationship between internationalization and performance of the EMNEs. This paper seeks to add to the literature by capturing the impact of firm resources on the internationalization‐performance relationship. Empirical analysis on a sample of 787 Indian manufacturing firms indicates that there is a non‐linear relationship between internationalization and performance. Findings also indicate that a firm’s capabilities in cost efficiency and marketing have a moderating impact on this relationship.

Understanding the impact of country effect on financial performance is important for service firms as they continue to grow and operate across national borders. The purpose of this paper is to empirically quantify the impact of country and several country-specific variables on firm performance in the service sector by estimating the portion of variation in firm performance attributed to these factors.

Using hierarchical linear models, the authors estimate the proportion of variation driven by country effects. These estimates are obtained from a data panel of 16,051 units from 3,345 service firms across 32 countries over a seven-year time frame (2001-2007).

In the analysis, home country explains approximately 11 percent of the variance in performance. Additionally, the authors find that six country-specific variables, namely, quality of governance, openness to trade, wealth, growth rate, uncertainty avoidance and individualism collectively explain 10 percent of variation in performance or 26.8 percent relative variation of performance.

This study extends the literature on country effect by quantifying the impact of country-specific dimensions on performance. It focusses on a single industry within the service sector. This allows for a more reliable estimate of the country effect, as it will not be confounded by cross-industry effects – thus alleviating some of the concerns with earlier research. Understanding the impact of the six specific country variables investigated in this work will allow service firms to better predict and improve the performance of subsidiaries.

The Indian power distribution companies are increasingly recognizing franchising for reviving their high loss-making rural pockets. The motivation for franchising has been a reduction of the franchisor's resource scarcity by bringing in operational efficiency and improved service quality to end consumers. However, there is a dearth of evidence on the influence of the franchisee's operations in addressing the resource scarcity of franchisors in predominantly rural areas. This study contributes towards filling the research gap.

A qualitative embedded multiple case study was conducted. The cases comprised two rural franchisees operating towards attaining the common goal. The study was built on archival analysis, personal observations and semi-structured interviews with the franchisors and franchisee officials across the organization's hierarchical levels. A conceptual model based on the review of prior literature formed the initial set of coding for the study. The data were presented based on within-case and across-case analysis.

The analysis revealed that the contract design impacts the requisite operational efficiency achievement. This variation could be elaborated by factors, such as system adaptation across organizational hierarchy, autonomy and independence, review and feedback systems, monitoring, a professional's attitude, bureaucracy, adaption with the local areas, risk sharing, incentives and compensation structure.

The study findings could be generalized to the extent of similar socio-economic conditions, prevailing governance mechanisms and law and orders. Additionally, since the law does not mandate the regulatory commissions to scrutinize the performance of the franchisees, the study was built on data shared by the franchisees and the discom. Further, this study considered the performance of only two performing franchisees. Matching these actualities with the discoveries of this study remains a continuing project as participation of private players is increasingly being recognized. Therefore, the insights drawn from this study could be used to improve the franchise model and can be scaled up across the nation, regions and sectors.

There is a dearth of literature on franchising in electricity distribution. This study is one of the first studies on studying the franchise system in the electricity distribution sector through the application of a well-accepted management theory.

The purpose of this study is to examine whether the usage of informal finance helps exports of emerging market firms.

The study analyzes a large dataset of observations on emerging market firms. To address the issue of a non-random sample and correct for self-selection in the regression analyzes, this paper uses the two-stage Heckman procedure. In the first stage, this study uses a sample of 74,148 firms from 135 countries over an 11-year time period (2006 to 2016). In the second stage, which includes only firms involved in exports, the analyses are based on 13,608 observations on firms from 135 countries over the same time period.

The study finds that the usage of informal finance helps exports of emerging market firms. Furthermore, the interactive effect between informal finance and home country affluence also influences exports.

The analyses do not account for destination market characteristics such as size and growth.

The study suggests that emerging market firms should not shy away from using informal finance which can often be more convenient, and sometimes cheaper, than formal finance. Informal finance’s timeliness might be particularly useful for pursuing strategies such as exporting.

Studies in international business implicitly assume that finance is available for pursuing strategies such as exports or foreign direct investment. However, formal finance is scarce in emerging markets. By drawing a linkage between informal finance and exports in emerging markets, the study adds to the international business literature. The study also examines joint and interactive effects of home country characteristics and deployment of informal finance on exporting.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the bibliometric characteristics of papers published in a high impact journal World Psychiatry during the period 2006-2015.

The data for this study were obtained from Thompson Reuters’ “Web of Science”. Publication details were extracted for the journal title “World Psychiatry”. This study covers authorship patterns, annual growth, impact factors, document types, top contributors, international collaborations, highly cited papers and keyword analyses. Software programs such as “Histcite”, “intcoll.exe”, “Pajek” and “Leximancer” were used to analyze the publications.

More than half of the publications were by editorial materials and number of publications from low and middle income countries is very low when compared to proportion of editorial board members. Almost 40 per cent of papers came from the USA and editorial board members had considerable number of papers. Kings College London led the institutions.

Analysis of high impact journals in the field of psychiatry has been carried out in a very few. Hence, the results of this study will be useful to compare with other journals.

The importance of regional strategy as a separate paradigm in the international business literature has grown in recent years, and the initial connections between regionalization and firm performance appear promising. What is lacking, however, is an empirical analysis quantifying the impact of regional effects on firm profitability. This topic is an important one for the field of international business, as drivers of firm profitability are some of the key motivators of research in international strategy. The aim of this paper is to empirically quantify the role of regional effects on the performance of service firms in a manner such that regional effects can be directly compared with country and firm effects on firm profitability.

Using a hierarchical linear model (HLM) with four levels, the proportion of variation driven by regional effects is estimated. These estimates are obtained from a data panel of 48,083 units from 7,129 service firms across the three triad regions (North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific) over a ten-year time-frame (1999-2008).

It was found that regional effects, in terms of relative importance, explain approximately 9 percent of the variance in firm performance. This pattern of results is consistent when the analysis was conducted during periods of increasing or decreasing profits, firm type, and ownership structure.

Within the context of international business, work on regional strategy/regionalization has emerged as a separate stream of literature. This study is one of the first to quantify the influence of regional effects on performance using a 4-level HLM model. Additionally, this paper demonstrates the application of a 4-level model, potentially increasing awareness of this technique and usage in other multilevel topics in the IB literature, which offers several avenues for future research.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on international acquisitions that took place in the insurance sector by US‐based firms in the years 1997‐2003 and their impact on shareholder wealth.

The study sample is based on 52 international acquisitions in 24 countries undertaken by US firms in the insurance industry during the years 1997‐2003. The event‐study methodology is used to verify the impact of international acquisition announcements on an insurance firm's shareholder wealth. Cross‐sectional regression analysis is used to determine the importance of host country factors.

Overall results of this study show that firms undertaking overseas acquisitions face statistically insignificant negative market returns, indicating the market neither rewards nor penalizes such firms. The market returns faced by firms during such acquisitions tend to vary by the degree of wealth of the host country, amount of bilateral trade between host and home country, extent of potential liabilities of foreignness (LOF) faced by the firm, and economies of scope.

An important contribution of this study is that it indicates how these returns in insurer acquisitions are influenced by country characteristics. Insurers are likely to face relatively higher positive returns while seeking entry into countries with large size markets and which have extensive trade relationships with the US insurers are also likely to face negative returns when entering markets that have potential pitfalls of LOF. The market does see higher risk in acquisitions made in countries characterized by greater differences in culture, environment, legal systems, and geographic distance. Additionally, there is limited evidence indicating that firms gaining scope economies might be able to reduce the negative impact of LOF. Therefore, the conventional phrase, “look before you leap” would be apt for insurers planning acquisitions in overseas markets.