In international business (IB), the level of equity ownership adopted by a firm is an important decision. In this study, we review and synthesize the findings of 105 empirical studies published in prominent IB and management journals on the determinants of equity ownership stake in foreign investment decisions, published between 1991 and 2020. Three primary theoretical lenses ‒ organizational learning perspective, transaction cost economics and institutional perspective – are adopted to catalogue and synthesize the existing literature. We find that, despite the proliferation of IB studies on antecedents of level of equity ownership decisions, many unanswered questions remain. We also find that theoretical fault lines impede progress in this research stream. Based on the literature review, we suggest a research programme that includes accounting for the behavioural view of decision‐making in the organization, shifting from an atomistic perspective to a network perspective of the firm, having a better understanding of the process of internationalization and considering industry heterogeneity as well as the host country's characteristics.

Acquiring firm imitates the payment method decisions made by prior foreign acquirers targeting the same host country in cross-border acquisitions. Information asymmetry and bounded rationality induces acquirers to imitate the decisions of other foreign firms in the similar context.Mimetic behavior of the firms is more salient when the acquiring firm belongs to a country with high uncertainty avoidance cultural attribute and when institutional uncertainty is high in host country. The hypotheses are tested using binary logistic regression on a dataset of 1,136 crossborder acquisitions done by a group of seven countries during 2000-2010.

In an emerging market context, the strength of sociodemographic faultlines of the top management team (TMT) might negatively impact the speed of firm's foreign direct investment (FDI) expansion. Building on upper echelon perspectives, the study proposes testable propositions on the role of sociodemographic faultlines (based on age, caste, and language) of the TMT on the speed of firm's FDI expansion. The role of decision‐making in TMT is crucial for embarking upon such strategic actions and analyzing those that are pertinent for the international business scholarship. Furthermore, we propose that the degree of inward foreign competition faced by the firms and the prior international experience of the TMT will moderate this relationship.

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