Purpose – The authors are witnessing the increasing extent of corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance as strategic behaviour specifically in emerging markets. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how multinational companies (MNCs) manage CSR activities in emerging markets to aid their core business activities. In line with this question, the paper aims to develop a theoretical view for deeper understanding of the strategy in CSR practices aiding internationalization. The view is based on a business network perspective highlighting the four concepts of learning, commitment, legitimacy and trust. Design/methodology/approach – The methodology employed is qualitative, based on interviews with involved parties. The case study is about the experiences of a Korean MNC’s CSR strategy when entering into the Chinese electronics industry. Findings – The case illustrates how the Korean MNC committed resources to gain trust and legitimacy that improved their market position. It further manifests that the firm’s CSR strategy was proactive because of the large commitment in several long- and short-term projects towards the society. Investment in social issues like education, environmental problems and communities aided the firm’s entry. Research limitations/implications – The study has a qualitative and in-depth nature. Future research is needed in order to generalize the proposed theoretical frame. Practical implications – The study manifests how a MNC employs CSR strategy for internationalization in a foreign market. It shows how managers can undertake different practical CSR measures to enter and expand in foreign markets. Social implications – While internationalization of firms is mainly based on their business commitment towards counterparts or business firms, the study shows how CSR strategy and activities towards the society support their businesses. Originality/value – While internationalization of firms is mainly based on their business commitment towards counterparts or business firms, the study shows how CSR strategy and activities towards the society support their businesses. The study investigates CSR strategy and enlightens activities like education and environmental problems. The study further develops the business network view and includes social aspects. The theoretical view holding the four relationship elements of trust, knowledge, legitimacy and commitment permits deeper understanding of the MNC’s proactive CSR behaviour in new markets.

This study examines how business networking and commitment to local market affect MNCs. speed of business entry in an emerging market. We look at relationship between networking, commitment and performance of entry process into Chinese automotive industry by multinationals from three different countries; USA, Europe and Korea. Data is collected through in-depth interviews and through secondary sources related to the entry process of these cases. The experiences of three MNCs illustrate that entry strategy and speed of entry are influenced by business networking between MNCs and the key business and sociopolitical actors. Our cases also show that networking tend to generate multi-dimensional effects on MNCs. speed of market entry.

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This study aims to investigate the public’s preferences for and quantitatively measure the economic value of a pollen forecast system, a new meteorological information service, in South Korea. To directly measure the economic value of the pollen forecast system and its attributes in terms of the public’s preferences, this study used conjoint analysis and a discrete choice model. In the conjoint survey, seven factors were considered as attributes of the pollen forecast system: the forecast area, forecast interval, information type, forecast period, delivery media, forecast accuracy, and price. Based on survey data from the six largest metropolitan areas in South Korea, the authors estimated people’s utility function by a rank-ordered logit model and calculated the relative importance (RI) and marginal willingness to pay (MWTP) for each attribute. People considered price, meaning the additional tax burden, to be the most important attribute, with a relative importance of 42.3%. In descending order of relative importance, price was followed by forecast accuracy, forecast interval, forecast area, forecast period, and information type; these attributes had MWTP values of 0.133, −0.017, 0.098, 0.059, and 0.011 USD month−1, respectively. The results of this study can serve as guidance of government investments in the pollen forecast system and provide an empirical basis for the application of conjoint analysis to economic valuation studies on a wider range of meteorological information services.