No abstract

Strategic leadership research in the field of international business (IB) explains how the actions and outcomes of multinational enterprises (MNE) vary with the attributes and interactions of their key decision-makersi.e., their strategic leaders. Yet, whilst the importance of strategic leadership has gained momentum in IB, we lack a systematic understanding of the roles that strategic leaders enact in the MNE context. This omission is critical, as understanding the distinctive roles of IB decisionmakers is a key prerequisite for establishing uniqueness in this emerging research field. In this study, we elaborate on the theoretical foundations of five IB strategic leadership roles and outline how the MNE context fundamentally shapes their uniqueness. Our perspective presents each of the five roles as distinctly shaped by two core microfoundational processesbounded rationality (BRat) and bounded reliability (BRel)which intensify the challenges facing MNE strategic leaders in their role enactment. Acknowledging that IB strategic leaders perform multiple roles simultaneously and interdependently, we conclude with an overall synthesis and guide for future research that moves toward a multi-role and multi-level understanding of IB strategic leadership.

We study the relationship between firms' top management teams (TMT) and internationalization complexity. We consider the effect of three different sets of TMT characteristicsinternational business orientation intensity, education intensity, and team diversity on three different and increasingly complex facets of internationalization-international markets intensity, international operations intensity and international country diversity. We argue that more international, highly-educated and diverse TMTs are better able to face the complexity derived from international competition. The results of our empirical analysis show that TMTs having foreign managers or managers with international experience are more likely to be in charge of firms facing higher international operations intensity. Conversely, more educated and more diverse TMTs are associated with complexity deriving from international diversification.