Product and international diversification among Japanese multinational firms

Abstract

This paper examines the relationship of performance with product and international diversification on Japanese multinational firms from 1977 to 1993. We show the relationships between diversification and performance change over time through the use of multiple time periods and accounting for keiretsu membership. Results show that while diversity strategies vary between keiretsu and non‐keiretsu firms, performance is not much different. Across time periods, performance varies considerably, but strategies are less variable. Product diversity has weak effects on firm performance only in one time period, while international diversification has negative profitability and positive growth consequences in in some periods. These results suggest first that diversification strategies and their effects on performance vary across time periods and generally produce some unexpected findings. We do not find strong interactive diversity effects. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Examining the Penrose effect in an international business context: the dynamics of Japanese firm growth in US industries

“…at the end of the third year after entry). Finally, we enter a time dummy indicating Japanese firms' entry prior to 1986 (Geringer et al, 2000).…”

Cross-listing and the scope of the firm

“…is one of the most fundamental questions in strategic management and international business (IB) (Hoskisson & Hitt, 1994;Lee, Peng, & Lee, 2008;Peng, Lee, & Wang, 2005;Rumelt, Schendel, & Teece, 1994). While research on the scope of the firm started with a focus on product scope, more recent work has called for taking into account of both product scope and geographic scope of the firm (Delios & Beamish, 1999;Geringer, Tallman, & Olsen, 2000;Hitt, Hoskisson, & Kim, 1997;Hutzschenreuter & Grone, 2009;Kumar, 2009;Peng & Delios, 2006). While over three decades of research since Rumelt (1974) has shed considerable light on the scope of the firm (Palich, Cardinal, & Miller, 2000), no previous work has investigated the relationship between the scope of the firm and an important new phenomenon associated with globalization that we believe has significant ramifications on the scope of the firm-cross-listing.…”

Intra-regional sales, product diversity, and the performance of merchandising multinationals

“…The resource-based view and the transaction costs theory have been applied to explain the benefits and costs of product and international Journal of International Management 13 (2007) 131 -146 diversification strategy (see, for example, Grant et al, 1988;Tallman and Li, 1996;Geringer et al, 2000). 2 In the existing literature, a number of studies explore the effects of product diversity and/or international diversity on a firm's performance (e.g., Rumelt, 1982;Buhner, 1987;Geringer et al, 1989Geringer et al, , 2000Tallman and Li, 1996;Hitt et al, 1997;Lu and Beamish, 2001). However, these studies neglect at least one of the following important issues.…”

“…Third, most existing literature has used U.S. data sources alone (e.g., Rumelt, 1974;Tallman and Li, 1996;Hitt et al, 1997), the European firms alone (e.g., Buhner, 1987;Grant et al, 1988), or the Japanese firms alone (e.g., Geringer et al, 2000). Some studies have compared U.S. and European firms in their data sources (e.g., Geringer et al, 1989).…”