Lucia Piscitello

Politecnico di Milano | Polimi · Department of Management, Economics and Industrial Engineering DIG

Understanding how Industry 4.0 (I4.0) technologies complement each other on one side, and human skills on the other, is an increasingly important concern for managers and policymakers alike: it is essential for the optimization of firm-level sociotechnical interactions as much as it is vital to smoothen the digital transition on a global scale. How...

International Business Review (Forthcoming) * Corresponding author. Authors listed alphabetically. Abstract Research on emerging market firms (EMFs) has acknowledged the role of innovation in catching-up with advanced economies. Although we know that EMFs' innovation increasingly depends on collaborations and cross-border knowledge flows, less has...

After two decades of research on Emerging Market Multinational Enterprises (EMNE), the debate still concerns the antecedents and strategies of their foreign expansion. However, much less has been said on the effects of international participation on their productivity. Building on insights from the Resource-Based View of the firm and agency theory,...

Firms are in a continuous process of critically re‐evaluating their offshoring strategies due to performance discrepancies. While prior research has focused on the implementation of organizational responses to performance shortfalls, we examine the offline search process, a key antecedent of organizational change, during which firms simultaneously...

Transaction cost economics (TCE) holds that multinational corporations (MNCs) should select governance modes based on associated transactional hazards. However, MNCs often adopt theoretically misaligned governance modes. Applying a prospect theory (PT) perspective, we use the context of business‐process offshoring to explore why firms choose misali...

Long tenure of research and development (R&D) employees helps organisations to utilise employees' knowledge over a sustained time period and strengthen their competitive advantage. It also allows organisations to benefit from the training investments made on their R&D employees. Thus, identifying the determinants of R&D employees' tenure is crucial...

The advent of digital economy has brought about major changes, and understanding their impacts on entrepreneurial dynamics is a challenge for managers and policymakers. We adopt Richard Florida's three Ts (talent-tolerance- technology) framework for a region and evaluate how the interplay between technology and digital affordances shape regional en...

Technology is generally assumed to complement workers performing creative tasks by enhancing their ability to gather, store, share and transform knowledge. We advance an alternative view by conceptualizing how technology complements workers also by extending the domain, namely the set of symbolic and material elements underlying a given creative ta...

We investigate the impact of Outward Foreign Direct Investment (OFDI) on the innovation performance of Indian multinationals by analysing their choice of entry mode (cross-border acquisitions versus greenfield investments) and their international location decisions (i.e. choice to locate in a global city). We rely on an augmented fractional logit e...

In spite of the fast spread of Additive Manufacturing (AM) in several countries and industries, its impact on employment is still unexplored and theoretically ambiguous. On the one hand, higher product customisation and shorter time-to-market entail an expansion of the market, thus fostering labour demand; on the other hand, AM profoundly changes t...

With the advent of Industry 4.0, technological interdependence is becoming increasingly important in the delineation of technological development dynamics. In the present paper, we propose an extension of the theory of technological paradigms conceptualizing the role of technological interdependence in the emergence of paradigms and the coevolution...

In order to better understand the complex and dialectical relationships between digital technologies, innovation, and skills, it is necessary to improve our understanding of the coevolution between the trajectories of connected digital technologies, firm innovation routines, and skills formation. This is critical as organizations recombine and adap...

In spite of the fast spread of Additive Manufacturing (AM) in several countries and industries, its impact on employment is still unexplored and theoretically ambiguous. On the one hand, higher product customization and shorter time-to-market entail an expansion of the market thus fostering labour demand; on the other hand, AM profoundly changes th...

This chapter analyses the role of traditional factors associated with Marshallian and Jacobsian economies (i.e. external agglomeration) and the role of factors associated to the intra-firm co-location of activities (i.e. internal agglomeration) in influencing location decisions of multinational enterprises (MNEs) within a foreign country. Our empir...

This paper investigates how important sources of heterogeneity shape the way in which family firms (FFs) enter foreign markets. By integrating insights from International Business and Family Business literature, we claim that the interplay between the generation ruling the firm and the presence of non-family board members direct the choice between...

In this introduction to the special issue, we take stock of the impact of the TRIPS agreement on international business in the hyper-globalised world of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century. We begin by providing a brief background on TRIPS, putting it in the historical context of international agreements on intellectual property (IP)...

This paper investigates the role of geographical and temporary proximity in the location and co-location decisions of manufacturing activities by foreign multinational enterprises (MNEs). Empirical analysis shows that foreign MNEs co-locate their new manufacturing plants with their plants already operating in the same manufacturing activity, while...

Drawing on the comparative ownership framework, we perform a comparative analysis of Chinese and Indian multinational enterprises (MNEs)’ ownership strategies in knowledge-intensive cross-border acquisitions (CBAs). Specifically, we claim that due to their lower comparative ownership advantage, and the consequent higher information asymmetry, Chine...

El efecto de la revolución digital ha sido escasamente abordado en la internacionalización de las PYME. Este artículo muestra que solo unas pocas empresas italianas en los sectores de la alimentación y la moda utilizan el comercio electrónico para la internacionalización. Las barreras son tanto tradicionales -los costes asociados a la logística y l...

Our study provides a quasi–replication of Shaver and Flyer (2000), which was among the first studies that challenged the positive role of agglomeration in determining companies’ location choice and performances, thus changing the way management scholars view companies’ attitude towards agglomeration forces. We employ the same research design, speci...

The strategy literature has widely acknowledged the negative impact of cultural diversity between the partners of an alliance on their innovation performance. We argue that innovation is more challenging in alliances involving subsidiaries of multinational companies (MNCs), as they embody a dual background that encompasses the cultures of their hos...

We explore when and why decision makers choose international entry modes (e.g., hierarchies or markets) that deviate from internalization theory’s predictions. By applying a cognitive perspective on entry mode decision making, we propose that the performance of prior international activities influences decision makers’ behavior in different ways th...

Research on the internationalization of family firms has flourished in recent years, yet the mechanisms through which family involvement shapes the determinants, processes, and outcomes of internationalization remain little understood and largely undertheorized. We contribute to research at the intersection of international business and family busi...

Additive manufacturing (AM) has the potential to transform the organisation of all the activities carried out by firms. The growing diffusion of these technologies is increasingly challenging multinational enterprises to reinvent their businesses. Accordingly, many scholars argue that AM may reduce countries’ participation in global value chains (G...

Despite their unprecedented growth, developing countries still face severe problems in the provision of collective goods. Electricity, whose provision is scarce or unreliable in most developing regions, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa, is an emblematic case. The reason for this shortage is not only imputable to the lack of effective formal institu...

Experience, meant as the repetition of the same action, is considered a predictor of the entry mode choice in foreign markets because it allows reducing uncertainty. However, repetition does not necessarily increase the expected performance, depending on the learning stemming from previous experiences. Focusing on offshoring decisions, namely the c...

The paper analyses how foreign multinational enterprises (MNEs) in service sector impact domestic manufacturing companies. We argue that the impact on the productivity of local upstream and downstream companies differs due to the heterogeneity of services. We investigate a sample of foreign MNEs located in Italy, finding that: (i) local suppliers e...

This chapter sheds light on the re-shoring of business functions. Policy makers and scholars are increasingly interested in the relocation of once offshored activities; however, the empirical evidence is mostly focussed on manufacturing activities, while very little is known about business functions that assist manufacturing activities. Using data...

Extant literature on foreign entry increasingly recognizes firms' heterogeneity as a potential reason for inconsistency in results on the establishment mode choice, that is, whether and under which conditions firms should choose to enter a new country through a greenfield investment or an acquisition. Our study contributes to this debate by identif...

This paper examines the role that multinational enterprises (MNEs) and foreign direct investments (FDI) can have in enhancing the access to electricity for local communities in developing countries based on the quality of home and host institutions. Access to electricity is a marker for development but it is far from being universal in developing c...

The new techno-economic paradigm of the information age has brought about new structures and processes in international business (IB). In this article, we examine the changing nature of the competitive advantages of places, the competitive advantages and strategies of firms, and the governance structure of IB networks in what has also been called t...

Sub-Saharan Africa is experiencing epochal changes, arguably becoming the new frontier for business. Multinational enterprises (MNEs) wishing to operate there need to adopt legitimation strategies, showing their social and long-term commitment with local context. We argue that, a viable approach would be promoting access to electricity for local po...

This paper investigate the impact the FDI can have simultaneously on different dimension of development. Setting for this study is sub-Saharan Africa and the energy sector

After decades of offshoring, involving production activities and business functions, some service and manufacturing companies have started to bring back their activities to their home country. We refer to this phenomenon by the term reshoring. We illustrate empirical evidence relying on two different datasets (“Uni-CLUB MoRe reshoring”; “Offshoring...

Access to electricity is a marker for development but it is far from being universal in developing countries. In this context, multinational enterprises (MNEs) could play a role, especially if the country suffers from institutional voids. Using a panel of 1500 home-host country pairs, observed from 2005 to 2011, we show that MNEs promote access to...

The present paper deals with the performance implications of service activities offshoring, meant as the delocalization of business services in foreign countries. Data have come from the Offshoring Research Network (ORN) and have been analysed using an Exploratory Factor Analysis to aggregate variables first and then through a two-stage approach to...

This paper aims at evaluating the sources of differences among countries' innovative performances in the renewable energy (RE) sector. Namely, we focus on the national innovative capacity, the knowledge developed abroad and the related knowledge spillovers. We claim that a country is more likely to develop RE innovation: (i) the larger the knowledg...

Sub-Saharan Africa is experiencing epochal changes, arguably becoming the new frontier for business. Multinational enterprises (MNEs) wishing to operate there need to adopt legitimation strategies, showing their social and long-term commitment with local context. We argue that, a viable approach would be promoting access to electricity for local po...

Mariotti S., Mutinelli M., Nicolini M. and Piscitello L. Productivity spillovers from foreign multinational enterprises to domestic manufacturing firms: to what extent does spatial proximity matter?, Regional Studies. This paper analyses the role of spatial proximity in productivity spillovers from foreign multinational enterprises (MNEs). Using a...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4cwrLH_6kE This article deals with the performance implications of the governance mode (captive offshoring versus outsourcing) selected when companies offshore service activities, which is still quite controversial in the literature. After accounting for endogeneity issues, we investigate the relationship between...

EU) must adjust to the changing global balance in terms of a different set of competitive forces ('Shifting Wealth'), especially to challenges from emerging market multinationals. 2. In the context of indebtedness of member state economies and given the will to promote re-industrialization of these economies, investments from emerging market multin...

It has been demonstrated that more creative innovative activities of subunits of multinational companies (MNCs) rely upon the munificence of local knowledge in the host country. Here, we argue that the strength of international business network connections of a host location influences the potential accessibility of international knowledge and henc...

This article contributes to the understanding of the role of European governments in fostering new global players in the utilities. We argue that the international growth of firms stems from their interaction with governments, which act not only as rule setters but also as goal-oriented strategists, through public policies and mechanisms ranging fr...

This article assesses the influence of spatial heterogeneity on the entry mode by multinational enterprises (MNEs) in foreign markets. Focusing on acquisitions, we claim that the location of the target firm influences the MNE's ownership choice. MNEs normally execute partial acquisitions to reduce their liability of foreignness and to preserve thei...

This paper evaluates the impact of public financial support to the internationalization of small and medium enterprises. We analyze the growth performance of firms that conducted outward foreign direct investments in the period 1994–2008, comparing firms that benefited from public support (380) with a sample of firms that also internationalized the...

Bannò M., Piscitello L. and Varum C. Determinants of the internationalization of regions: the role and effectiveness of public policy measures, Regional Studies. This paper assesses the role of public policy measures on outward internationalization of regions. By including financial and non-financial incentives among the determinants of the interna...

This article examines the acquisition behavior of multinational companies from emerging markets (EMNCs) compared to multinational companies from advanced markets (AMNCs). Specifically, we relate the governance mode (i.e. the degree of commitment) to exogenous and endogenous uncertainty. As a result of endogenous uncertainty due to their liability o...

This paper deals with backward and forward linkages stemming from foreign multinational enterprises (MNEs) in service sectors, and their impact on the productivity of local manufacturing firms. Using a database on foreign MNEs in service sectors in Italy, over the period 1999–2005, we find that: (i) backward linkages impact local supplier firms’ pr...

The amount and the nature of the innovative activity of multinational corporation (MNC) subunits have changed over time. Historically, subunits innovated mainly to adapt for local conditions products or processes developed in the home country of the MNC parent company. Thus, subunit creative activity in new fields little explored earlier by their p...

Relying both on TC and RBV, we argue that cooperation with public actors allows firms to access the key resources for designing and locating infrastructure facilities and, at the same time, to mitigate information costs and the risks of opportunistic behaviour. Our model has been tested through a survey analysis involving 83 managers from Italian l...

The increasing competition between governments to attract foreign direct investment (FDI) can be attributed to their prominent role in promoting knowledge-sharing, innovation and growth. The fact that Italy has always been a laggard in such initiatives has further blemished the country’s attractiveness to foreign investors. Based on the past experi...

This paper investigates the location of foreign-owned MNC technological activities in the European regions over the period 1987-1995. Specifically, it focuses on the different strategies driving MNCs' locational choice (to exploit or augment competencies developed in their home base), the influence of the potential for intra-and inter-industry spil...

Purpose – This chapter aims at investigating the impact of cross-border knowledge spillovers on technological innovation in the renewable energy sector. Methodology/approach – The analysis presented in the chapter assumes that technological knowledge exhibits several tacit elements and requires established connections to flow between countries. A n...

The paper analyzes the effects of international research alliances on the performance of NTBFs (new technology-based firms) by adopting a framework that incorporates both the resource-based view and the global strategic network theory. The paper focuses on the European Union-funded international research joint ventures established by a large sample...

The paper analyses productivity spillovers from foreign MNEs on domestic manufacturing firms. Using a database on foreign MNEs in Italy, our results reveal that local firms do benefit from the presence of foreign MNEs, and the effect is higher when local and foreign firms in manufacturing sectors are co-located. However, spillovers benefiting domes...

This timely book brings together cutting-edge research on the important subject of science and innovation policies. The contributors - distinguished social science scholars - tackle the key challenges of designing and implementing public policies in the context of the new knowledge economy. © Massimo G. Colombo, Luca Grilli, Lucia Piscitello and Cr...

Internationalization has become increasingly important for the survival, growth and long-term viability of business organizations (Lu and Beamish, 2004; Shapiro, 1982; Wright and Ricks, 1994). An environment that supports firms’ internationalization and growth is indispensable for the success of domestic firms. From a national standpoint, the engag...

This paper investigates the role of cross-country spillovers in renewable energy technologies. The balance between international and domestic knowledge sourcing in energy innovation is still an open question. Recent studies show that a few countries develop new high-quality technologies, but follower countries cannot limit themselves to importing s...

Companies are increasingly asking which of their value chain activities are best performed within their own company and which may be outsourced. In addition, they are also considering which pieces of their value chain may be better performed abroad. These interrelated decisions concerning outsourcing and offshoring have not only changed entire indu...

This article provides an empirical analysis on the effects of incentives to firms' outward internationalization on the firm's growth. Specifically, the analysis is conducted on 237 Italian firms that received an incentive in the period 1991 to 2007 versus a counterfactual sample of 307 firms that internationalized their activity in the same period...

The contribution investigates the main features that fuel the international growth of Italian small and medium enterprises (SMEs). The analysis is based on the descriptive statistics harvested from the results of a survey on SMEs that have at least one foreign affiliate carried out in the 2000-2008 period. Above all, the analysis: i) shows that Ita...

Like manufacturing multinational enterprises, multinational banks, although being more subject to local regulation and market preferences, are increasingly changing their international attitude. Namely, they rely on foreign activities not only as a means to exploit their own competitive advantages within foreign markets, but also to access exclusiv...

This study suggests a model for the agglomerative behavior of multinational enterprises (MNEs) with local competitors. Relying on MNEs' spatial distribution across 686 Italian territorial units, we find that MNEs' location behavior is influenced by (i) information externalities, giving rise to locational cascades and the imitation of other MNEs and...

Public incentives have often been criticized for being ineffective, but there is still a lack of specific, rigorous analyses to either support or debunk that claim. In fact, no evidence has been provided so far on the role and effectiveness of financial incentives for outward internationalization. The paper aims to close that gap by evaluating the...

This paper deals with forward and backward linkages stemming from foreign multinational enterprises (MNEs) in services sectors and their impact on the productivity of local manufacturing firms. We distinguish between pecuniary and technological spillovers. Using a database on foreign MNEs in service sectors in Italy, over the 1999-2005 period, we f...

The access to local knowledge in a host country has been recognized as a crucial factor in explaining the capacity of MNC sub-units for locally exploratory activity. We argue that as international business has moved away from the traditional model of unidirectional transfer of technological knowledge from the parent company to its foreign sub-units...

In this paper we use the theoretical lens of resource and competence-based perspectives and global strategic network theories to analyze the effects of international R&D alliances on the performance of high-tech start-ups. In the empirical section of the paper we consider the European Union funded international R&D alliances established by a large...

Open Source Software (OSS) represents an "open innovation" paradigm based on knowledge produced and shared by developers and users. The paper inquires how OSS challenges the three Teece's building blocks. New findings from a large survey of European software companies, show that within the OSS paradigm: (i) OSS can be a sustainable business model e...

The present paper adds to the literature investigating the effects of outward FDI on the home country employment and skill composition. Considering the “industrial region” as the unit of the analysis, we capture both direct and indirect effects of foreign production on the parent company and its environment. The empirical evidence refers to the int...

The literature on firms' export performance has traditionally related it either to ownership and location advantages or to factorial endowment of firms and countries. This paper aims at extending the determinants of firms' export capacity, including factors related to the international involvement of both the firms and their environment. The empiri...

This study suggests a model for the agglomerative behaviour of MNEs with local competitors. Relying on foreign MNEs’ spatial distribution across 686 Italian Local Labor Systems, we find that MNEs’ locational behaviour is influenced by (i) informational externalities, giving rise to locational cascades and imitation of other foreign MNEs, and (ii) p...

This paper aims to investigate whether offshoring of R&D activity in fast-growing economies impacts on the knowledge creation of home investing countries, especially focusing on the effects on the sectoral focus/mix of knowledge production at home. In particular, the study develops an exploratory cross-country analysis focusing on OECD countries in...

Il settore terziario rappresenta il comparto piu' dinamico e dimensionalmente piu' rilevante delle maggiori economie avanzate inoltre, fornendo input impiegati per la produzione di beni finali, incide sulla competitivita' dell'intero sistema economico. Il dibattito su come incrementare efficienza e qualita' dei servizi ha assunto carattere di prior...