Rui Torres de Oliveira

• Professor
• Professor at Deakin University

Interviewing as a part of a research effort involves much more than just the personal interviewing skills of the researcher. The cultural context surrounding where the interview is being conducted has an important influence over the whole interviewing process and must be seen as critical. In this research we focus on China’s specific cultural conte...

Internationalization of emerging market firms (EMFs) is challenging pre-eminent theories. This article argues that no single existing theory adequately explains EMFs’ pattern for overseas investment. Using case studies and a multi-level approach, our research suggests that EMFs can be categorized into four different clusters based on different rati...

Retail firms are increasingly using social media for purposes other than traditional marketing, such as innovation. Yet, while the innovation literature has established the benefits of involving customers in the development of products/services through open innovation, the role of social media in innovation is not well understood. Accordingly, we i...

Research summary By adopting a phenomenon‐based research approach, we examine the case of an emerging market (EM) supplier upgrading its position in the automotive global value chain (GVC) through the acquisition of a technologically advanced firm from a developed market (DM). Drawing on GVC and social integration literature, we explore the role of...

Open innovation (OI) refers to the inbound and outbound flows of knowledge beyond the boundary of the organization, which can be in the form of pecuniary or non-pecuniary exchanges. Investigation into pecuniary and inbound innovation types has advanced rapidly, but non-pecuniary outbound OI (free revealing) has received less attention. Presenting a...

Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are crucial in driving innovation, creating employment, and fostering economic development. To achieve these goals, they collaborate with various organizations, including universities, to extend their internal resources and capabilities, thereby scaling their efforts. However, inconsistent results and vague theor...

Prior literature establishes a link between family involvement and the firm financial performance. However, the mechanisms through which family involvement in a firm affects its financial performance in different institutional settings are largely unknown. Using an unbalanced panel of 3,322 listed firms from 32 countries over a 9-year period, we fi...

Emerging market (EM) firms have been extensively theorized and understood as firms that escape their home country's poor institutions via internationalization to gain strategic assets and capabilities in better market-supporting institutions; however, there is a dearth of research that discusses the hindrances EM firms may face as they internationa...

Purpose The purpose of this study was to examine entrepreneurs’ learning before, during and after entrepreneurial failure and understand the relationship between learning and recovery from failure. Design/methodology/approach A qualitative multiple case study was carried out based on entrepreneur interviews who have experienced the failure of thei...

Purpose Despite the importance of knowledge processes in building absorptive capacity, we are less clear about the micro-processes of absorptive capacity development and particularly about the role of individuals' knowledge processes. Design/methodology/approach This study empirically examined, via an in-depth case study, the microfoundations of a...

We compare how non-financial government support, versus knowledge gained through exporting, supports innovation in Vietnamese small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Analysis of panel data of 1,018 SMEs shows that government support for staff training and technological development quality increases the likelihood of product and process innovation. Res...

We foresee the I4.0 technologies as a source to foster change on multinational corporate purpose and as a mechanism to disseminate it across the different subsidiaries and its stakeholders. For example, the vertical integration processes that I4.0 can provide to multinationals have the potential to uncover social and environmental issues that multi...

Using survey data from companies located in the Wuxi (Taihu) international science park in China, we aim to analyze to what extent science park residents experience barriers to innovation and to what extent opening up the innovation process allows them to overcome constraints and increase innovation performance. Findings indicate that surveyed firm...

Despite their global emergence, sharing economy businesses do not consistently experience favourable outcomes across different geographical regions. Additionally, since the sharing economy is considered a contemporary business mechanism, unlike the traditional business model, there is a lack of constructive business frameworks for these businesses...

Purpose This paper aims to extend the conceptualization of well-being as a staged social responsibility process by undertaking further conceptual development of these ideas as well as exploratory, small-scale international testing. Design/methodology/approach The sample comprised 117 leaders from Alaska, India and Norway. Cluster analysis was used...

Purpose This study sought to provide a more comprehensive understanding of how managers' coaching skills can affect individual performance through the mediating role of affective commitment. Design/methodology/approach The sample included 198 employees from diverse organizations. Based on an online survey, respondents assessed their managers' coac...

For many digital ventures, acquiring financial resources in multiple rounds beyond seed funding to grow has become an important part of their entrepreneurial journey. The success rate of raising equity capital beyond their seed investments is, however, very low. Existing entrepreneurship studies on financial resource acquisition have explored separ...

This research examines how organisational support mechanisms extended to expatriate families influence the adjustment of the expatriate, the spouse, and accompanying children. We present data from 173 accompanying expatriate spouses in China and 135 expatriates employed in foreign and local multinationals in China. We report on expatriates’ percept...

China’s position as one of the most powerful nations in the world is undisputed. However, in an evolving landscape, China’s utilisation of a path-dependent business system may hinder the ability of the country’s institutions to undergo necessary change, which will have important implications for international business literature. Through business s...

China's “Belt and Road” Initiative (BRI) has been regarded as an important measure of all-round opening-up in the new era. However, in practice, the level of internationalization differs significantly across firms located in different Chinese provinces. Provisional policy responses to the BRI create varied conditions for internationalization, yet r...

It is assumed in the international entrepreneurship and international business literatures that firms entering overseas markets possess attributes that are unique and valuable, providing them with an advantage that offsets their liability of foreignness. There is a further assumption that the market knowledge acquired through exporting is independe...

The open innovation literature provides compelling evidence of value being created from inbound knowledge flows. Missing from this conversation is an empirical understanding of why firms reveal intellectual property without immediate financial return. Revealing seems contrary to capturing rents from innovation. Using survey data and secondary data...

Highlights: • We merge the circular economy concept, blockchain, and Ostrom’s framework; • We propose that MNEs change their business model to include dealing with their waste; • We advance a conceptual model with incentives and penalties using blockchain; • We develop a resources value loop that adds to the product life cycle theory; • We progress...

Based on the evolutionary theory of the firm this paper examines how traditional variables that describe a firm's organizational structure - formalization, specialization, and centralization - affect the adoption of inbound and outbound open innovation. Using a cross-sectional survey of Chinese small and medium enterprises, our study shows that org...

Purpose This paper constitutes an explorative study into post-acquisition implementation of emerging market acquisitions in developed countries. More specifically, the study aims to better understand how low capability Chinese firms are able to capture value when acquiring high-capability targets in developed countries through a novel post-acquisit...

Earth’s capacity to sustain mankind is reaching a tipping point. Packaging waste is one of the critical problems that is leading to such a situation and a focus of the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals. However, large multinational enterprises look at their products and its packaging in a separate way, which leads them to think that when the produ...

Purpose: Blockchain technology has the potential to significantly impact, both in positive and negative terms, the way business operates. While it is still considered to be in the relatively early stages of adoption, numerous applications of the technology have been adopted in a variety of fields, from finance to agriculture. Yet, little attention...

In the past two decades, digital technologies have substantially changed the ways in which individuals and firms communicate and transfer knowledge, with wide-ranging implications for organisations and institutions. From an organisational perspective, the emergence of digital technologies has enhanced the materialisation of new business models (Fos...

It is well known that innovation benefits firms, and that openness may enhance these benefits. Yet, few studies consider how firms’ institutional context and different economic systems moderate openness and innovation outcomes in new ventures, which arguably are most exposed to institutional constraints. Comparing data from a liberal (Australia) an...

Open innovation (OI) refers to the inbound and outbound flows of knowledge beyond the boundary of the organization, which can be in the form of pecuniary or non-pecuniary exchanges. Investigation into pecuniary and inbound innovation types has advanced rapidly, but non-pecuniary outbound OI (free revealing) has received less attention. Presenting a...

This study sought to provide a more comprehensive understanding of how authentic leadership can affect employees’ individual creativity through affective commitment’s mediating role. The sample included 177 leader–follower dyads from 26 private, small- and medium-sized enterprises. Followers reported their levels of affective commitment and percept...

Research summary Despite knowledge about the importance of intermediaries in filling institutional voids, we do not understand how intermediaries facilitate institutional change. This research demonstrates how intermediaries use six rhetorical legitimation strategies—logos, ethos, pathos, autopoiesis, teleological, and anthropos appeals—to influenc...

The starting premise of this article is that within existing approaches the nature of the interrelationship between components of wellbeing is both under-conceptualized and under-measured. This paper contrasts three perspectives of wellbeing component interrelationship. The first and most common is a hierarchical approach, which prioritizes economi...

The emergence of China as one of the most important nations is undoubted. However, the path-dependent business system that the country possesses may challenge the transformation that Chinese institutions are trying to achieve. Using the business system theory and empirical evidence, through a mixed-methods approach, we explain the Chinese business...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to analyze the formal political, legal and economic institutional legitimacy challenges for (US-based) multinational corporations (MNCs) attempting to enter the Cuban market, discuss the key local constituencies in Cuba that are able to grant legitimacy and sketch out respective strategies to deal with each of t...

Since the end of Great Recession about a decade ago, the 20 biggest emerging market economies have become the drivers for global outward foreign direct investments (OFDI) (Casanova and Miroux in Emerging Market Multinational Report, 2017), and these capital outflows are increasingly directed toward developed countries in form of international merge...

Wang Jiafeng (called Jeff Wang), CEO of the Chinese Joyson Automotive Group, and Jinhong Fan, the company’s Chairman and CFO, were having lunch in a Ningbo restaurant, in the Zhejiang Province where Jeff Wang founded the company, and reflected on their most recent visit to Germany. Both vividly remembered the trip to Germany and the lunch in the ca...

This paper examines the direct effects of the Chinese institutional environment on local MNCs' decisions to acquire firms in developed countries. Due to the significant capabilities gap between Chinese acquirers and developed market targets, these transactions require a unique post-M&A integration approach that differs from those prescribed by exta...

In the recent past, Vietnam has dramatically increased its investment relationship and trade with the United States. At the same time, United States foreign direct investment and trade with China has been decreasing. This is even more significant when we are in a period of internal growth within the United States. Using comparative business system...