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Storytelling the Internationalization of the Multinational Enterprise

December 2014
Journal of International Business Studies 45(9):1115-1132

DOI:10.1057/jibs.2014.32

Authors:

Usha Haley

Wichita State University

David M Boje

New Mexico State University

Internationalization deals with expansion across space and time. Researchers have framed internationalization as market growth and expansion through foreign direct investment (FDI). We use narrative theory to frame a bigger, richer picture. Using Mikhail Bakhtin’s typology of nine space–time conceptions and directed observations of McDonald’s Corporation, we show how multinational enterprises (MNEs) create narratives of internationalization to mitigate the risks of FDI. Competing space–time conceptions in consumers’, authors’ and societies’ stories interact with managerial narratives to affect international product and task environments. We increase awareness of MNEs’ storytelling by offering a typology of stakeholders’ stories across space and time.

Storytelling and storytellers

…

Language in storytelling space-time

…

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AUTHOR COPY

Storytelling the internationalization of the

multinational enterprise

Usha CV Haley

and

David M Boje

College of Business & Economics, West Virginia

University, Morgantown, USA;

Department of

Management, New Mexico State University,

Las Cruces, USA

Correspondence:

UCV Haley, College of Business & Economics,

West Virginia University, 1601 University

Avenue, Morgantown, WV 26506, USA.

Tel: +00 1 212 208 2468;

email: uhaley@asia-paciﬁc.com

An earlier version of this article was presented

at the 28th EGOS Colloquium, “Organizations

as Phenomena of Language Use”sub-theme,

Helsinki, Finland, July 2012. Editor Mary Yoko

Brannen gave generously of her time and

ideas to improve this article. We thank her,

two anonymous reviewers, George Haley,

Robert Maddox and Jennifer Sexton for their

excellent suggestions.

Received: 8 November 2012

Revised: 30 March 2014

Accepted: 4 May 2014

Online publication date: 19 June 2014

Abstract

Internationalization deals with expansion across space and time. Researchers

have framed internationalization as market growth and expansion through

foreign direct investment (FDI). We use narrative theory to frame a bigger, richer

picture. Using Mikhail Bakhtin’s typology of nine space–time conceptions and

directed observations of McDonald’s Corporation, we show how multinational

enterprises (MNEs) create narratives of internationalization to mitigate the risks

of FDI. Competing space–time conceptions in consumers’, authors’and socie-

ties’stories interact with managerial narratives to affect international product

and task environments. We increase awareness of MNEs’storytelling by offering

a typology of stakeholders’stories across space and time.

Journal of International Business Studies (2014) 45, 1115–1132. doi:10.1057/jibs.2014.32

Keywords: case theoretic approaches; internationalization theories and foreign market

entry; role of time; storytelling; language (language design, silent language translation);

global stakeholders

INTRODUCTION

Internationalization deals with expansion in space (across countries)

and over time, with theories identifying location economies as drivers

for optimal value creation. Dunning (2009) noted that stakeholders’

collaborations spanning home and host countries shape internatio-

nalization. We present these collaborations as combinations of

strategic

and mundane “(ac)countings”

(Barad, 2011: 149), narra-

tive explanations of “space–time enfoldings”(Barad, 2010: 240) by

multinational enterprises (MNEs); not simple counting, (ac)counting

becomes an accounting for what materializes in MNEs’internationa-

lization, and also of what gets excluded from materializing. We

explore how narratives help MNEs to garner legitimacy as well as to

differentiate products and to lower costs. MNEs’narratives of inter-

nationalization ensue not from single interlocutors, but through

dialogic processes as stakeholders at home and abroad interact in

space and time to challenge, and sometimes to replace, shared

narrative. Indeed, MNEs constitute storytelling systems whose lan-

guage incorporates text and sensemaking activities to introduce

change (Boje, 1991). We emphasize inter-textuality or ways in which

stories change and move across space and time in resistance to

opposing narratives (Boje, 2001).

International Business (IB) research has started exploring inter-

nationalization within broader social and power relationships

Journal of International Business Studies (2014) 45, 1115–1132

www.jibs.net

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through narrative (Gertsen & Søderberg, 2011; Vaara

& Tienari, 2011), discourse (Balogun, Jarzabkowski,

& Vaara, 2011), sensemaking (Geppert, 2003),

semiotics (Brannen, 2004), ethnography (Yagi &

Kleinberg, 2011) and framing (Fiss & Hirsch, 2005)

and we add to this stream. We accept that local stories

link simultaneously to broader narratives about glo-

balization and localization, legitimation and resis-

tance (Haley, 1991). Storytelling thereby captures

some richness in internationalization’s small steps,

deepening our understanding of sensemaking and

mutual learning by giving voice to actors beyond

managers. Our research connects to enduring issues

in MNE theory on gaining and exploiting experiential

knowledge from internationalization (Aharoni, 1966;

Johanson & Vahlne, 1977), locating for value creation

(Dunning, 2009), coding social information and

coordinating action (Kogut & Zander, 1993), and

combining local responsiveness with global integra-

tion (Bartlett & Ghoshal, 1989). We advance empiri-

cal knowledge on internationalization through our

exploratory case of McDonald’s Corporation and

contribute to theory building with propositions on

when and why narratives change.

As our ﬁrst contribution, we argue that managers

and other stakeholders strategically weave narratives

incorporating conﬂicting stories, to meet concerns

within and across international markets. Successful

storytelling eases transfer of intangible assets (e.g.,

brand names), while challenging the status quo of

reiﬁed histories (Berger & Luckmann, 1967). We

propose that managers forge incremental, self-justi-

ﬁcatory narratives through interpreting local and

global data from multiple stakeholders to mitigate

such concerns in internationalization as liabilities of

foreignness, market-based constraints and require-

ments for ethical accounting of themselves across

borders. Narratives also persuade some stakeholders

to stay with the past, while convincing others to

break away and to imagine strategic futures (Brown,

2006) –consumers’tastes can evolve, hostile labor

can become supportive and so on. We argue that

these multi-actor narratives provide a fuller picture

of incremental internationalization (Doz, 2011).

As our second contribution, we include multiple

sensemakings of time in the storytelling of interna-

tionalization. Researchers have mostly disregarded

narratives that imagine the future and concentrated

on those that make sense of the past. Yet the linear

metaphor and logic that these narratives emphasize

create mechanistic, closed systems that discount

innovation or divergent visions in MNEs. Indeed,

MNEs’internal and external stakeholders may strive

to sketch conﬂicting future visions from contradic-

tory past understandings (Floris, Grant, & Cucher,

2013).

First, we show how contradictory stories spanning

space and time may exist in internationalization

accounts. Next, we present the methodology under-

lying our case analysis of McDonald’s. In the

ensuing section, we organize our observations of

McDonald’s storytelling by nine space–time concep-

tions. We then propose how conﬂicting stories of

internationalization may affect strategic continuity

and change. Finally, we present our conclusions,

connections to conversations on MNEs and implica-

tions for theory and practice.

STORYTELLING IN THE CONTEXT OF

INTERNATIONALIZATION

We deﬁne storytelling as the intra-play of dominant

narratives (epistemic or empiric) with ontological

webs of lower-level living stories that provide sense-

making currency for stakeholders. Narrative focuses

on the past and abstract patterns of place. We deﬁne

dominant managerial narrative as an overarching,

past-oriented, monological, linear plot presented by

managers; when managers use it to shape the future,

it may tend toward linear goals and petriﬁcation

(Czarniawska, 2004).

More narrowly, story deals

with content, with the living, emergent and unfold-

ing present. As a domain of contending discourse,

storytelling reveals tensions between narrative and

story (Gabriel, 2000), and contests over emphasizing

local and/or global, unchanging or changing, and

the past, present or future. From the nineteenth

century, language formed the base of epistemic and

historical-materialism storytelling, with Saussurean

Linguistics (Harris, 1988), into Russian Formalist

semiotic and verse analyses, Structuralist Anthropol-

ogy of Levi-Strauss’s mythic language codes, and

Pragmatist symbols, indices and iconic languages

(Peirce, 1931–1958).

More recently, Bakhtin (1981)

contrasted surface language with deep, ontological

structures in space and time, and we apply his

dialogic approach to international storytelling. We

argue that strategic storytelling includes managing

conﬂicting stories of internationalization to provide

relevance and strategic ﬁt for MNEs within and

across international markets.

Theorists have studied MNEs’costs when expand-

ing internationally from poor coordination and con-

trol (Zaheer, 1995), cultural and institutional distance

(Prahalad & Doz, 1987), and lack of ﬁt when transfer-

ring systems, cultures and technologies from home to

host countries (Hymer, 1976). Some showed that

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incremental expansion reduces failure but may not

increase proﬁts (Delios & Beamish, 2001). Others

observed “ﬂexible replication”where MNEs alter

lower-level market-based indicators but maintain

higher-level values and vision ( Jonsson & Foss,

2011). Generally, internationalization experience

reduces costs (Luo & Peng, 1999). Yet paradoxes

exist (Brannen, 2004): international and host-

country experience, as well as cultural distance,

failed to explain Walt Disney’s internationalization.

Brannen (2004) concluded that after initial market

entry, MNEs gain legitimacy through soft, strategic,

people-embodied assets.

Fewer IB researchers have explicitly studied time in

internationalization, focusing instead on behavior in

time ( Jones & Coviello, 2005). The dominant eclectic

and internalization paradigms ignored time or

focused on comparative, static analysis to predict

changed environments’effects on MNEs’strategies

and performance (Eden, 2009). However, reasons for

initial entry may fail to explain MNEs’subsequent

strategies or performance (Haley, 2001). Many

researchers viewed time as a universalist, immutable,

cultural construction, for example, Hofstede’s(1980)

long-term orientation, or history ( Jones & Khanna,

2006). Yet Middleton, Liesch, and Steen (2011) con-

cluded that in their narratives on internationaliza-

tion, managers perceive and construct time sub-

jectively, rather than as clock time, to understand

and to communicate events and processes; the man-

agers in their study identiﬁed a “cooperation”time

dimension for building stakeholder relationships.

Indeed, the “melody”of MNEs’value-creation activ-

ities in space corresponds to a “rhythm”in time

(Lefebvre, 2004) where the past and future can ram

into the present. We next elaborate on how “space–

time”folds into accountings of internationalization.

Space–Time Conceptions

Space and time interconnect in internationalization:

diverse understandings of past events and future

glories emerge and inﬂuence MNEs’stories, actions

and resources. Previous researchers (Boje, Oswick, &

Ford, 2004; Robichaud, Giroux, & Taylor, 2004)

argued that Russian socio-linguist Bakhtin’s(1981,

1984, 1986) space–time conceptions provide useful

ways to capture heterogeneous storytelling beyond

executive suites. Bakhtin’s conceptions include less

powerful stakeholders’perspectives to explore how

the marginalized inﬂuence, interact with, interpret

and respond to the powerful narratives justifying

internationalization and its aftermath. Through

Bakhtin’s conceptions, we focus on cultural tensions,

refrain from assuming harmony in MNEs’storytelling

and explicitly seek alternate sources to managerial

accounts as Westney and Van Maanen (2011)

advised.

Bakhtin contended that what we call storytelling

implicitly manifests heterogeneous conceptions

(chronotopes) of space and time: each conception

comprises a lens to view a slice of fused space and

time or “space–time.”Spanning nine different

space–time levels in social, historical and biographi-

cal relations, stories exist in response to what was

said before and in anticipation of what will be said in

response. Conceptions range from simple, future-

perfect linear adventures, to nonlinear, interactive,

temporal cycles and assemblages. Figure 1 presents

Bakhtin’s nine space–time conceptions that incor-

porate local, global or mixed audiences and are

oriented toward the past, present or future.

Some

organizations, such as Disney, look primarily to the

past for stories of their future, as local becomes

global (Boje, 1995; Brannen, 2004). Others, such as

Enron, story their future while ignoring their past, as

global crashes into local.

Many internationalization theories rely on sim-

ple, linear conceptions of time not tied to speciﬁc

space. For example, MNEs’planning models

(Hennart & Larimo, 1998) comprise generic, lin-

ear, Romance Adventure narratives of overcoming

existing weaknesses, including foreignness, with

intangible assets and opportunities ﬁltered

through managers’past experiences. Yet managers

solely relying on past experiences and resources to

inform narratives miss current developments.

Similarly narratives solely reacting to unforeseen

events, such as in Everyday Adventure, fail to

motivate or to inspire for future resources, while

Past Present Future

Global Chivalric

Adventure Folkloric

Mixed

Romance

Adventure

Rogue, Clown

& Fool

Historical

Inversion

Biography

Rabelaisian

Purge

Idyllic

Local Everyday

Adventure

Time

Space

Figure 1 Snapshot of Bakhtin’s space–time conceptions.

Source: Adapted from Bakhtin (1981, 1984, 1986).

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ignoring learning. Culler (1981: 178) observed that

narratives operate with double logic including

narratives of selected past events and unfolding

stories about the future. We argue that the dialogic

process of storytelling involves nonlinear time

where the past and future can collide in the

present. We propose that space–time matrices (col-

lections of conceptions) catalog complex sense-

making, resource allocation, strategic positioning

and learning (Bowman & Hurry, 1993) in MNEs’

internationalization, displaying changes over time

to dominant managerial narratives and stake-

holders’stories. Kaleidoscopes of space–time matrices

emerge in MNEs’narratives, indicating how stories

and counter-stories of internationalization contri-

bute to strategic and semantic ﬁt.

Some researchers addressed how storytelling strat-

egy relates to networks of relationships. Meyer and

Rowan (1977) highlighted how organizations

attain legitimacy and resources by articulating

myths of rationality and isomorphic standards

with institutional environments. Smircich and

Stubbart (1985) linked strategy to narratives of

historical context and culture. Pentland and

Feldman (2007) developed narrative networks to

spotlight potential, realized and ﬂuid interconnec-

tions between people and actions. Yet IB research

haslargelyportrayedMNEsashierarchical,focus-

ing on top-driven, not emergent activities (Gertsen

& Søderberg, 2011). Some researchers proposed

that MNEs form networks comprising nodes where

home-country managers create knowledge to repli-

cate internationally (Ghoshal & Bartlett, 1988;

Kogut & Zander, 1993). As Brannen and Doz

(2010) concluded, through slogans such as “Think

Global, Act Local,”managers and academics justify

and promote minimal adaptation to local differ-

ences and minimal contextual appreciation.

Morson (1994) argued that Bakhtin’s dialogic of

narrative time may portray experiences as arising

from chance, and diverse futures as illusory options.

However, post-experience narratives may reduce or

expand present or future options through interpre-

tations of what else could have happened. We

incorporate Morson’s (1994) extensions of Bakhtin’s

time in local and global stories’past, present and

future: In emergent–present stories, besides actualities

or impossibilities, a middle realm of real options can

happen; prospective–future stories operate in closed

time, with limited options that stem from events to

come, not prior events; retrospective–past stories

reduce options through backward causation of the

future as already existing and sending backward

signs. We next present our methods and case study

of McDonald’s.

METHODOLOGY AND DATA

Case studies constitute the dominant IB qualitative

research method (Welch, Piekkari, Plakoyiannaki, &

Paavilainen-Mantymaki, 2011). We used McDonald’s

Corporation as an exploratory case study to develop

theory (Yin, 2003). Our approach approximates

what Welch et al. (2011) described as contextualized

explanations: we subjectively generated explana-

tions that preserved context while recognizing

cause-and-effect contingencies which we saw as

dynamic, holistic interactions between storytellers.

With headquarters in Oak Brook, Illinois, and over

34,480 fast-food restaurants in over 119 countries in

early 2014, McDonald’sistheworld’slargestfood-

service retailing chain. Almost all its restaurants (India,

a notable exception) offer standard menus, including

hamburgers, french fries and milk shakes. McDonald’s

demonstrated the successful transfer of intangible

assets across countries and engaged in controlled

variation: it sustained high growth, brand recognition

and proﬁtability. In 2008, McDonald’sproﬁts rose

10%, global sales 4.3% and shares 7% (Wiggans &

Birchall, 2009). In 2009, defying the global downturn,

McDonald’s created 12,000 more jobs and opened 240

new restaurants across Europe. In its 2013 annual

survey, Millward Brown ranked McDonald’sfourth

among 100 global brands with brand equity of US

$90,256 million, 46% more than in 2008. In 2013, the

average US McDonald’s restaurant generated $2.6

million in sales, double the industry’saverage,up

13% from 2008, though ﬂat from 2011. With an

annual advertising budget exceeding $2 billion,

roughly the size of Aruba’sGDP,theMNEspentmore

on this storytelling form than any competitor. Chief

Marketing Ofﬁcer (CMO) Neil Golden classiﬁed adver-

tising’s role as changing the way people think about

McDonald’s(O’Brien, 2012).

We assumed historical and social coordinates

existed for internationalization stories. Our interpre-

tive research emphasized the ontological, being in

space–time, in lived experiences, in ongoing social

interactions, rather than the epistemological, social

construction of reality through language categories

(Boje, 2001; Lamb, Sandberg, & Liesch, 2011). Con-

textual understandings emerged in stakeholders’

internationalization living stories through spatia-

lized interactions, timing and pace patterns. This

tradition also corresponds with use of case studies.

We captured inter-textuality in MNEs’stories

through identifying stakeholders’voices in dynamic

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networks of production, distribution and consump-

tion, including managers, farmers, consumers, media,

governments, labor, local and global competitors,

authors, advertising agencies and marketing depart-

ments. As with other narrative inquiry (Gertsen &

Søderberg, 2011), voices did not speak for them-

selves: we chose stories and quotes according to our

criteria of importance which included strategic

changes in managerial narratives and visible inter-

nationalization processes, as well as public justiﬁca-

tions of existing narratives. Through our choices of

storytellers and stories, we emphasized certain struc-

tures and meanings in stories. Our multimodal data

distinguished internal and external actors but not

the processes through which competing internal

narratives became dominant (Floris et al., 2013).

For each story, we asked:

●Whose social identities get constituted?

●Who gets included?

●Who is quoted?

●Who speaks for whom?

●Who commissioned this?

●How are other stories incorporated?

●What is the time and place?

●What are the author’s footprints?

●Whose conventions (genres, styles, types) are

incorporated?

●To whom is the text distributed?

●Who is the audience?

●What are the common sense terms?

●What are the parodies, ironies and meta-

phorization?

●What interpretative matrix do the storytellers

construct?

For our analysis, we used purposive sampling,

selecting units of investigation relevant to show

how MNEs manage narratives for strategic ﬁt

within and across international markets.

authenticate constructs and theoretical relation-

ships, we collected stories using multiple methods

and sources (Eisenhardt, 1989; Yin, 2003), compar-

ing common story threads from different story-

tellers. Triangulation provided authentication,

incorporated different storytellers’perspectives,

experiences and meanings and allowed multiple

voices to speak (Balogun et al., 2011).

In coding, we employed a “directed”approach

(Ryan & Bernard, 2000) that can provide fresh con-

ceptual understanding (Welch et al., 2011). Both

authors ﬁrst independently categorized all stories.

We resolved contradictions by re-examining the

stories together for holistic interpretations of text

and performance beyond literal meaning. Disagree-

ments and subsequent discussion led to reﬁning

coding categories through successive iterations

between theory and data. Nevertheless, we accept

the double-hermeneutic problem (Giddens, 1987) as

our categories interpret already interpreted narra-

tives and stories, without additional knowledge of

the storytellers’motives or alterations. Conse-

quently, we do not claim to present the only possible

classiﬁcation of McDonald’s stories.

Data

For our data, ﬁrst, we made trips to 45 McDonald’s

international restaurants (in the United States,

United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, France,

Denmark, the Netherlands, Spain, Finland, Holland,

Thailand, Singapore, South Korea, Malaysia, China,

Hong Kong, Japan, Russia, Hungary and India) to

understand the local–global aspects of McDonald’s

storytelling. Our onsite observations included site

visits, ﬁeld-note analysis, employee interviews,

observing exterior construction and interior decora-

tions, and photographing international and US res-

taurants. We also used archival sources, including

company reports, to research McDonald’s imple-

mentation and communication of internationaliza-

tion in each country.

Second, we analyzed six, animated, 40-min long,

McDonaldland videos, The Wacky Adventures of

Ronald McDonald, produced by Klasky-Csupo studios,

and sold at McDonald’s restaurants from 1998 to

2003: they included Scared Silly (1998); The Legend of

Grimace Island (1999); Visitors from Outer Space (1999);

Birthday World (2000); Have Time Will Travel (2001);

and The Legend of McDonaldland Loch (2002). We

chose these videos because a strategic shift occurred

during this time as McDonald’s abruptly embarked

on leaner and more-nutritious food branding.

Third, we reviewed transcripts of four important

legal disputes involving McDonald’s. These included:

Sid and Marty Krofft Television Productions vs

McDonald’s Corp. (1977); McDonald’sCorp.vsHelen

Steel and David Morris (1990); The State (Millau,

France) vs José Bové and nine other members of

Confederation Paysanne (1999); and Block, Sharma,

Steel et al. vs McDonald’s Corp. (2001). We chose

these disputes because they resulted in changes of

McDonald’s brand positioning and symbols.

Fourth, we analyzed 23 native-language, television

commercials from Japan (in Japanese), China

(in Mandarin), Hong Kong (in Cantonese), Turkey

(in Turkish) and South Korea (in Korean). These

commercials played in the countries from 2007

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to 2008. McDonald’s micro-targeted these commer-

cials to speciﬁc groups, including women and chil-

dren under 10 years old (York, 2009).

Finally, we incorporated other major forms of

constitutive communication displayed in McDo-

nald’s storytelling such as a game, media-generated

theories of McDonald’s, and ofﬁcial and unofﬁcial

biographies of McDonald’s managers. Table 1 out-

lines the stories and sources.

Our analysis revealed that numerous conversa-

tions underpinned McDonald’s internationaliza-

tion. However, the dominant managerial narrative

historically emphasized how global economic efﬁ-

ciencies in logistics, products and services provided

legitimacy and resources (Hennart, 1982). In 1960,

McDonald’s operated 228 restaurants, mostly in the

United States. In 1987, Jim Cantalupo became pre-

sident of McDonald’s International and spearheaded

its global expansion of about 35% annually (Love,

1995). In 1988, McDonald’s 2600 foreign restaurants

generated a quarter of net revenues; by 1994, 4700

foreign restaurants generated half of net revenues.

McDonald’s labeled the managerial narrative under-

pinning internationalization as Cantalupo’s Theorem

–an equation he developed in 1994. The Theorem

answered: how many restaurants (penetration

potential or PP) can McDonald’s build in any

country? Cantalupo calculated:

PP ¼

25;000

I

US $23;120



where, P=Country’s population; I =Country’s per-

capita income; 25,000 =Number of people for every

McDonald’s restaurant in the United States in 1994;

and US$23,120 =US per-capita income in 1994.

By Cantalupo’sTheorem, the United States had the

highest PP followed by Japan, Germany, France,

Canada, China, Russia, Australia, India, South Africa,

Colombia and Pakistan. In this narrative, internatio-

nalization involved replicating restaurants across space

for efﬁcient control and coordination of operations.

For Cantalupo, internationalization involved two

stages. First, his staff demarcated internal stake-

holders for foreign direct investment, trade and

logistics concerning locations, real estate, construc-

tion, personnel, business law and host-government

relations. In culturally familiar Canada, Britain, Aus-

tralia and Europe, McDonald’s operated and

expanded via wholly owned subsidiaries. In cultu-

rally distant Asia and the Middle East, it established

joint ventures or licensed its name. Second, Canta-

lupo deployed the McDonald’s brand to legitimize

the managerial narrative to external stakeholders. In

an interview he elaborated, “The McDonald’s name

Table 1 Storytelling and storytellers

Storytelling types Storytellers Conceptions

Big Mac Index (1986–); Cantalupo’s Theorem (1994);

McDonaldland videos (1998–2003); Golden Arches

Theory of Conflict Prevention (2000)

Economist; Jim Cantalupo; Klasky-Csupo; NYT

columnist Thomas Friedman

Romance Adventure

Two legal disputes involving McDonald’s (1999, 2001);

Supersize Me movie (2004)

José Bové and farmers; Harish Bharti and

vegetarians; McDonald’s Corporation; film maker

Morgan Spurlock

Everyday Adventure

Biographies and autobiographies of McDonald’s senior

managers (1976–2002); television commercials from

Japan, China, Hong Kong, Turkey and Korea (2007–

2008)

McDonald brothers; Ray Kroc; anthropologists and

sociologists; commissioned writers; local advertising

agencies

Biography

McDonaldland (1998–2003); The Lost Ring Alternative

Reality Game (2008)

Klasky-Csupo’s McDonaldland videos; advertising

agency AKQA; AvantGame; bloggers

Historical Inversion

QSCV (1957) McDonald Brothers; Ray Kroc; Jim Cantalupo Chivalric Adventure

Hamburglar, Ronald McDonald and Grimace (1963–) Willard Scott; Klasky-Csupo; managers Rogue, Clown and Fool

Birdie, Hamburglar, Mayor McCheese, McDonaldland

(1998–2003); print advertisements/logos from India,

Holland and Japan (2002–2008)

Klasky-Csupo’s McDonaldland videos; local

advertising agencies

Rabelaisian Purge

McDonald’s Breakfast Time (1973–) McDonald’s Marketing department; fast-food

competitors

Folkloric

McDonaldland videos (1998–2003); McDonald’s real-

food stories (2008–); McDonald’s green story (1989–)

Klasky-Csupo; McDonald’s Advertising and

Marketing departments

Idyllic

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and what we stand for opens a tremendous number

of doors”(Love, 1995).

McDonald’s managerial narrative displayed small

variations in menus (e.g., beef-less hamburgers in

India) and routines (closing for Islamic prayer in

Jordan) as it internationalized. Cantalupo assured

Fortune magazine, “People are more the same than

they are different. I don’t think our food is seen as

American; it’s seen as McDonald’s”(17 October

1994). We next categorize space–time in McDonald’s

internationalization stories.

SPACE–TIME IN McDONALD’S NARRATIVES OF

INTERNATIONALIZATION

A kaleidoscope of space–time matrices emerged from

McDonald’s communicated strategies. Drawing on

managerial statements, we labeled one space–time

matrix as “Eat Smart, Go Active strategy: To be

the leading restaurant promoting healthy, happy,

active lifestyles everywhere we do business.”The

Eat Smart, Go Active matrix illustrates McDonald’s

storied identity from fatty-food to nutritious

choices including: a Romance Adventure where

homogeneity tactically adapted to local food-

ways; an Everyday Adventure that reacted to legal

trials and the movie on obesity, after which man-

agers eliminated supersize options worldwide;

Ronald replaced with a slimmer Clown who led

customers and employees in ﬁtness workouts; and

a return to Idyllic relationships with nature bol-

stered by Chivalric codes of quality and value.

Individual slices of sometimes overlapping space–

time that follow show how McDonald’smanage-

rial narrative of economic efﬁciency and market

entry interplayed with, and changed in response

to, global stakeholders’conﬂicting stories.

Romance Adventure

Here, Bakhtin (1981: 100) saw space and time

reduced to linear, abstract progression or monologic

narrative. Internationalization becomes a trium-

phant adventure where the MNE and managers do

not transform. For example, Cantalupo’s Theorem

used past events to plan the future: McDonald’s

and managers traveled across geographic terrains,

encountered diverse stakeholders, yet retained their

identities. McDonald’s projected homogeneity

across the world with interchangeable systems and

small variations for local preferences: for example,

Japanese prefer rice with Happy Meals.

Klasky-Csupo’s McDonaldland videos anthropomor-

phized McDonald’s adventurous internationalization.

Every video sent the characters to Bakhtin’s“alien

world”through travel in space and time. For

instance, the hero characters traveled to Far Flung

Forrest, Grimace Island, Outer Space and Birthday

World theme park where through the reversible laws

of time, they entered the Jurassic period and ﬁnally

McDonaldland Loch. Each time, the heroes tri-

umphed over the unknown and unforeseen through

innate characteristics.

The media reinforced this narrative for global

analysts. In 1986, saluting McDonald’s homogenous

global system, the Economist proposed Burgernomics,

based on purchasing-power parity or the notion that

a dollar should buy similar amounts in all countries.

As benchmark, the Economist used McDonald’s Big

Mac and over two decades later, the Big Mac Index

continues. Similarly, New York Times’columnist,

Friedman (2000) developed his Golden Arches Theory

of Conﬂict Prevention on McDonald’s internationali-

zation. Friedman concluded that no two countries

with McDonald’s restaurants waged war against each

other because of economic interdependence.

Everyday Adventure

Here, through searing trials, stakeholders become

witnesses, telling emergent stories in the local public

square. This conception overlaps with Romance

Adventure, but the MNE and managers change.

Bakhtin (1981) segmented this time from natural

cycles, emphasizing alienation of everyday workings

from natural order. In stories of unforeseen events,

McDonald’s experienced local trial and revelation;

its metamorphoses became mythological cycles of

crisis that abruptly changed everyday workings.

Responding to managerial narratives, counter stor-

ies portrayed McDonald’s as ill-treating labor and

animals, unfettered globalization, fraudulent pro-

moter and obesity sponsor. Managerial narratives

transformed for proﬁtability. Thus transformation

by ﬁre led to reform and renewal of McDonald’s

petriﬁed narrative.

José Bové trial

In Millau, France on 12 August 1999, protesting

unchecked globalization, José Bové and 300 farmers

dismantled a McDonald’s restaurant, created

$65,000 of damage, and deposited the remains on a

public ofﬁcial’s lawn. A public prosecutor charged

Bové and nine farmers with “willful destruction.”

In September 2000, Judge François Mallet sentenced

Bové to 3 months in prison, but 16 witnesses from

ﬁve continents, testiﬁed on his behalf. International

media covered the trial and demonstrators displayed

T-shirts and banners with “McDomination”in Millau’s

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town square. To counter these stories, on 22 January

2002, McDonald’s France launched a nationwide

advertising campaign promoting McDonald’sas

“Born in the USA, but made in France.”The corpora-

tion replaced mascot Ronald McDonald with comic-

character Asterix the Gaul. Managers then posi-

tioned McDonald’s as a casual French diner, with

lampshades, wooden tables, upholstered leather

banquettes, Internet and iPod/iPhone stations

and a localized menu, including Croque McDo’s,

McCamembert and lemon tartlets. Managers also

ran an Open Doors program for customers to tour

kitchens and to meet suppliers. In 2007, with daily

sales exceeding $1 million, McDonald’s France

became the MNE’s most proﬁtable European sub-

sidiary, and in 2014 was its most proﬁtable foreign

subsidiary.

Beef-laced fries

In May 2001, in Seattle, Harish Bharti’s class-action

lawsuit alleged that for over a decade McDonald’s

“fraudulently concealed”the existence of beef in

french fries (Skolnik, 2001). Previous media stories

haddetailedhowMcDonald’sfalselypromotedfries

as vegetarian despite beef ﬂavoring. Spokesman Walt

Riker responded that McDonald’s had always indi-

cated use of natural ﬂavoring, which as a synonym

for beef extract fell within federal Food and Drug

Administration’s guidelines. To discover that natural

ﬂavoring came from beef, customers had to contact

aMcDonald’s customer-satisfaction representative

(Sanders,2001).IncountriessuchasIndia,withlarge

numbers of vegetarians, McDonald’sdidnotusebeef

extract. Yet mobs in India ransacked a McDonald’s

restaurant, broke glass panes and smeared Ronald’s

statue with cow dung, resulting in arrests of 30

protestors. McDonald’s estimated the loss at 2 million

Rupees. Despite quick and repeated reassurances on

vegetarian content, anti-McDonald’sdemonstrations

continued in India. In March 2002, McDonald’s

issued a formal apology: “mistakes were made in

communicating to the public and customers …those

mistakes included instances when french fries and

hash browns sold at US restaurants were improperly

identiﬁed as ‘vegetarian’,”and donated $10 million

to Hindu and vegetarian charities.

Supersize me

On 25 January 2005, Martin Spurlock’s movie on

childhood obesity from McDonald’s food and adver-

tising was nominated for an Oscar. Simultaneously,

the Second US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a

lower-court judge wrongfully dismissed the obesity

lawsuit on behalf of two New York children against

McDonald’s. Spurlock undertook a 30-day road trip

to corroborate the children’s claims of health pro-

blems from McDonald’s food, traveling to 20 US

cities, eating only McDonald’s food and gaining

29.5 pounds. The movie received 27 awards at global

ﬁlm festivals. McDonald’s countered by eliminating

Supersize options and sending nutritionists and ﬁt-

ness experts on road trips with Ronald and Oprah

Winfrey’sﬁtness guru. Managers recast the narrative

as “Eat Smart, Go Active strategy: To be the leading

restaurant promoting healthy, happy, active life-

styles everywhere we do business”(Kapica, 2004),

simultaneously launching the Adult Happy Meal

internationally, with nutrition tips and pedometers.

Biography

Here, stakeholders seek knowledge and destinies in

broader managerial narratives. Senior managers and

external stakeholders discover hidden, latent traits

by illuminating their stories in the public square.

We concluded that McDonald’sofﬁcial chronolo-

gies became more inter-textual, multidisciplinary and

pluralistic as managerial narratives disintegrated. The

heroization of ofﬁcial and unofﬁcial McDonald’stexts

decreased; simultaneously, conﬂicting stories moved

from abstract to everyday, globally projecting local

understanding. McDonald’s published biographies

replied and anticipated responses to one another,

thereby rewriting and retelling the managerial narra-

tive. Ofﬁcial biographies (e.g., Westman & Molina,

1980),aswellasautobiographies(e.g.,Kroc&

Anderson, 1976), heroized senior managers. Other

unauthorized biographies supplanted gloriﬁcation

with investigative journalism (e.g., Love, 1995). Still

other unauthorized biographies accused early auto-

biographies and biographies of opacity (e.g., Schlosser,

2001). Ritzer’s (1993/2002) sociological study of

McDonald’s equated it with cultural imperialism

and McDonaldization. In response, Watson (1997),

through ethnographies in East Asia, argued that locals

appropriated McDonald’s for their needs: for example,

in China, lingering customers subverted fast food and

turned McDonald’s into Beijing social clubs.

Simultaneously, advertising agencies broadcasted

inclusive stories to children and women, social seg-

ments that may experience powerlessness. In televi-

sion commercials, eating at McDonald’ssigniﬁed self-

actualization through relaxation, fun or empower-

ment. A Chinese commercial showed tired young

children learning English numbers; in an inspiring

ﬂash they realize that the time 3 turned counter-

clockwise forms an M, an outlet for fun and relaxation.

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They escape tedium as the teacher understands the

universal symbol for McDonald’s. In a Japanese

commercial, a demure woman sits under a tree,

reading a book and drinking a McDonald’s shake,

while men play soccer. The ball veers near her and a

player orders its return. A sip of the shake instantly

empowers her. Bursting out of demurity, she kicks

the ball the length of a ﬁeld, while the man watches

incredulously.

Historical Inversion

To reinvigorate managerial narratives, historical

inversion occurs: purpose, ideals, justice, perfection,

harmony and myths about a Golden Age shift to the

past, and past myths and ideals transpose to the

present. Stakeholders actively dive into adventure

and through heroic deeds glorify themselves and

others. Heroes are individualized, yet symbolic. In

this environment outside time, true meanings sur-

face of “that which was, and which is and which

shall be”(Bakhtin, 1981). In stories of alternative

worlds, McDonald’s transformed through stories of

mythic pasts, making concrete in the present an

otherwise ephemeral and fragmented future.

In the McDonaldland video, Have Time Will Travel,

the characters travel to a past alternate world to learn

about themselves through mirrored, folkloric char-

acters, including Ronald and Mayor McCheese in

their disco period. Though they enjoy time away,

the characters long to return to the present. Through

Historical Inversion, the characters’present becomes

concrete and less fragmented through trips into the

past to reclaim values and legacy.

Similarly, in the alternative reality game (ARG)

(March–August 2008), McDonald’s successfully used

branded narrative of heroic deeds. Beijing’s Summer

Olympic Games, saturated with advertising, pro-

vided the ﬁnale for this global story that used a

Golden Age, and bloggers’cooperation, to shape an

emergent present. The free game involved six char-

acters, who along with 2.9 million players in over

100 countries, unraveled the truth to save the world.

The AvantGame creators’initial package to bloggers

made no mention of McDonald’s, and symbols, such

as the Golden Arches, only appeared at the end. The

game generated 10 million blog and 400 million

media and public-relations impressions, bringing

ARG into mainstream advertising. The managers

took risks by avoiding product placements and overt

pitches. “McDonald’s believed that if we could tell

an amazing story about saving the world and give

young people around the world the chance to be the

heroes of that story, they would passionately

embrace it and tell others,”the AvantGame’s

designer said (Brunelli, 2008).

Chivalric Adventure

Bakhtin’s (1981: 1512) technically and systemically

organized space–time appeared in stories of techno-

cratic chivalric codes that informed McDonald’s

planning efforts. Internal and external stakeholders’

conﬂicting stories tested ﬁdelity to the codes. Tech-

nocratic stories, based on sensemaking of the past,

aligned and re-aligned managerial narratives in

response to changing environments. Barry and

Elmes (1997) also saw recovering from divergence

with a founder’s vision as a chivalric story.

In McDonald’sofﬁcial chronology, Richard and

Maurice McDonald designed the organizational sys-

tem, and resisted Ray Kroc’s efforts to change it. Kroc

replicated the brothers’system around the world,

further standardizing and systematizing the design.

In 1957, Kroc crafted the chivalric-type operational

code of McDonald’s Quality, Service, Cleanliness

and Value (QSCV). By 1990, McDonald’s stopped

narrating heroic founder, Ray Kroc’s QSCV code, and

focused instead on internationalization stories.

However, by the decade’s end, stock values and

same-store sales plummeted. Jim Cantalupo rein-

stated the QSCV code for more health-conscious

customers. In short, Kroc narrated the chivalric code,

succeeding CEOs lost it, and Cantalupo reinstated a

tweaked version for new and international custo-

mers. Each CEO as chivalric hero was tested against

the past chivalric code.

Rogue, Clown and Fool

“The rogue, the clown and the fool were ﬁrst present

in the very cradle of the modern European novel,

and there left behind their fools’cap and bells

among swaddling clothes”(Bakhtin, 1981: 406). As

hyperbolic metaphors of the past, the Rogue, Clown

and Fool represent common people’s literature in

public rather than private spheres. In stories of

human and institutional failings, the three medieval

masks saw situations’falseness, made public the

private, and unmasked feudal and institutional

hypocrisy in theatrical, public spaces.

In Klasky-Csupo’s McDonaldland videos, Ronald

McDonald (the clown created in 1963), Hamburglar

(the rogue) and Grimace (the fool) illustrate this

conception. “The clown is one of the most ancient of

literature’s images, and the clown’sspeech,deter-

mined by his speciﬁc social orientation (by his privi-

legesasaclown)isoneofthemostancientartistic

forms of human discourse”(Bakhtin, 1981: 405).

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The clown’s privileges include speaking back to

corporate power, which Ronald has done. The

rogue’s privileges include acting outside social

norms, and Hamburglar has lied, stolen and played

cruel pranks on friends. The fool’s privileges include

miscomprehending high languages and the modern

world, and Grimace’s pre-modern, folk-island cul-

ture had discarded technology.

Ronald occupies a unique place in McDonald’s

stories. The Wacky Adventures of Ronald McDonald’s

credits identiﬁed characters’real voices; yet, Ronald

played himself. In each Klasky-Csupo story, Ronald

began as a real clown who magically transformed

into a cartoon clown as he entered McDonaldland,

from which he brought lessons back to the real,

public world as a costumed human. In Visitors from

Outer Space, the characters discovered that Hambur-

glar lied and stole. Yet Ronald reset narrative expec-

tations by acknowledging that Hamburglar had a

“right to be ‘other’in this world”by stating “Which I

know you can’t help, being the H, and all.”Hambur-

glar received no punishment and thanked Ronald

for his understanding, which came from the clown’s

world with different rules. Since 2003, managers

styled Ronald as “Chief Happiness Ofﬁcer”and

presented him as someone who sees the “underside

of every situation”(Bakhtin, 1981: 159), that which

should not be anywhere in the world.

Rabelaisian Purge

Here, humor and satire expose problems as new

matrices between words, objects and phenomena

destroy and replace old ones. Space emerges “from

the human event that occurred there and that gave to

the place its name and its physiognomy”(Bakhtin,

1981: 189). The Rabelaisian purges inauthentic and

renews managerial narratives as in mocking, self-

deprecating stories involving the body.

Invited changes to managerial narratives come

through emergent stories of a sardonic world struc-

tured around the human body. Grotesque charac-

ters, banquets and lofty spiritual themes elicit

Rabelaisian laughter in McDonald’s commercials

and videos. At McDonald’s, as Bakhtin (1981: 178)

indicated, the “most varied objects and phenomena

of the world are brought into direct contact with

food and drink –including the most lofty and

spiritual things.”For example, the McDonaldland

videos included religious parodies of Jonah and the

Whale (Have Time will Travel) and hell (Birthday

World and Scared Silly); and literary parodies of

Plato’s Cave (Time Travel), and the Trojan War

(McDonaldland Loch). Grotesqueness emerged as

hybrid human, food and animal parts in McDonald-

land characters: Hamburglar, Mayor McCheese and

Sheriff Big Mac have human bodies and burger

heads.

As Figure 2 shows, discourse with international

stakeholders has occurred through carnivalesque

images and metaphors. To encourage Indian

mothers to bring babies to McDonald’s, Leo Burnett

India started the Baby Ronald campaign. In the

Rabelaisian tradition, Baby Ronald wore a white-face

comic mask. In Holland, Rabelaisian clowns’lips

served as urinals in a restaurant. In a Japanese print

advertisement, Ronald appeared as a cross-dresser.

Folkloric

Through “a taking-apart and putting together of

social every day time,”time becomes collective and

mystical. “To retain their signiﬁcance in narrative

[human life and nature] must undergo one or

another form of sublimation, a metaphorical

Baby clown in India Caricatured clown lips at urinal in Holland Clown as woman in Japan

Figure 2 Rabelaisian purge in McDonald’s stories.

Source: Adapted from postings on various websites and from articles since 2005, including www.peaceaware.com/McD, www

.mediabistro.com, www.adsoftheworld.com, adpr1400.blogspot.com, www.popularfeminism.wordpress.com, www.youtube.com/

watch?v=_UKLncvGxQ8, www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2215978/Ananas-Bar-Brasserie-restaurant-removes-offensive-urinals-shaped-

like-womans-lips.html.

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broadening of their signiﬁcance”(Bakhtin, 1981:

215). Stories of constructed, mythical times take

apart existing individual and social time cycles, to

reassemble them as collective time, as with man-

agers’branded narratives on collective, food-eating

times.

Historically, food has temporal characteristics

grounded in crop and seasonal cycles as well as

culturally inﬂuenced dining times and preferences.

McDonald’s Time, however, reconstructs individual

and social cycles. In 1973, managers introduced

the Egg McMufﬁn and later instituted Breakfast

Time across the world, distinct from geography,

culture and personal time. The mystical reconstruc-

tion of Breakfast Time proved proﬁtable. In 2007,

McDonald’s breakfast sales accounted for approxi-

mately $6.6 billion, about 30% of sales. “We

invented the category,”said McDonald’s spokes-

woman Danya Proud, “and we are extremely bullish

as it continues to be a priority”(Holaday, 2009).

McDonald’s competitors, like Denny’s, reacted to

the reconstruction of time cycles. Acknowledging

McDonald’sinﬂuential stories, a Denny’s corporate

manager said “Our challenge was to create craveable

breakfast items that consumers would want to eat

all day long.”

Idyllic

Here, a future trajectory of family, nature, agricul-

tural labor and craft-work combine. The Idyllic space

provides glimpses of a future for “an organic fasten-

ing-down, a grafting of life and its events to a place,

to a familiar territory with all its nooks and crannies,

its familiar mountains, valleys, ﬁelds, rivers and

forests, and one’s own home”(Bakhtin, 1981: 225).

In Idyllic, marketers and advertisers melded local

and global stories of agricultural life, handcrafted

products and family to stakeholders’familiar terri-

tory, distinct from technocratic stories.

McDonald’s videos, including Legend of Grimace

Island, memorialized extended families of children,

aunts, uncles and parents in an Idyllic pre-class,

agrarian society that grew and consumed its food.

For McDonald’s, this family bond also became bill-

board story: the Adult Happy Meal –“For kids, moms

and everyone in-between.”Stories emphasized con-

cepts of groundedness. One side of its packaging

described the Big Mac’s height while another high-

lighted the vegetables, cheese and cooking utensils

that go into making the hamburger. McDonald’s

global CMO, Mary Dillon said the goal was to “create

unique personalities for our menu items by telling

a story about each one”(Vella, 2008). Color

photographs of ingredients reminded customers

that real food goes into a Quarter Pounder. The

french-fry package featured a partially peeled potato.

From 2008 to 2010, managers introduced this Idyllic

story to 118 countries, including translations into 21

languages with adjustments for local stakeholders.

In Australia, for example, packaging highlighted

beef sourced in neighboring New Zealand.

Control of Idyllic space through global sourcing

and production has encountered counter stories.

Opponents of managerial narratives included the

organic-food movement opposing genetically mod-

iﬁed beef and chicken; environmental groups object-

ing to packaging waste; non-governmental groups

such as People for Ethical Treatment of Animals; and

unions. In response, managers altered narratives

with green stories on food science, homogenous

systems, fresh vegetables and eco-friendly business

practices. Yet Starkey and Crane (2003: 222) noted

McDonald’s strained alliance with the Environmen-

tal Defense Fund “located in the space where the

natural environment is made meaningful to human

identity, experience, and relationships through story.”

They (2003: 231) argued: “McDonald’s cannot turn

its golden arches green.”In 2009, as stories extended

branded green space, managers changed the Golden

Arches’colorinsomeEuropeanandUSrestaurants

from yellow to green (Associated Press, 2009).

Space–Time Matrices

Interplaying stakeholders’stories emerged as space–

time matrices in McDonald’s internationalization.

Activists alerted customers to McDonald’s effects on

environment and labor. Yet Historical Inversion,

Idyllic and Folkloric stories allowed managers to

make mythical links around fast food, and to negoti-

ate criticisms. Romance and Chivalric Adventure

stories highlighted how McDonald’s successfully

replicated to internationalize. Yet Everyday Adven-

ture stories revealed that managerial narratives chan-

ged through unanticipated circumstances. Through

Rabelaisian laughter, Biography and the Rogue,

Clown and Fool, McDonald’s invited pluralistic

views, including mockery of managerial narratives,

for incremental change as it internationalized. We

next propose avenues for theory building.

DEVELOPING THEORY

Small-N studies, such as the McDonald’s case, con-

tribute to developing theory. McDonald’s represents

an MNE that has successfully managed its interna-

tionalization through enfolding contradictory forces

for change and continuity in narrative. As IB lacks a

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theory of international storytelling, discussing what

we can learn and propose from the case assumes

importance. In this section, we present some propo-

sitions derived from the McDonald’s case to aid in

developing theory.

As in Historical Inversion, Folkloric and Idyllic,

managers’internationalization narratives for efﬁ-

ciency and markets aimed to attain legitimacy and

resources for McDonald’sthroughshapingeco-

nomic orders and creating discursive spaces by

localizing global, expanding consumption space

and institutionalizing time norms (Foucault,

1977). Yet as global cultural scripts interacted with

local beliefs, norms and values, managers appeared

to re-align narratives in response to conﬂicting

stories (Delmestri & Wezel, 2011). Consequently,

McDonald’s marketing and advertising depart-

ments strove to make global brands into global

stories, presenting alternative mythical worlds that

cooperating stakeholders could enjoy. Thereby,

the dominant managerial narrative explicated

order and constrained change (Näslund & Pemer,

2012): managers afﬁxed meanings to central con-

cepts that constructed stories about food items, so

that speciﬁc associative connotations occurred in

the MNE’s local linguistic context to contain

change. Successful managerial narratives could

therefore become the source of inertia (Geiger &

Antonacopoulou, 2009), enacting the “resilience

of dominant stories”(Näslund & Pemer, 2012: 91).

We propose:

Proposition 1: The more stabilized and branded

the dominant managerial narrative, the more it

legitimizes, displaces and otherwise controls space

and time.

As in Chivalric Adventure, successful technocratic

stories brought legitimacy, resources and increased

opportunity for McDonald’s (Meyer & Rowan,

1977). However, successive CEOs’stories communi-

cated interfering and conﬂicting logics that man-

agers needed to address with existing storytelling

repertoires (Gertsen & Søderberg, 2011). Techno-

cratic tweaking of quality, modernity and progress

enabled integration of managerial narratives and

conﬂicting logics, contributing to the narratives’

evolution (Delmestri & Wezel, 2011). Effective man-

agement of centripetal and centrifugal forces

depends on managerial narratives’responsiveness

and also on saturation (Koschmann, Kuhn, &

Pfarrer, 2012). Managerial narratives’receptivity (or

resistance) may also vary over time and circum-

stance. However, narratives more receptive to

textual inﬂuences should show more responsiveness

to environmental changes, membership turnover,

resource constraints or new deﬁnitions of relevant

issues, and therefore more willingness to manage

conﬂict. We propose:

Proposition 2: The greater the dominant man-

agerial narrative’s ability to respond to interfer-

ence, the greater the MNE’s strategic success.

As in Biography, Rogue, Clown and Fool, and

Rabelaisian Purge, raconteurs’,advertisingagen-

cies’and consumers’conversational competition

to insert texts may shape managerial narratives

through mutual learning and collaboration

(Gertsen & Søderberg, 2011). Compilations of

texts can also become “distanced”and expand

inﬂuence beyond situated conversational circum-

stances (Taylor, Cooren, Giroux, & Robichaud,

1996), as with the mascot Ronald McDonald.

Multilayered food stories from managers, consu-

mers, investors and other stakeholders fashioned

McDonald’s narratives of personal, group and

organizational identity (Hardy, Lawrence, &

Grant, 2005). Management narratives can absorb,

caricature, ignore or complement organizational

detractors’conﬂicting stories (Gardiner, 1992).

Consequently, managerial narratives may appear

to deviate from legitimizing, economic rules of

standardization including efﬁciency, calculability,

predictability and control. For example, McDo-

nald’smanagersrecomposednarrativesonwork,

cooking and rituals of fast-food eating through

grotesque depictions to remake presentations of

consumption. We propose:

Proposition 3: The greater the number of emer-

gent stories, the more the MNE invites changes to

the dominant managerial narrative.

As in Romance Adventure, the capacity of Canta-

lupo’sTheoremto attract economic, social and

cultural resources, and to marshal some stake-

holders’consent, reinforced the managerial

narrative’s trajectory (Koschmann et al., 2012).

Therefore managing, not resolving, conﬂicting

narratives increased the resources that McDonald’s

managers could attract (Lounsbury & Glynn,

2001). Czarniawska (2004) argued that more petri-

ﬁed narratives characterize strong, long-lived and

successful corporate cultures; long-lived narratives

incorporate reinforced sediments of norms and

practices. Consequently, strategic success may

contribute to increased petriﬁcation of managerial

narratives. As McDonald’smanagersaligned

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strategies and systems to extract maximal beneﬁts,

they may also have reinforced managerial narra-

tives (Sabherwal, Hirschheim, & Goles, 2001). We

propose:

Proposition 4: The more the environment offers

legitimacy and resources, the more petriﬁed the

dominant managerial narrative.

As in Everyday Adventure, managerial narratives’

receptivity does not necessarily produce change;

openness to new textual inﬂuences conﬁrmed trajec-

tories offensive to consumers, such as McDonald’s

beef-laced fries, as information deemed irrelevant

got blocked. However, the narratives lost value

through rigidity and unresponsiveness to other stor-

ies, indicating the practice of normalization (Weick,

2012). Tactical storytelling encourages storytellers

to meander when erosion of space and time makes

stories less useful. Yet successful managers can

become unresponsive to conﬂicting stories. For

McDonald’s, environmental changes such as obesity

consciousness may also have made managerial nar-

ratives obsolete; however, the managers continued

to operate as if old narratives explained changed

circumstances (Starbuck & Milliken, 1988). Conse-

quently, managerial narratives that appealed to

stakeholders in earlier spaces and times, no longer

meaningfully engaged them. As legitimacy and

resources evaporate, even the most petriﬁed man-

agerial narrative must be restoried for continued

success. We propose:

Proposition 5: The more petriﬁed the dominant

managerial narrative, the more it misses conﬂict-

ing narratives, leading to its replacement for con-

tinued success.

Figure 3 categorizes space–time conceptions for

and against changes in the MNE’s stories. Some

conceptions may have bolstered McDonald’s narra-

tives through sensemaking, while others may have

threatened with conﬂict or crisis. Managerial narra-

tives sometimes conﬂicted with other stories ema-

nating from diverse cultural, social and ecological

environments. Ofﬁcial McDonald’s chronologies

reveal struggles between competing stories (Floris

et al., 2013) and a kaleidoscope of stakeholders’

stories, not just managers’, explained internationali-

zation and presence abroad. Bakhtin’s nine concep-

tions map onto these stories, sometimes aligning

them to an imagined past (Chivalric Adventure,

Romance Adventure, Rogue Clown and Fool); simul-

taneously mocking present tradition (Rabelaisian

Purge) as well as providing alternative worldviews

(Historical Inversion, Biography); and offering pro-

spective senses of future possibilities (Folkloric and

Idyllic). When narratives no longer ensured strategic

Forces FOR Change Forces AGAINST Change

Biography

Rogue, Clown & Fool

Rabelaisian Purge

Everyday Adventure

P1: The more stabilized and branded the

dominant managerial narrative, the more

it legitimizes, displaces and otherwise

controls time and space

P2: The greater the dominant managerial

narrative’s ability to respond to

interference, the greater the MNE’s

strategic success

P3: The greater the number of emergent

stories, the more the MNE invites changes

to the dominant managerial narrative

P4: The more the environment offers

legitimacy and resources, the more

petrified the dominant managerial

narrative

P5: The more petrified the dominant

managerial narrative, the more it misses

conflicting narratives, leading to its

replacement for continued success

Historical Inversion

Folkloric

Idyllic

Chivalric Adventure

Romance Adventure

Figure 3 Force fields around dominant managerial narratives.

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success, managers changed them (Everyday Adven-

ture). The ﬁnal section outlines this research’s con-

tribution to IB theory and practice.

CONCLUSIONS

Lefebvre (2004) identiﬁed how interplaying space

and nonlinear time affect comprehensions of every-

day life, and we extended that to accountings of

internationalization. We presented internationaliza-

tion through the lens of McDonald’s international

storytelling. We showed how dominant narratives

may fall into crisis, disrupting rhythms of space–

time. Rather than a simple search for locational

advantages, internationalization then becomes a

nonlinear combination of mundane and strategic

repetitions of storytelling events. Shadows of past,

present and future offer alternatives that could have

been, or in the future still might emerge as options

for stakeholders, all in dialogic relationships to one

another, and as alternative temporalities. This view

challenges the dominant IB paradigm of MNEs as

hierarchies with omniscient managers narrating

for other stakeholders; instead, the saturated space

around the process of internationalization becomes

pluralistic, polyphonic, local–global environments

that include multiple points of view that emerge in

successful narratives. Our storytellers use metaphor

and logic as they use words and internationalization

gets represented through storytelling, in television

commercials, billboards, and news and print adver-

tisements. Table 2 identiﬁes how the conceptions

capture the rhythm of storytelling time in local and

global space.

Implications for Theory

McCloskey (1990) argued metaphors (models, equa-

tions) and stories (history) offer complementary

answers –the former explain, the latter aid under-

standing. IB researchers have relied primarily on

efﬁciency and rationality metaphors to explain inter-

nationalization (Haley & Haley, 2013). Some pre-

sented internationalization as logical, external

activity to implement plans and data analysis; others,

as replicating MNEs’intangible assets through homo-

genous subsidiaries. Yet metaphors unravel when

faced with paradox: storytelling answers some of the

Table 2 Language in storytelling space–time

Conception Text and performance Space Time

Romance

Adventure

In planning stories; managers and agents use past events to plan

future, travel diverse geographic terrains, encounter diverse

stakeholders, yet retain identity

Local becomes more Global Retrospective past evolves into

Prospective future

Everyday

Adventure

In stories of reactions to external, unforeseen events through

public trial and revelation; MNEs’metamorphoses become

mythological cycles of crisis changing everyday workings

Global sensitized and

responsive to Local accident

Emergent present

Biography In personal stories; internal–external, local–global stakeholders

discover hidden, latent traits by publicly illuminating lives

Many Locals within Global Emergent present refashioned

into Retrospective attachment

with past

Historical

Inversion

In alternative, mythical-world stories; MNEs transform through

stories of mythic pasts to make ephemeral, fragmented future

concrete in present

Many Locals within Global Emergent present transformed

by Retrospective trips into past

Chivalric

Adventure

In technocratic stories; technocratic chivalric codes inform

planning, test fidelity to codes

Global values subordinate

Local

Retrospective fidelity to past

informing Emergent present

Rogue,

Clown and

Fool

In human and institutional-failing stories; three medieval masks

see falseness, publicly unmasking feudal and institutional

hypocrisy

Local plays on Global stage Retrospectively imagined past

shows falseness of Emergent

present

Rabelaisian

Purge

In mocking, self-deprecating stories; laughter makes managerial

narrative and chivalric code less pompous and pretentious

Global contested by Local Emergent present mockingly

purged of counter-realism

Folkloric In mythical-time stories; managers and agents take apart and

reassemble individual and social time cycles for collective

significance

Global imagined time

sublimates Local

compartmentalized time

Prospective future attains new

significance through new

collective cycles

Idyllic In grounded-space stories; managers and agents unify and graft

stories of agricultural life, handcrafted products and family to

stakeholders’familiar territory

Local strategically storied

spaces makeup Global idyllic

space

Prospective future restoried

through Retrospective grounded

past

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paradoxical “why”in IB internationalization models.

Sidestepping Cartesian subject–object cuts and inter-

nalization theories, storytelling offers internationali-

zation as local resolution within MNEs of exteriority-

within-phenomena (Barad, 2010).

Emphasizing inter-textuality, we showed how

McDonald’s learned to understand internationaliza-

tion as part of and activated by waves of relational

stakeholders’collaborations and meanings and in

active encounters with planning and analysis. We

proposed internationalization not as trajectories of

narrative continuity as in planning, but as disrup-

tions of continuity with pasts or futures (Barad,

2011), and as complex materiality. In internationa-

lization, MNEs reconﬁgure and thread some living

stories with overarching narratives, and discard

others, to highlight collaborations across space–

time. This “dis/continuity”refracted through local,

global, past, present and future represents not abso-

lute separation between spaces and times, subsidi-

aries and headquarters, but “a cutting together/apart

–a holding together of the disparate …without

effacing heterogeneity”(Barad, 2010: 265) or redu-

cing differences to sameness. Distinctions between

temporal and contextual variables became local and

emergent: in speciﬁc collaborations, conceptions of

space–time emerged for McDonald’s–but did not

necessarily pre-exist. How managers understood and

appropriated these conceptions changed external

environments: for example, reacting to US litigation

and a movie, McDonald’s adopted healthy-menu

items worldwide, thereby materially changing the

global food-service industry. Space–time concep-

tions can also identify simultaneous causality from

multiple origins, and internationalization’s ripples

within relationships. To aid our analysis, we asked

questions to position stories in texts that precede/

anticipate other texts and in local–global contexts.

Similar questions could situate other MNEs’inter-

nationalization in dynamic storytelling networks of

production, distribution and consumption, and as

sociocultural but also hegemonic activities. Thus, we

propose storytelling could add nuance and depth to

both discursive and metaphoric approaches to

understanding internationalization.

Our exploratory case study connects to previous

theoretical ﬁndings. McDonald’sstoriesspanned

national space–time boundaries to support or to top-

ple dominant narratives, indicating that as a complex

organizational process, internationalization includes

cultural-identity negotiation across countries, as Yagi

and Kleinberg (2011) proposed. In these varied cul-

tural environments, as Barkema and Drogendijk

(2007) suggested, McDonald’s engaged in past knowl-

edge “exploitation”through injected dominant narra-

tive as well as future “exploration”through living-

story collaborations. Santangelo and Meyer (2011)

concluded that ﬁrms internationalize through itera-

tive cycles of learning and changes in commitment;

though rarely studied, subsidiaries’commitments to

prior actions may decrease as well as increase. Our case

shows how and why managers justiﬁed changes in

commitment and divergence with founders’principles

as well as how narratives changed in response to

stakeholders’stories. Similar to Jonsson and Foss’s

(2011) observations on Ikea’s internationalization,

stories allowed for lower-level market changes in

McDonald’s products, occasionally leading to changes

in higher-level dominant narratives. Burgelman

(2011) pointed to “strategic recognition”as key for

adaptive organizational capabilities. Through recog-

nizing the conﬂuence of internal and external stories

that affect successful internationalization, McDonald’s

managers showed how needs for adaptation arise and

how managers justify them through references to the

past and future in the present.

Implications for Practice

Combined with more-traditional IB analyses (Cuervo-

Cazurra, Caligiuri, Andersson, & Brannen, 2013),

storytelling offers guidance for managers to choose

from a wider web of stakeholders for inclusion in

global narratives. Multiple MNEs across nations

attempt to coordinate conceptions of abstract and

concrete everyday-life moments for added value.

Managers rely heavily on projections from ﬁnancial

and economic models, and competitors’strategies, to

identify stakeholders’stories for inclusion in strategic

planning, with mixed results. Our research suggests

that successful internationalization may also entail

incorporating conﬂicting stories that bubble up from

mundane, local collaborations.

Avenues for effective storytelling exist in the

same food-service industry. Since the 1990s, com-

petitor Burger King (BK) has experienced angry

stakeholders and growing competition, followed

by steeply falling international proﬁts and sales.

BK responded by openly imitating McDonald’s

food stories worldwide: for example, the Big King

burger looked and sounded exactly like McDonald’s

Big Mac ( Jargon, 2013). BK parodied its imitation of

McDonald’s food stories in television commercials

(Wei, 2010): in one, its King mascot breaks into

McDonald’s headquarters late at night and steals

therecipeforMcDonald’sbreakfastsandwich.“It’s

notthatoriginal,butit’s super affordable,”the

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commercial intones. In 2012, BK’s managers

announced aggressive international expansion for

new markets with younger demographics, as well as

imitation of McDonald’s international storytelling:

with similar food stories, Chief Financial Ofﬁcer

Daniel Schwartz hoped for similar success with

price-sensitive consumers (Brown, 2012). Yet

despitesomesuccess,BK’s stories also spawned

additional conﬂicts with Hindus (goddess Maha-

lakshmi on a ham sandwich), UK women (bikini-

clad showering women indicating Breakfast Time),

Singaporean women (Super 7-incher), anthropolo-

gists (Whopper Virgin advertisements), children’s

advocates (Sponge Bob Square Butt commercial)

and the Mexican government (stereotyped Mexi-

cans). Allowing selective lower-level changes in

subsidiaries’mundane stories may enhance effec-

tiveness of BK’s higher-level narratives. In addition

to headquarters’stories on low prices, BK’s narra-

tive may incorporate local, conﬂicting stakeholders’

stories, thereby developing unique, collaborative

accounts of internationalization for added value.

Non-commonsensical avenues to understand

effective stakeholder collaborations in internatio-

nalization may usefully begin from the ﬁve propo-

sitions we presented. Rather than focusing on

narratives that reinforce historical and planning

trajectories, our theory of international storytelling

could sensitize researchers and managers to how

MNEs may shape futures through re-imagining the

past, and noticing differently in the present, while

incorporating some contradictory cultures and

interests, and discarding others. Thus, MNEs’multi-

actor, learned narratives in space–time can comple-

ment theoretical and managerial analyses for

greater understanding into the core IB concept of

internationalization.

NOTES

We define strategy as realized or emergent patterns

in a company’s decisions or actions (Mintzberg, 1994).

Karen Barad proposed (ac)counting as both counting

and accounting for holding together the disparate. Barad

(2011: 146) elaborated that (ac)counting “cannot be a

straight forward calculation, since it cannot be based on

the assumed existence of individual entities that can be

added to, subtracted from, or equated with one

another.”In MNEs’storytelling, (ac)counting occurs

between the mundane and strategic, between past-

oriented narrative and living story.

We accept that petrification may sometimes be

comprehended post hoc; petrified dominant narratives

stamp strong organizational cultures and may provide

needed continuity for organizations under certain

circumstances.

Ferdinand de Saussure depicted language as a

collective product of social interaction, and essential

instrument to constitute and articulate the world,

influencing developments in the social sciences, with

relevance for storytelling.

Mikhail Bakhtin did not explicitly define local and

global. We interpret his use of local as referring to

individuals and small social groups, and global to

collectives (including nations) and (global) society. We

interpret present time to include maintaining activities

that contribute to value creation.

We selected stakeholders’stories that interviews and

analysis revealed provided justification or opposition for

McDonald’s internationalization efforts and presence

abroad.

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ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Usha CV Haley (PhD, New York University) is

Professor of Management, College of Business &

Economics, West Virginia University. Her research

on international business, corporate and govern-

ment strategy has been incorporated into US and

EU federal regulation; awards include the Academy

of Management’s Research Impact on Practice

and Economist’s Thought Leadership on Emerging

Markets. Born in India, she is a US citizen (uhaley@

asia-paciﬁc.com).

David M Boje (PhD, University of Illinois) is Wells

Fargo Professor, Distinguished University Professor,

and Bill Daniels Ethics Fellow, Management Depart-

ment, New Mexico State University, with an honor-

ary doctorate from Aalborg University, Denmark. He

researches storytelling using qualitative methods

and chaired the Academy of Management’s Research

Methods Division. Born in Spokane, Washington, he

is a US citizen (dboje@nmsu.edu).

Accepted by Mary Yoko Brannen, Deputy Editor, 4 May 2014. This article has been with the authors for four revisions.

Storytelling the internationalization of the MNE Usha CV Haley and David M Boje

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Journal of International Business Studies

jibs-editorial-trust

Data

July 2016

Usha Haley · David M Boje

Boje MurnignhanMgtSCI

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February 2015

David M Boje

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