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Building on recent developments in optimal distinctiveness (OD) research, we identify two dimensions of corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices – CSR scope conformity and CSR emphasis differentiation – and examine the antecedents of both. We theorize that private ownership and enhanced media coverage may increase scope conformity and emphasis differentiation, while such effects may be contingent on industrial context. In socially contested industries, the impact of private ownership on scope conformity will be mitigated, and the impact of media coverage on scope conformity will be amplified. Meanwhile, in highly competitive industries, the impact of private ownership and media coverage on emphasis differentiation will be mitigated. We test our predictions using a database of 942 Chinese publicly listed firms between 2008 and 2016. Our findings imply that the choice of optimal CSR strategy has to be made in accordance with the embedding context. The multidimensionality view of OD enables firms to better orchestrate firms’ strategic positioning along different dimensions of complex practices, which leads to better customization of societal expectations and the industrial competitive landscape.

Informal institutions influence all aspects of international business (IB), but they have received limited attention in the literature relative to formal institutions. This article extends prior IB work by examining the relationships between several key formal and informal institutional factors and the international strategy of MNEs. First, it examines the direct effects of formal and informal institutional effectiveness, convergence, and distance on MNE local adaptation, developing arguments and propositions for each relationship. Second, it focuses on the interactions of formal and informal institutional effectiveness and convergence to develop an eight-fold typology of market institutional configurations. This typology depicts the role that informal institutions take in a market depending on the interaction of these three institutional factors. Third, it builds on these interactions and the concept of institutional distance to develop a conceptual framework of market and MNE institutional diversity and dynamism. This framework captures the formal and informal institutional relationshipswithina home market, host market, parent firm, and foreign subsidiary, as well as the formal and informal institutional relationshipsacrosseach of these entities over time. In so doing, this article helps advance research on informal institutions and IB, which can lead to considerable future work on the topic.

Over the past several decades, the “Bring In” and “Go Global” policies implemented in China have encouraged an unprecedented level of investment in and out of the country, creating unique opportunities for Chinese firms to learn and innovate along the paths of inward and outward internationalization. The international business (IB) literature has yet to satisfactorily explain what has been learnt by the Chinese firms and whether and how their learning and innovation have taken place over time. This special issue examines the specific content, nature, mechanisms, processes, and internal and external conditions and contexts of learning and innovation of Chinese firms during the course of inward and outward internationalization. We provide an overview of the “Bring In” and “Go Global” policies, assess the current state of the field, and explicate how the research articles in the special issue contribute to the understanding of learning and innovation of Chinese firms along the paths of inward and outward internationalization.