PhD Defence: Guus Hendriks
In his dissertation ‘Multinational Enterprises and Limits to International Growth: Links between Domestic and Foreign Activities in a Firm’s Portfolio’ Guus Hendriks studies several limits and aims to restore balance in the international business literature by addressing some of the biases built over time.
Guus Hendriks defended his dissertation in the Senate Hall at Erasmus University Rotterdam on Thursday, 7 February 2019 at 13:30. His supervisors were Prof. Pursey Heugens (RSM) and Prof. Arjen Slangen(KU Leuven). Other members of the Doctoral Committee are Dr. Alain Verbeke (University of Calgary) Prof. Thomas Hutzschenreuter (Technical University of Munich) Prof. Sjoerd Beugelsdijk (University of Groningen) and Prof. Taco Reus (RSM).
About Guus Hendriks
Guus Hendriks embarked on PhD studies in 2013 at the Department of Strategic Management and Entrepreneurship and engaged in international business research under the direction of Pursey Heugens and Arjen Slangen. Always interested in topics at the intersection of business studies and economics, he completed both undergraduate programmes at Radboud University in his hometown of Nijmegen in the Netherlands. After already having spent a semester at the University of Turin in Italy, Guus had the opportunity to continue his studies in a truly international postgraduate programme. He graduated with distinction from a joint-degree programme in international economics that led him to study at the University of Antwerp, Staffordshire University and VŠE University of Economics in Prague. Having worked in industry in the Czech Republic for a period of three years prior to pursuing a Ph.D., Guus developed a strong interest in the challenges that firms face when operating across country borders. His research interests relate to the portfolio growth strategies of multinational enterprises, the internationalization of emerging market multinationals as well as the development effects of foreign investment. His work on these topics has won several awards, including the Best Overall Paper Award of Academy of Management’s International Management division and the GSJ Prize for Best Global Strategy Paper at the 2016 annual meeting of the European International Business Academy. His work is published in journals such as the Journal of Management Studies and UNCTAD’s Transnational Corporations. Guus currently works as an Assistant Professor of International Business at the University of Warwick in the United Kingdom.
Thesis Abstract
Most multinational enterprises (MNEs) pursue growth and aim to expand their international portfolios of operating locations. Often, however, they face important limits to growth. This dissertation studies several such limits and aims to restore balance in the international business literature by addressing some of the biases built over time. Firms’ home-country activities may act as a limiting factor in their international expansion trajectory, but have received little attention to date. One of the dissertation chapters reveals that a firm’s domestic footprint, in combination with domestic environmental uncertainties, shapes its cross-cultural expansion strategy, and may limit the complexity it adds to its portfolio. The subsequent chapter indicates that behavioral factors have an important bearing on international portfolio growth decisions, more so than hitherto assumed. It finds that the net growth of an MNE’s country portfolio in the face of cultural and economic diversity within that portfolio hinges on cues as to how well the MNE is performing relative to its own past performance and the current performance of its peers. The last chapter indicates that firms’ domestic activities not only shape their internationalization moves, the reverse also holds true. Emerging economy firms seem to benefit domestically from cross-border acquisitions only under certain circumstances, most notably when they are already characterized by a relative high degree of internationalization.
Photos: Hans / Capital Images
