This research investigates how small multinational enterprises (small MNEs) internationalize by opening branch offices or subsidiaries in foreign markets, managing their multiple embeddedness in their host and home locations, and their subsidiaries’ dual embeddedness in external environments and within their organizations. We study four small multinational enterprises, two each from the small open economies of New Zealand and Finland, and we use literature from entrepreneurship and international business to derive a model of these multiple dimensions of embeddedness. The cases illustrate how firms can become more (or less) embedded in their locations through their physical presence, operations, key employees, and local hires while achieving internal organizational embeddedness through their corporate structure and social and technological bridging. Our research gives insight into how small MNEs may overcome their liabilities of smallness, foreignness, and outsidership by drawing on resources from home and host locations and sharing this throughout the organization.
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1 Introduction
A firm becomes part of the local institutional and social fabric through embedding, enabling it to draw upon and use resources from its local surroundings (Jack & Anderson, 2002). Firms that establish subsidiaries or branch offices in foreign countries can become embedded in multiple locations, including their home locations and those of their overseas units (Leppäaho et al., 2018). While knowledge of and embeddedness in various local contexts are essential to the success of all MNEs (Ghemawat, 2007; Meyer et al., 2011), they may be especially important for small MNEs, as smaller firms rely more on resources from their environments (Batjargal, 2003; Hite & Hesterly, 2001). A small MNE is a type of SME (small- and medium-sized enterprise) that has used foreign direct investment (FDI) to internationalize by establishing branch offices or subsidiaries to access customers and resources (Fernhaber et al., 2008; Vanninen et al., 2017, 2022).
We use social embeddedness theory (Busch & Barkema, 2020; Granovetter, 1985; Uzzi, 1997) as a lens to understand the social processes through which entrepreneurial outcomes such as internationalization are achieved (Johannisson et al., 2002) and how social ties within specific locations are used and strengthened via mechanisms such as social bridging (Korsgaard et al., 2015; McKeever et al., 2014). We also highlight the unique characteristics of small MNEs and their managers that extant research rarely considers (Laufs & Schwens, 2014). For instance, small MNEs’ decisions about how to internationalize are affected by their managers’ characteristics, experience, knowledge, networks and interpretations of the environment (Child & Hsieh, 2014; Evers & O’Gorman, 2011; Nummela et al., 2014).
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We define social embeddedness as “the nature, depth, and extent of an individual’s ties into an environment, community or society” (McKeever et al., 2014, p. 222). Thus, we focus on the embeddedness of individuals, such as founders and top management team members, who influence how firms become embedded. We use “environment” to denote the locations in which small MNEs operate and draw from the literature on spatial embeddedness to understand this form of embeddedness (e.g., Kalantaridis & Bika, 2006; Korsgaard et al., 2015; Welter, 2011). Communities and societies in the host environment(s) are the “social structures” that our case firms and their employees must blend into, and we use the international business literature to examine the role of these social structures (e.g., Johanson & Vahlne, 2009; Zaheer, 1995). We use the term embedding to refer to the process and mechanisms of becoming embedded (Jack & Anderson, 2002); and embeddedness (Hess, 2004) to describe the state of matters during this process or the output of the embedding process.
Both external (outside a firm in its home or host market) and internal (inside the firm) embeddedness have positive effects on corporate, subsidiary, and innovation performance (Ciabuschi et al., 2014; Dellestrand, 2011; Yamin & Andersson, 2011). Yet there is a need to investigate further the interactions among various types of embeddedness (Wigren-Kristoferson et al., 2022; Yamin & Andersson, 2011), especially for understanding how firms manage dual (i.e., simultaneous internal and external) embeddedness (Cenamor et al., 2019; Ciabuschi et al., 2014).
The literature about MNEs refers to embeddedness in two or more locations as multiple embeddedness (e.g., Meyer et al., 2011; Munjal & Pereira, 2015). Embeddedness simultaneously internal within the firm and external within the environment is called dual embeddedness (Cenamor et al., 2019; Ciabuschi et al., 2011, 2014). Multiple embeddedness can help small MNEs access information and resources and gain legitimacy, thus overcoming the challenges of small size and foreignness. However, they must solve a dual-network problem to benefit from local knowledge and resources in multiple places. Their employees in international units must become sufficiently embedded in their location to access local knowledge. Yet they must also become embedded enough in their organization’s internal network to share in and impart knowledge across the firm (Meyer et al., 2011). As little is known about how small MNEs solve this problem, we examine how small MNEs simultaneously embed their employees and subsidiaries in local environments and spatially dispersed organizational structures.
We focus on small MNEs for two reasons. First, firms with high levels of internal and external embeddedness may be rare (Ciabuschi et al., 2014). Many studies of SME internationalization focus on exporting. Because export-focused SMEs have fewer opportunities to engage in local networks, this literature has not emphasized external embeddedness. Second, small firms may be more likely to need to balance both forms of embeddedness to succeed in a foreign market because of their limited resources (Brouthers & Nakos, 2004).
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We study how four small MNEs originating from the small open economies of New Zealand and Finland internationalized through FDI. Drawing on these firms’ experiences, we use the methods described by Eisenhardt (1989) and Welch et al. (2011) to inductively develop an explanation of how their subsidiaries became embedded in their host locations and within their organizations and how these multiple dimensions of embeddedness are managed.
Our work contributes to the research on embeddedness in international business (e.g., Cenamor et al., 2019; Ciabuschi et al., 2014) by investigating how different types of embeddedness interact (Yamin & Andersson, 2011) and how firms coordinate and manage dual embeddedness (Cenamor et al., 2019; Ciabuschi et al., 2011, 2014). To the best of our knowledge, this study is the first to illuminate the multiple dimensions of embeddedness that small MNEs experience and how small MNEs’ characteristics influence these dimensions. Small MNEs are embedded to different degrees in their home and host locations. Their subsidiaries’ internal embeddedness also varies as they may have different organizational roles (Andersson et al., 2001). We studied multiple embeddedness as a process of increasing (or decreasing) embeddedness in both home and host locations and showed how this process can occur. For example, the extant literature largely overlooks how MNEs manage subsidiary dual embeddedness when it considers subsidiaries’ roles and the microfoundations of their leadership (see the literature review of Meyer et al., 2020). Our study adds to the multi-level perspective on this process. Overall, we contribute to the embeddedness and SME internationalization literature by showing how internationalizing SMEs can use embeddedness to mitigate their various liabilities.
We begin by reviewing the research on embedding from the entrepreneurship and international business literature. We then explain our method and describe the four cases. We analyze the cases and integrate our empirical observations with the extant literature to form a visual model of the multiple embeddedness of small MNEs. Finally, we present our conclusions and suggest avenues for further research.
2 Theoretical Background
2.1 Embeddedness
Embeddedness is a multi-level construct that entails the interaction and interplay of institutional constraints (macro-level), market factors (meso-level), and individual-level resources (Wang & Warn, 2018). Complementing the formal (macro- and meso-level) institutions, informal (micro-level) institutions embed the behaviors a society deems acceptable (North, 1990). For instance, a firm’s business relationships are socially and locally constructed by the individuals who participate in them (Ojansivu & Medlin, 2018). This relational embeddedness facilitates information exchange and interorganizational learning at the dyadic level (Soontornthum et al., 2020). As these levels of analysis are interrelated (Aguilera & Grøgaard, 2019), we jointly consider the embeddedness associated with each level (Trettin & Welter, 2011).
Embeddedness refers to who is embedded in what (Hess, 2004) and describes the nature, depth, and extent of an individual or firm’s ties to the environment (Dacin et al., 1999; Uzzi, 1997). At the firm level, embeddedness is an element of various business processes (Dacin et al., 1999; Jack & Anderson, 2002; Uzzi, 1997), including internationalization (Leppäaho et al., 2018). It also has relational and structural aspects that are influenced by the environment(s) in which a firm operates (Granovetter, 1985; Jack & Anderson, 2002). The social embeddedness of management is an essential competitive resource (Podolny, 1993) because its benefits are complex and difficult to replicate (Geletkanycz & Boyd, 2011). These benefits include information and learning (Westphal et al., 2001) and relational assets such as trust that are key to accessing critical resources and implementing strategies, including internationalization (D’Aveni & Kesner, 1993).
The spatial context of embeddedness has received relatively less attention (Kalantaridis & Bika, 2006). It exists at multiple levels of granularity, including countries, communities and neighborhoods, industrial districts, and clusters (Welter, 2011). The ability of people or organizations to move among or bridge (Müller & Korsgaard, 2018) various spatial contexts enhances their potential to access additional or unique resources in each location (Korsgaard et al., 2015). However, spatial contexts also introduce the challenge of distance (including geographical and cultural) that must be bridged in the external environment and inside the firm’s organizational structure (Ciabuschi et al., 2011; Meyer et al., 2011).
Spatial elements influence embeddedness greatly, as proximity enhances the potential for close contact among parties by facilitating exchanges of knowledge and know-how in the local economy (Kalantaridis & Bika, 2006). Smaller technology-focused firms, where R&D costs are high, and knowledge is primarily implicit, are thought to benefit from being located (and embedded) inside a geographical cluster, or within a regional complex of similar firms, because of the advantages created by networking, information flows, and other positive externalities (Kalantaridis & Bika, 2006). Embeddedness in such environments may be especially important during the early stages of a firm’s development (Keeble et al., 1998), and founders may be attracted to such clusters to benefit from their externalities. For example, Silicon Valley attracts nascent ventures led by entrepreneurs from many countries.
2.2 Multiple Embeddedness
Embeddedness within multiple countries may be especially relevant to international businesses and entrepreneurs. Both firms and entrepreneurs can be embedded in various institutions, networks, and places that condition the resources and opportunities they can access (McKeever et al., 2015), including physical, human, social, and financial capital (Müller & Korsgaard, 2018). Embedding in foreign locations can mitigate the liabilities of foreignness and outsidership (Johanson & Vahlne, 2009; Vahlne et al., 2012). The liability of foreignness can hinder firms that are outsiders to host-country networks, placing them at a disadvantage relative to domestic insiders (Johanson & Vahlne, 2009; Zaheer, 1995). They must become embedded into a host country to become competitive. The liability of outsidership highlights a firm’s need to gain insider positions within social networks to become an attractive business partner (Johanson & Vahlne, 2009). Because foreign firms often operate at the periphery of local networks, they may be more likely to suffer from this liability (Johanson & Vahlne, 2009).
Literature on the embeddedness of large MNEs focuses on subsidiary locations. Thus, it implicitly recognizes a firm’s embeddedness in at least two locations: the headquarters (HQ) in the home market and the host country(ies). Firms typically build resource endowments in their home country and use them to drive their international growth (Tan & Meyer, 2010) and shape their strategies (Meyer et al., 2011). The ability to embed to varying degrees in different locations is an advantage of multinational firms (Teece, 2006) and is dynamic by nature (Lattemann et al., 2017). In the literature about MNEs, embeddedness in two or more locations is called multiple embeddedness (e.g., Meyer et al., 2011; Munjal & Pereira, 2015).
By being embedded in local contexts, subsidiaries can perform several roles contributing to a firm’s external embeddedness. First, they can be a source of knowledge for the HQ (Yang et al., 2008) by serving as listening posts that receive, filter, and transmit knowledge to the parent company (Mudambi & Navarra, 2004). Second, they may evolve into centers of excellence with regional or global responsibilities (Birkinshaw & Hood, 1998). Third, by performing local value-added activities, they build legitimacy with local customers and governments (Contractor et al., 2010) and enable firms to connect to their markets (Baumgarten & Heywood, 2012).
However, to use local knowledge across the organization, firms must solve a dual-network problem of dual embeddedness: their subsidiaries must be embedded both within the host location to generate knowledge access and inflows and inside the firm’s internal network for the knowledge to be effectively transferred and used through the organization (Jha et al., 2018; Meyer et al., 2011). Research has linked external embeddedness to subsidiaries’ market performance and competence development within and across the firm (e.g., Andersson et al., 2001). However, facilitating the knowledge transfer from subsidiary to headquarters and thus realizing the benefits of external embeddedness requires internal embeddedness (Yamin & Andersson, 2011). If a subsidiary is sufficiently embedded to gain an insider position in local external networks but is not embedded in the organization’s internal networks, managers in the headquarters and subsidiary may know little of each other’s activities (Vahlne et al., 2012). Further, many activities like innovation and product development require close relationships with international subsidiaries (Ciabuschi et al., 2011; Moran, 2005; Uzzi & Lancaster, 2003). Relocating home country executives or staff to a host location or hiring locals into executive positions can help a firm manage and coordinate across intra- and inter-organizational boundaries (Schotter et al., 2017). Such individuals act as boundary spanners and are central to solving the dual-network problem (Meyer et al., 2011). We conceptualize the embeddedness inside a spatially dispersed organization as internal embeddedness.
Figure 1 summarizes our argument. Small MNEs become embedded in multiple environments, including their home and host country locations. They need embeddedness in their external environments and internal embeddedness within an international organization. The subsidiary is the vehicle for gaining external embeddedness, which may increase or decrease its embeddedness in its host country environments. A firm can solve its dual-network problem by increasing internal embeddedness and thus benefiting from its subsidiary’s external embeddedness in the host environment(s). Without this dual embeddedness, conceptualized as simultaneous internal and external embeddedness, the firm may be unable to realize the strategic objectives of its foreign investment, thus undermining performance.
Fig. 1
Theoretic framework: Multiple embeddedness of firm in various spatial context(s)
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3 Method
We focused on SMEs that operate as multinational companies (small MNEs) and followed the approach recommended by Eisenhardt (1989) and Welch et al. (2011), iterating between existing knowledge on embeddedness and the insights that arose from our case studies. Having multiple cases helped us to understand the variety of ways small MNEs may embed themselves in international locations. A multiple case design is conducive to robust theory development because the propositions it generates are deeply grounded in varied empirical evidence (Eisenhardt & Graebner, 2007), and multiple cases enabled us to develop theory on the multi-faceted and time-dependent nature of the process by comparing both similarities and differences of the pathways of the case firms.
We used purposeful sampling, as Patton (2015) described, to find the firms. We chose cases from New Zealand and Finland, both small and open economies heavily reliant on international markets, especially in niche industries. Our rationale is like Chandra’s (2017) argument for studying Australian firms to expand outside the US and European context prevalent in prior studies. We searched for small MNEs with fewer than 250 employees in the business press and from internationalization accelerator programs with subsidiaries or branch offices in at least one international market in addition to its domestic HQ and at least one full-time employee working permanently in the international unit. We selected two firms from each country as cases that exhibited relatively more complex international configurations of subsidiaries/branch offices and activities. All these firms had dispersed their core activities by having at least some of their core activities and executive management team in their international units. The industry was not a selection criterion per se in the initial search. Still, it became evident that most firms with this approach to internationalization operated in sectors that offer intangible products or services such as software and are technology-based. Three cases were new ventures when they made their first foreign investment (i.e., fewer than six years since their founding according to Zahra et al.,’s 2000 definition), and one was 11 years old, making them all young compared to the commonly used cut-off of 15 years (De Clercq et al., 2014; Zhou et al., 2012). The smallest firm had 29 employees, and the largest had 100 employees.
Table 1 describes the four firms. Most revenues in all four firms came from large business-to-business (B2B) clients in the key markets of their international offices. Cases 1, 2, and 3 established their first international office within three years of founding the firm. Case 4 initially internationalized via exporting and resellers, then drastically changed its strategy in 2007, quickly dispersing its activities and management team to various locations. Cases 1, 2, and 3 had three or four locations each, while Case 4 had five offices and remote employees in 13 additional locations. The firms mostly made greenfield investments when they opened international offices, but two had acquired existing businesses.
Table 1
Case profiles and data sources
Case 1
Case 2
Case 3
Case 4
Country of origin
Finland
Finland
New Zealand
New Zealand
Year of foundation
1997
2012
2007
1996 (sales started in 2000)
First international office
2000
2012
2009
2007
Industry
Software
Mobile application
Designer of wireless solutions
Software
Customers
Large B2B cooperation partners/customers in US, B2C customers around the globe
B2B customers (TV channels)
B2B (in both industrial markets and consumer markets)
B2B
Number of employees
35
29
68
100
Office locations
Finland, US, Taiwan
Finland, Poland, UK
New Zealand,
US (3 locations)
New Zealand (2 locations), US (2), Netherlands (+ remote employees in 13 locations)
FDI types
Greenfield (+ acquisition in 2014)
Greenfield
Greenfield
Greenfield (+ acquisition in 2014)
% of sales from international markets
100
NA
100
100
Data sources
Interviews
1 × CEO
1 × President of US Inc/VP of Sales and marketing
2 × CEO & Co-founder
1 × CTO
2 × CEO & Co-founder
1 × Manager
1 × CEO & Co-founder
1 × Managing Director Europe
Other
Media entries
Email correspondence for updates
Media entries
Initial meeting with the founder
University master students’ group report
Email correspondence for updates
Media entries
Case study
Email correspondence for updates
Media entries
Email correspondence for updates
Following Yin’s (2014) recommendation, we used multiple sources of evidence to construct the cases. We obtained secondary data from the firms’ websites, press releases, newspaper articles, business and industry publications, white papers, and marketing brochures. We used these data to corroborate evidence from our interviews. We interviewed at least two key informants from each firm. Key informants were the founder/CEO who knew the most about the matters central to our study and another manager recommended by the CEO/founder as a knowledgeable informant with a long history at the firm. We used a semi-structured, open-ended interview protocol. We promised anonymity and confidentiality and digitally recorded the interviews. We conducted ten interviews, two to three per firm, ranging from 40 to 95 min. In addition, we followed up with some interviewees by email to cross-check or complete information. The data sources are listed in Table 1.
We first asked the informants to confirm or correct general information about the firm we had gathered from secondary sources. Then, we asked them to explain the firm’s subsidiary structure, including functions, activities, key employees, and duties in each location. We triangulated their descriptions with the information already collected from secondary sources. We also asked about the firm’s international expansion and motivations for doing so, the challenges and obstacles during this process, and how it coordinated operations in its different locations. Finally, we asked about the customer, investor, and other stakeholder relationships to understand the firm’s operations in foreign markets. After collecting the data, we followed Eisenhardt’s (1989) suggestion to perform a within-case analysis by writing detailed descriptions of each case that combined the information from multiple sources. We then studied each case as a stand-alone entity to allow its distinctiveness to emerge before looking for similarities and differences across cases. This first stage included constructing maps of the locations for all activities and key employees in the firm and the timelines for international expansion. To aid this process, we coded the data as recommended by Pauwels and Matthyssen (2004) with the aid of NVivo. We used an abductive coding approach to capture the embeddedness aspects of our empirical data (Dubois & Gadde, 2014). Following Dubois and Gadde (2002, 2014), we had a theoretical framework (Fig. 1) that guided the data collection and analysis, but the original framework was modified during the research process as we learned more about which aspects were essential for small MNEs’ embeddedness (as seen in Fig. 3) compared to the contexts where the theories were derived (i.e., large MNEs and domestic entrepreneurship).
In the first phase, we examined how the company was organized, including locations, employees, and activities (see Table 2). We also created codes related to motivations for how the company was organized and its communication and control (i.e., how the dispersed organization was managed). We used Müller and Korsgaard’s (2018) categorization to identify the key resources accessed in each location and Hess’s (2004) three dimensions of embeddedness (societal, network, and spatial) to assess the extent of embeddedness toward the home or host location. We considered how the culture and institutions of the firm’s founding country enabled or constrained its activities (societal embeddedness), the structure of relationships that formed among individuals and organizations (network embeddedness), and the anchoring of the firm in specific locations (spatial embeddedness). In this stage, we captured the static nature of embeddedness at any given time.
Table 2
Home and host location activities
Case 1
Case 2
Case 3
Case 4
Home location
- Legal domicile
- Company head office, physical facilities (28 local employees)
- Board members
- Activities: Part of HQ activities, marketing, R&D
- Legal domicile
- Incorporated company, P.O box
- Funding from a governmental support organization
- Activities: Part of HQ activities, business development, marketing, customer support, R&D (front end)
- Legal domicile
- Company head office, physical facilities (60 employees representing 10 different nationalities)
- Part of a business incubator program
- CEO / Co-founder former board member of governmental internationalization support organization
- Close cooperation with a local university
Activities: Part of HQ activities, R&D
- Legal domicile
- Official company head office (12 mostly local employees)
- Activities: Part of HQ activities
- Branch office (7 mostly local employees)
- Board members
- Activities: R&D
Host location 1
- Incorporated subsidiary in US, physical facilities (5 local employees)
- Connections from home-country internationalization support organization residing in the area
- Activities: Part of HQ activities, global sales of firm’s primary offering, close cooperation with technology partners
- Branch office (28 local employees)
- Local co-founders’ connections
- Board members
- Activities: Part of HQ activities, R&D (back end)
- Incorporated subsidiary
- 1 head office (5 mostly local employees)
- Part of HQ activities, sales to large customers in Asian region
- Branch office (2 local employees)
- Board members
- Activities: Part of HQ activities, consumer devices sales and marketing
- Branch office (1 local employee)
- Board members
- Activities: Part of HQ activities, industrial applications sales and marketing
- Incorporated subsidiary
- Branch office (25 mostly local employees)
- Activities: Part of HQ activities, R&D
- Branch offices (multiple branch offices with one employee in each, in total 20 mostly local employees)
- Activities: Part of HQ activities, global sales and customer support
- Remote employees in 13 US states (30 local employees)
- Board members
- Activities: Part of HQ activities, global sales and customer support
Host location 2
- Acquired former partner company (2 local employees)
- Global sales of firm’s additional offering
- Branch office (2 employees, British and Polish)
- Board members
- Activities: Part of HQ activities, R&D
- Incorporated subsidiary, 6 local employees
- Board member
- Activities: Sales, implementation and global customer support
However, we noted that the state of embeddedness could fluctuate rapidly, especially in young and flexibly operating SMEs. We realized it was important to focus on the embedding process rather than on the static states of embeddedness. To aid our analysis of embeddedness’s dynamic and processual nature, we focused further on tracking the internationalization patterns of each case firm, starting from its foundation until the latest data-collection point. Following Langley (1999), we visually mapped the sequence of events on different levels (e.g., the establishment of a subsidiary and appointments of key employees) that could describe the embedding process of the case firms (see Appendix).
In the second phase of coding, we used categories that emerged from the literature (external, internal, and dual embeddedness) to concentrate on the embedding process, how the companies attempted to achieve external embeddedness, the tensions this effort created for the internal dynamics of each firm, and how they coordinated and managed their dual embeddedness. For instance, having a virtual presence via “technological bridging” (discussed below) was prevalent in all cases, yet extant literature had not highlighted this mechanism. Further, to scrutinize the SME context, we focused on the liabilities of newness and smallness that are typical to SMEs, in addition to foreignness and outsidership, concluding that the firms used embedding as a mitigation strategy for their various liabilities.
The detailed results of both stages of analysis are reported in the following sections. The figures, tables, and framework enabled us to identify differences and similarities between the cases. Finally, we moved iteratively between the literature and the case data to refine our findings by relating them to existing theories and clarifying our contributions.
4 Findings
4.1 Case Descriptions
Appendix shows the timeline of key events for the firms, including their establishing branch offices/subsidiaries in international markets and their increasing (or decreasing) multiple embeddedness in home and host locations. We assessed our informants’ embeddedness changes during the interviews by asking about the motivation for location decisions and how they affected the firm’s relative orientation toward its home and host location(s). In the lower part of each figure, Hess’s (2004) three dimensions of embeddedness are identified and marked with either (−), signifying an event increasing embeddedness in the home location, or (+), signifying an event that increased embeddedness in the host location. All four firms operate in two or three countries with a varying degree of embeddedness in each country.
Table 2 describes the subsidiary structure for each firm. The firms have always had their legal domicile and official HQ in their home country. Cases 1 and 3 have the most key activities and executive team members in their home country. Case 1 has the strongest home country presence, with only one executive team member outside the domestic HQ. With Case 2, the executive team and key activities are in the branch offices, and the Finnish HQ is virtual despite its legal status. Case 3 works closely on R&D with a New Zealand university, requiring a strong presence in NZ despite its markets being elsewhere. Cases 1, 3, and 4 have unofficial international head offices that are the center of their foreign operations. However, these are not regional HQs with a coordinating role; they are larger units that host most of the international employees and some key activities because an executive team member works from that location. Case 4 has moved almost all its core operations outside NZ and retains only administrative and R&D functions in its NZ HQ. Its international HQ is the administrative hub in Silicon Valley that hosts most of its key activities. Cases 2, 3, and 4 also have international branch offices that host one or more executive team members.
4.2 Themes from Analysis
4.2.1 The Process of Embedding
The case firms illustrate how firms may become embedded in their host location(s). Case 1 started by sending a Finn to establish its US subsidiary, initially resulting in lower external embeddedness but higher embeddedness within the organization. This expatriate later returned to Finland to become the new CEO, while a local person was hired to run global sales and marketing from the US subsidiary. Case 2 had a multicultural founding team. An executive team member established the firm’s operations in the UK, and a Pole then moved back to Poland to launch the firm’s development center. The firm later hired a new CEO in the UK. Case 3 started with a relatively high degree of external embeddedness by hiring a US-based Vice President of industrial applications to create a US subsidiary and later repeated the move by appointing a local Vice President for consumer devices in a different location in the US. Subsequently, it established a third US location with a local R&D team. Its CTO was hired from this location but quickly relocated to NZ.
Case 4 is particularly complex. This firm started its US operations by sending an expatriate with experience in the market. Several other employees relocated from NZ to this location, helping to keep internal embeddedness high. The executive team later relocated from NZ. Another US location is staffed entirely by US locals, including the CTO. There is also a team of remote employees in 13 US states who are US nationals. The subsidiary in the Netherlands, an acquisition of an existing business, is staffed by Dutch citizens. In 2015, Case 4 hired a US-based CEO to lead the firm. However, this did not work out, and the company hired a new CEO based in the NZ office.
The sequences in Appendix demonstrate that the degree of embeddedness in the host location typically increases. However, as seen in Appendix, this process is often not linear; a firm may decrease or rapidly increase its embeddedness. A firm might establish a greenfield subsidiary or branch office and send an employee from its home country to start the operations. This individual is typically a sales or support person in a small MNE. This way, the firm achieves spatial and partial societal embeddedness by incorporating a subsidiary. However, adherence to local social norms, credibility, and legitimacy may be weak, as the employee is not well embedded in local social networks. Hiring local employees increases the firm’s external embeddedness. These individuals bring local networks and knowledge of cultural norms and ways of working that help the firm to acculturate and strengthen its network embeddedness. An expatriate member (or members) of the executive team may move into the subsidiary, increasing the unit’s internal embeddedness within the organization. Finally, a local person can be appointed to the executive team or board, further increasing external embeddedness in the host location and internal embeddedness within the organization. This is summarized in Fig. 2, which shows both the linear (the straight diagonal arrow) and non-linear process of increasing (and sometimes decreasing) embeddedness in a small MNE. The curved arrows describe the typical variations around the general path, which is more or less linear, as illustrated by Case 4’s return to an NZ-based CEO and Case 3’s leap to a later stage. Further, a firm may decrease its commitment. It might, for example, move from “FDI + Executive team expatriates” back to “FDI/local employees,” which would reduce internal embeddedness.
Fig. 2
Process of increasing/decreasing host location embeddedness in small MNEs
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4.2.2 External Embeddedness
Embedding in host markets typically starts when a firm strives for external embeddedness (or uses its existing embeddedness) in a given location. Given that all the case firms were in technology-based industries, they considered it essential to be insiders in key industry locations. The interviewees used the terms “nexus” and “cluster” frequently, and their comments suggest they view embedding in such locations as more important than being in the host country per se:
The reality is that companies go to Silicon Valley to find new technology. Being there provides credibility for us. Companies are not coming to New Zealand to look for new technology. They go to the US to look for technology. Our Korean customers go to Silicon Valley to look for new technology. Our Chinese customers are the same. It becomes a matter of where we need to be in order to attract the attention of the key people. (CEO, Case 3)
All four firms had well-defined customer bases and emphasized the importance of easily interacting with customers and key influencers in their industry. A statement by the CEO of Case 2 illustrates this:
Because [CTO] is in London, he can very easily meet with the people who have a lot of influence in the television industry. These people either have an office in London or visit the city often. (CEO, Case 2)
All case firms established subsidiaries or branch offices to access talent, gain credibility, and to lower costs, as this quote from the CEO of Case 2 illustrates:
As we have functions centered in different locations, meaning Poland, we have much better access to talent than in Finland, it would be very difficult to hire experienced coders here, and in Poland it’s much easier. It’s because of two things: we have networks there, meaning [founder X and founder Y’s] acquaintances and in Poland we can pay competitive salaries. Meanwhile in Finland we couldn’t afford to hire them, and I don’t even know that many coders here [in Finland]. (CEO, Case 2)
To varying degrees, the case firms think of themselves as host-country locals and have adapted their companies to reflect local business norms. In addition, the case firms use local legal and accounting firms to help them adhere to legal requirements and business norms, as this quote from the CEO of Case 1 illustrates:
We have to be in the US so that we would look like a US firm, so that they [customers] would trust us and that we would have a US bank account number, all these things that come from there [US]. (CEO, Case 1)
Case 4 also has American members of its executive team and US-based members of its board. This firm has even organized and named positions within the whole company according to US norms:
We have adopted American hierarchy in terms of the naming convention, and the American hierarchy is quite well-defined, so you have C-level, and then underneath you have VP, or SVP levels, then underneath you have the director level and underneath that you have a manager level and then you have the individual contributors at the bottom. So, we have people for all of those positions. Whereas New Zealand doesn’t really have a clear hierarchy in its management structure, we tend to have the managing director, and everyone else. (CEO, Case 4)
Similarly, a founder of Case 3 had a decade of experience working in the US and has consciously steered the company towards being “a US firm.” The firm has adopted a “US culture,” even though most of its employees (87%) are in NZ:
While we are a New Zealand company, we are presenting ourselves to our customers in US and we are behaving like a US company. From a legal perspective the US is still a subsidiary of us but from the day one of the key things for us has been to be a global company, not a New Zealand company. We don’t think like a New Zealand company, I don’t think we have a culture of New Zealand company, I’ve spent ten years of my career living and working in the US, doing start-ups and being entrepreneur in that market. We bring a very different perspective in the way we build our business. (CEO, Case 3)
Locally incorporated subsidiaries help the firms to become immersed in the local environment and to learn its intricacies, as a quote from Case 1 illustrates:
[Former CEO] actually changed [Excel] to Quickbooks when he hired [US employee], and [US employee] who had an accounting degree came in to be office manager and looked at him and said, “why are you doing this on an Excel spreadsheet?”. And he was like “Oh, kind of write the cheques out and we have an outside account” because they were just young guys. “No,” she says, “No. I’m an accountant and you can be put in jail for this so we’re going to get Quickbooks and put our cheques and have our taxes done right”. (President of US Inc, Case 1)
Case firms often learned local intricacies by hiring people in local markets. As the CEO of Case 4 put it:
If you want to be successful in America, you must hire Americans. Americans want to buy from Americans, Germans want to buy from Germans, Dutch want to buy from Dutch. (CEO, Case 4)
In addition, by employing local member(s) of the executive team, some of the firms were able to relocate value-adding activities such as R&D to the subsidiaries and thus build legitimacy with local customers and governments:
[Board member] is recognized as being one of the most successful hardware technology executives in Silicon Valley. We are excited that he can provide advice and insight as we look to build our development centers offshore. [VP of Engineering] brings broad technical and management experience leading large teams in international multi-disciplined R&D efforts. They are ideal complements to our board and senior leadership team as we embark on our next phase of growth. (Press release, Case 3)
In sum, small MNEs’ multiple locations have various constraining and enabling factors that influence their external embeddedness. The motive(s) for establishing foreign units originates from the small MNE’s original home country and founding team characteristics, influencing the embedding process. For example, the firms used their employees’ social and business networks when selecting locations for their foreign units, providing them with a head start for embedding themselves in their host location.
4.2.3 Internal Embeddedness
While achieving sufficient external embeddedness in host locations, firms must also develop internal embeddedness. Small MNEs have physical offices in multiple countries and thus typically employ a variety of nationals working in different parts of the globe. Therefore, they may have tensions regarding their internal working cultures. For instance, Case 1 has most of its employees and top management team in Finland, and the board of directors is Finnish. Its internal culture is Finnish, including that of the US subsidiary, although it strives to appear like a US firm. As the President (US Inc) of Case 1 explained:
The same values we have in Finland are applied here. Identical values for Finland and here [US]. We treat this [US subsidiary] as a Finnish company. I treat it like we are Finns here. So, like I don’t fire people for having an issue here. Where if I was in an American company, I’d fire them on the spot. I don’t make my people here to work 12 to 14 hours a day. It’s not the way our company works. They work their 8 – 8½ hours a day [like in Finland]. (President (US Inc), Case 1)
To manage these tensions, firms must have mechanisms for increasing external embeddedness while maintaining internal embeddedness. One mechanism is social bridging. Interviewees highlighted routines for regular meetings and communication habits that make managing these globally dispersed organizations run “like clockwork,” as the CEO of Case 3 described:
[VP of engineering] manages the distributed engineering team. It works like clockwork to be honest. His project managers run weekly project reviews which people around the parts of the world join, he has his own management leadership meeting with his engineering management team once a week, they have all hands meetings and detailed project review meetings scheduled on regular basis. All of these things make up the fabric of in which how they communicate and work together. (CEO, Case 3)
Similarly, the CEO of Case 4 explained that:
I have one-on-one meetings with all of my direct reports every week and I have a group meeting once a week as well. And that’s supposed to happen all through the chain. My head of operations will have one-on-ones with his direct reports and then a group meeting with his direct reports once a week, so all the reporting comes back up. (CEO, Case 4)
Additionally, the CEO of Case 1 highlighted how the firm had changed many practices to promote trust and transparency among employees in different locations. For instance, Case 1 decided that the primary purpose of its board meetings is to share information with rotating guests from the management team. It also ensures that its customer-facing employees, who are based in its US subsidiary, know about the status of R&D projects, an issue that had hindered its sales efforts. Case 4 CEO noted that keeping up with operations of different locations means his working life involves constant travel:
I come back here to this office [New Zealand] every six weeks, I go to the European office two or three times a year, I try to go once a quarter, I go to see Seattle maybe once a month, so I’m doing a lot of traveling trying to keep that [culture]. It’s difficult to have a culture when you have your team distributed like this. Again, culture is incredibly important to a small company. (CEO, Case 4)
In small firms that operate globally, time zones can delay responses from key individuals who reside in different locations. Power must be delegated, as not every unit has a senior manager. Still, they may have global responsibilities (not just a specific market area) even if they reside mainly in one location. Quotes from case firms 1 and 3 illustrate how this may be executed in small MNEs:
I give a lot of power to people. If you give them responsibility, you also give them power. These are not separate concepts. So, people can decide about a lot of things by themselves, and then we accept also that mistakes will happen. (CEO, Case 1)
Case 3 hosts mostly senior managers in its international subsidiaries and thus can trust they achieve the commonly agreed objectives without close supervision:
I look at the decision-making process, and I describe our decision-making system as one of robust debate. It’s not about management coming up with all the answers and coming up with the decision but having an open environment where especially the key decisions are debated. (CEO, Case 3)
As small MNEs often multinationalize soon after their founding, they embed more towards their locations while they simultaneously also grow. This process may seem straightforward, as Fig. 2 suggests, but it can cause tensions. New managers become part of a globally dispersed management team, and their roles are more complex than in MNEs with more regional-level managers. Still, being a small MNE has advantages: the social mechanisms increasing internal embeddedness are stronger, coordinating operations is easier, and managers have more operating autonomy.
4.2.4 Managing Simultaneous Internal and External Embeddedness: Dual Embeddedness
Adapting to the norms and practices of a host location (increasing external embeddedness) while also striving to achieve internal embeddedness may be challenging. A firm may also need to balance these goals with maintaining external embeddedness in the home location (or multiple locations). Thus, achieving dual embeddedness becomes crucial.
The experience of the case firms suggests that the locations of key employees and the executive team significantly influence the embeddedness into the home or host locations (see Appendix) and internal embeddedness. Case 1 has most of its employees and executive team in Finland, and its board of directors is Finnish. However, it hired US-based accountants to help it adhere to local regulations. In contrast, Case 2 had a multicultural founding team and is now weakly embedded in its home country of Finland. It is now highly embedded both in the UK because of its market nexus and in Poland, where most of the founding team is from and where it now has the most employees. The CEO of Case 3 focused on finding talented employees wherever they lived and leaving them in place. Other interviewees offered examples of using local knowledge globally without transferring people from their homes, where they are embedded in local networks. For example, Case 3 appointed a leading Silicon Valley technologist to its board of directors, who brought a wealth of experience and knowledge from this industry nexus. Further, this board member helped the firm hire a locally sourced VP of Engineering. Similarly, Case 4’s board includes several US-based board members who bring their industry expertise and local connections.
The companies remained connected to their home locations despite being embedded in host locations. For example, Case 3 maintained its R&D activities in NZ by working with a local university. The home country or host locations may also be costly, creating tension between a location’s benefits and costs. This is illustrated by the contrasting experiences of Case 2 and Cases 3 and 4. The CEO of Case 2 emphasized the cost advantages of locating its development activities in Poland. In contrast, the CEOs of Cases 3 and 4 argued that the benefits of locating in Silicon Valley outweighed the costs of having an office there.
A critical tension in dual embeddedness is how embedded the firm seems from the outside versus how it “feels” inside. For all case firms, it was essential that from the outside, they appeared local. The feeling inside varied – some firms felt that they were also “host country local” with the business culture fully adapted to host country norms; one case’s informant stated that while they are American on the outside, they are Finnish on the inside. Thus, the degree of adaptation to the host country concerning internal business culture may vary.
Another critical dimension in dual embeddedness in small MNEs involves where to establish/keep specific functions and employees. Because their resources are scarce, they have little redundancy, and most functions have a global responsibility. As the case firms became more embedded in their host countries, they sometimes reduced their home-country operations to the extent that they moved their HQ functions to the host country. There were significant shifts in gravity for firms that chose a new home location. In a large MNE, a subsidiary may gain legitimacy based on the expertise developed there (e.g., Ryan et al., 2020), but this seems to happen differently in our small MNEs.
4.2.5 Virtual Embeddedness
Regardless of how embedded these firms were, there was evidence of a virtual dimension of embeddedness, especially internal embeddedness. Relatedly, we identified a mechanism that we call technological bridging. Because of their dispersed organizational structures, the case firms had found ways to bridge the physical distance using information and communication technology (ICT). The interviewees highlighted that ICT could be used in various ways, from communication to product development. The CEO of Case 3 has previous experience of taking a New Zealand firm to US markets and thinks that advances in ICT and its decreasing cost have eased operating from many locations tremendously in recent years:
We’ve become very good at using all of the modern technology tools available online – they make it a lot easier to do it than what it was five to ten years ago, I mean ten years ago it would have been very difficult for a company like ours to operate in many different locations, in many different places. (CEO, Case 3)
While the CEO of Case 4 is based in New Zealand most of the time, he can stay up to date on the operations of all locations. The company has established metrics for all areas of operations that can be viewed from a management dashboard:
Every area has a dashboard that has the reports on. – Because you can’t micromanage people anymore, you have to step back and manage so everyone has different metrics, so I have metrics for my team, and then they set metrics for their people – . (CEO, Case 4)
Additionally, digital channels help with customer relationships when trust is already achieved. Once a firm has established its key customer relationships in the first phases of multinational operations, it is increasingly easy to maintain the relationships via digital channels:
Nowadays [physical presence] doesn’t matter that much in our relations to our corporate clients because they know us, and they are in contact via digital channels. (CEO, Case 1)
However, there may be tensions caused by differences in individuals’ preferences. For instance, case firms were hesitant to employ new technologies. For example, the CEO of Case 1 describes communications with the US subsidiary:
It’s a video call now, previously we didn’t use the video function because we didn’t want them to see what we think. But [President (US Inc)] demanded it. When I started as CEO, we decided to open up things. In [previous CEO’s] era, lots of things were hidden. But then I thought this doesn’t work like this, [President of US Inc] can’t sell if he doesn’t know, and he has to know before [product] is ready so that he can influence [the development]. And we were afraid that he’ll try to influence it too much. (CEO, Case 1)
Although virtual offices are used in start-ups with small budgets or in more established firms that wish to employ individuals in numerous locations, the CTO of Case 2 described why he does not enjoy this way of working:
One thing is that you get stacked in your home, and yeah you see you are progressing, but you know, it’s kind of different [to work from office], like damn, I have an office now. I go to some cafes and work at home, and it doesn’t feel the same. When I am in Poland, and I actually go to the office, I have a warm feeling - now that you have this office, you can go there and work from there. (CTO, Case 2)
There may also be tensions in virtual work caused by employees residing in different parts of the globe not understanding each other, as described by the CEO of Case 4:
Email is probably one of the worst ways to communicate. We are constantly dealing with people issues created by emails. Particularly when you have multiple cultures in your company. And often their [European employees] directness can be interpreted by Americans as insulting, and this creates problems. What we are encouraging in the company is to stop using email particularly when you start getting into any kind of argument or conflict, pick up the phone and talk to somebody. (CEO, Case 4)
Thus, while ICT blurs the division between home and host location and may help achieve dual embeddedness, technological bridging may not be sufficient.
In sum, although virtual embeddedness can facilitate embeddedness in a globally dispersed organization, it can also replace or complement physical operations when the firm is already externally embedded. Thus, the role of technological bridging evolves. As legitimacy with host-country local customers is achieved, the firm’s location may become less important due to its virtual presence.
5 Discussion and Conclusions
5.1 Managing Multiple Dimensions of Embeddedness
We used social embeddedness theory (Busch & Barkema, 2020; Granovetter, 1985; Uzzi, 1997) and drew on two related streams of literature: entrepreneurship (e.g., McKeever et al., 2015) and international business (e.g., Meyer et al., 2011). We combined insights from this literature with empirical observations from our four cases to examine the multiple dimensions of embeddedness of small MNEs. In this way, we contributed to embeddedness research by responding to the call for further investigation of the interactions among the various types of embeddedness (Wigren-Kristoferson et al., 2022), especially in understanding how firms manage dual (simultaneous internal and external) embeddedness (Cenamor et al., 2019; Ciabuschi et al., 2011, 2014). Figure 3 summarizes our model of the embeddedness of small MNEs in multiple locations. Each firm is embedded to different degrees in at least two locations, having a physical presence in its home and one or more international locations. In addition, both domestic and foreign units are embedded within the firm. Finally, the resources available in home and host locations constrain and enable embeddedness in one or several locations.
Fig. 3
Multiple dimensions of embeddedness of small MNEs
×
We studied multiple embeddedness as a process of increasing (and decreasing) embeddedness in both home and host locations. Becoming embedded in host locations is relatively rapid in small MNEs. While Fig. 3 provides a static view of embeddedness, our results suggest that constant development and even drastic changes in gravity may occur during short periods due to these firms’ smallness and newness. Our cases suggest that small MNEs often move towards host-location embeddedness and away from home-location embeddedness. Thus, small MNEs’ multiple embeddedness is ever-fluctuating; if resources (e.g., number of employees, etc.) stay the same, increasing embeddedness in the host location typically means that embeddedness simultaneously decreases in another location (such as the home location). If a small MNE grows, it can increase its embeddedness in more than one location. If it does not grow significantly and must be embedded in its key host markets, it may need to diminish its presence in the original home market to a bare minimum. Simultaneously, a small MNE’s view of its origin may shift; this firm may start to view itself as a host country firm despite originating from elsewhere.
While extant research on MNE embeddedness assumes subsidiaries have important global responsibilities and are externally and internally embedded, the subsidiary in a small MNE may be a desk in a shared office, where the employee in this office is the key resource. Further, Jha et al. (2018) suggested that subsidiaries of large MNEs can become externally embedded relatively quickly because of the MNE’s legitimacy but take longer to establish internal embeddedness. Our study indicates that the employees of small MNEs are influential in this sense. Small MNEs typically lack the legitimacy of large MNEs when expanding to host markets, and their employees must rely on their personal legitimacy through their embeddedness in local networks. Host-country employees are often the easiest way to gain such legitimacy. Our findings shift analytical attention away from the subsidiary and toward such employees. These individuals are also crucial for solving the dual-network problem because they are strategic insiders, a source of embeddedness that has been posited as influential but remains under-researched (e.g., Geletkanycz & Boyd, 2011; Hillman et al., 2000; Oehmichen & Puck, 2016). We provide empirical evidence of how these individuals play this role. An executive can be integrated into home and host country networks, enhancing internal and external embeddedness. Executives from host locations can bridge to the external social environment due to their existing ties even as they are internally embedded within the small MNE. This practice is an example of how some small MNEs vary from the dominant model of having all executive team members in a single HQ to facilitate the multiple dimensions of embeddedness. Our findings provide insight into the microfoundations of leadership in the embedding process, a phenomenon that research has also largely overlooked in large MNEs (e.g., Meyer et al., 2020).
Notably, each form of embeddedness has a different role in the firm. For instance, from the perspective of the firms’ HQ, multiple embeddedness is essential as it impacts the firms’ internationalization-related decisions and how exposed it is to different host country locations. Managing dual embeddedness, especially knowledge acquisition and sharing, for subsidiary development also becomes important for the HQ.
5.2 Embedding as a Mitigation Strategy to Various Small MNEs’ Liabilities
Embeddedness can also be viewed through the lens of the liabilities concept (e.g., Johanson & Vahlne, 2009; Vahlne et al., 2012), which helps focus attention on the challenges that small MNEs face during internationalization. The interplay between the four liabilities is crucial for small MNEs compared to large MNEs. The liability of newness may increase the likelihood that a young firm with few resources undertakes FDI and disperses its top management team and core activities to international subsidiaries and offices. To some extent, newness offers agility and flexibility (i.e., the learning advantage of newness) while creating benefits through dual embeddedness. A small MNE may need to disperse its executives to launch and manage foreign operations with few resources.
Conversely, external embeddedness is required to mitigate the liabilities of foreignness and outsidership. Our observations suggest that bridging is the primary way small MNEs manage the need for dual embeddedness. They disperse the top management team and other key employees and their core activities for these to act as the bridge. For example, a small MNE may find hiring middle managers for a subsidiary challenging because resources are scarce (liability of smallness). Instead, the firm might have the founding team double as subsidiary managers and locate them in subsidiaries. These individuals may be expatriates or host-country locals with native knowledge of the host country (overcoming the liability of foreignness and achieving external embeddedness) and existing access to local networks, information, and resources (overcoming the liability of external outsidership and achieving external embeddedness). Because they are founders or executive team members, they have close ties to the rest of the organization, increasing internal embeddedness. Being new may help firms achieve simultaneous dual embeddedness. For an older company with established routines and structural rigidity, dispersion of the top management team in this way might be more difficult.
5.3 Virtual Embeddedness
While extant research on virtual embeddedness focuses on firms’ external inter-organizational connections (Morse et al., 2007; Smith et al., 2017), we provide empirical evidence that virtual embeddedness inside the firm is important. Virtual embeddedness both facilitates internal embeddedness and can be used to replace or complement physical operations when the firm is already externally embedded. Thus, we suggest that the role of technological bridging as an embedding mechanism is dynamic and evolves. In an increasingly virtual world of work, the binary distinctions in the embeddedness literature are becoming blurred.1 For example, the difference between home and host locations may be losing importance, as key staff members can be virtually present in multiple locations via virtual meetings and other technological tools. We identified a mechanism, technological bridging, that small MNEs use to bridge physical distance and foster virtual embeddedness.
5.4 Practical Implications
Our study provides helpful guidelines for managers in current or future small MNEs that want to mitigate their liabilities when internationalizing. Small MNEs can establish subsidiaries or branch offices in key international markets or the nexus of their industry. The firms we studied demonstrate how these units can drive core activities and house executive team members while benefiting from multiple embeddedness by using strategies to balance external and internal embeddedness.
6 Limitations and Future Research
We studied firms that established subsidiaries and located key activities and executive team members in host countries. More research is needed on international embedding and the variety of organizational structures used by small MNEs, including hybrid and lower commitment modes of entry. Strategies in which firms use their home country networks (e.g., expatriates in the host country) to embed in the host country also merit more research. Further, because all our cases were in technology sectors, selling to business customers and deriving most of their revenue from international markets, they might have needed to be more embedded in international locations. The required degree of embeddedness is likely different for firms that depend less on revenue from international markets or sell directly to consumers.
Moreover, our observations may be relevant only to firms with intangible products such as software. Perhaps the case firms could have flexible organizational structures because they did not have to invest in capital equipment or factories and could thus operate in multiple locations with low fixed costs. Intangible products can also be developed by teams working in different locations, which may be more difficult with physical products. Thus, future research might compare the embeddedness of firms with intangible and tangible products. In addition, because our case firms are still young, we did not have a long organizational history to assess change. Longitudinal or retrospective studies over extended periods will be welcome. Finally, social embeddedness concerns the nature, depth, and extent of individuals’ ties to the environment, community, and society (McKeever et al., 2014). Our research has focused on the nature of ties and their multiple dimensions in the present context, but it has not addressed the depth and extent of these ties. For example, future research could investigate these aspects of embeddedness in small MNEs with quantitative network analysis to assess their extent and longitudinal qualitative designs to understand their depth. In addition, our informants are all CEOs (most are co-founders) and other key employees, such as senior-level executives. Conducting more interviews with employees in different organizational positions would probably introduce other relevant perspectives.
Declarations
Conflict of Interest
The authors have no competing interests to declare.
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