International Establishment Mode Choice: Past, Present and Future

Despite over three decades of research focusing on the choice multinational enterprises make between establishing foreign operations through either cross-border acquisitions or greenfield start-ups our understanding of the issues that impact this choice and the performance outcomes of making this decision is still unclear. To help improve knowledge in this area we provide a comprehensive review of the empirical studies on international establishment mode choice published between 1980 and 2015. Through this method we gain a greater understanding of the theories used, the variables employed, and the empirical results. In this way we can detect inconsistencies and offer suggestions for future research. We identify a number of issues that future studies need to address: changes to the models, introducing new theories or combining theories, applying new or better methods, and most importantly linking this choice to performance. Hence, our study consolidates knowledge in this area and highlights several ways to improve our understanding of the international establishment mode decision.