Strangers in a Strange Land: Legitimacy Formation by Polish Multinationals Venturing into Sub-Saharan Africa

Our paper revisits one of the fundamental questions of International Business (IB) scholarship, investigating the ways through which multinational enterprises (MNEs) establish legitimacy when entering a foreign market. We address this question in a novel context of Central and Eastern European (CEE)...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Management international review 2024-08, Vol.64 (4), p.671-700
Main Authors: Wasowska, Aleksandra, Obtoj, Krzysztof, Kopinski, Dominik
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Business
Business and Management
Business Strategy/Leadership
Case studies
China
Companies
Corporate social responsibility
Eastern Europe
Emerging Markets/Globalization
Global economy
Globalization
Host country
International business
International business enterprises
Legitimacy
Liability
Liability (Law)
Multinational corporations
Narratives
Natural resources
Nigeria
Operations Management
Organization
Poland
Research Article
Stereotypes
Strangers
Sub-Saharan Africa
Western Europe
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Summary:Our paper revisits one of the fundamental questions of International Business (IB) scholarship, investigating the ways through which multinational enterprises (MNEs) establish legitimacy when entering a foreign market. We address this question in a novel context of Central and Eastern European (CEE) firms venturing into Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), employing a multiple case study approach. We investigate the process of legitimacy formation by Polish firms entering SSA for market-seeking reasons. We find that the firms studied use their initial liabilities of foreignness, outsidership, and origin as starting points for pragmatic, moral, and cognitive legitimacy-building by developing narratives that neutralize the distance between themselves and important local stakeholders. Our findings contribute to an understanding of the contingent nature of ‘liabilities’ in IB literature and shed light on the role of narratives in the internationalization process.
ISSN:0938-8249
1861-8901
DOI:10.1007/s11575-024-00548-2