La tesis se compone de dos partes. En la primera (capítulo dos) se presenta una extensión de un modelo de entrada "à la Dixit". Se considera un marco en el que las decisiones de entrada del líder pueden revelar información acerca de la rentabilidad de los mercados a un seguidor. En este contexto se caracteriza el comportamiento estratégico del líder. Asimismo, se demuestra que cuando la rentabilidad esperada de los mercados se situa a un nivel intermedio el líder opta por una estrategia de introducción secuencial con el fin de retrasar la entrada del competidor. Por el contrario, cuando la rentabilidad esperada de los mercados es menor, el líder tiende a introducirse en todos ellos al mismo tiempo, con el fin de evitar la entrada de la otra empresa. En la segunda parte de la tesis (capítulos 3 a 6) se estudia la manera en que las empresas organizan sus acuerdos de cooperación. En el capítulo 3 se proporciona una introducción al tema. En los capítulos 4 y 5 se presentan dos modelos teóricos. En el primero se utiliza un marco de contratos incompletos y se analiza el rol que el aprendizaje del know-how del partner juega en el desarrollo de dos modos de organización de alianzas estratégicas, esto es, Joint Ventures y acuerdos de contratos. Se demuestra que cuanto mayor es la asimetría en la capacidad de aprendizaje de las empresas, mejor es la Joint Venture. El modelo presentado en el capítulo 5 combina las herramientas y métodos de dos áreas de la literatura económica: inversión bajo incertidumbre y teoría de la búsqueda. El objetivo principal del modelo consiste en relacionar la forma de gobierno elegida por las empresas involucradas en la alianza con las características del sector en el que la alianza tiene lugar. Se demuestra que cuanto mayor es la incertidumbre a la que se enfrentan las empresas, mayor es la probabilidad de que elijan formas de gobierno más flexibles, como los acuerdos de contratos. El último capítulo se dedica a la investigación empírica del tema. Se contrastan algunas de las predicciones que pueden ser derivadas de los modelos presentados en los capítulos 4 y 5, así como aquellas que han sido destacadas en otros trabajos teóricos. / The thesis is composed of two distinct parts. In the first one (chapter 2), I present an extension of an entry model "à la Dixit". I consider a setting in which the entry decisions of the first mover might reveal information about the markets' profitability to a second entrant. In this context, I characterize the first mover's strategic behavior. I show that when priors about markets profitability are at an intermediate level, then the first mover enters them sequentially trying to delay the competitor's entry. On the contrary, when priors are lower, the first mover tends to enter all the markets at the same time trying to preempt the other firm. In the second part of the thesis (chapters 3,4,5,6), I consider the issue of the governance form of strategic alliances. That is, I study the way in which firms organize their cooperative arrangements. In chapter 3, there is a brief introduction to the topic. In chapters 4 and 5, I present two theoretical models. In the first one, I employ an incomplete contracts setting and I analyze the role of learning the partner's know-how on the performances of two typical modes of organizing strategic alliances, namely Joint Ventures and Contractual Agreements. I show that the more asymmetric firms' absorptive capacities are, the better a Joint Venture performs. The model of chapter 5 combines the tools and methods of two strands of economic literature: investment under uncertainty and search theory. The main objective of the model is that of relating the form of governance that partners choose for their alliance to the typology of the project undertaken and to the characteristics of the sector in which the alliance takes place. It is proved that the larger the uncertainty that partners face, the more likely that they choose more flexible forms of cooperation such as Contractual Agreements. The last chapter is devoted to an empirical assessment of the topic. I test some of the predictions that can be derived from the models of chapters 4 and 5 as well as those that have been put forward by other theoretical studies dealing with the same issue.

This dissertation consists of three essays broadly centering on external changes and how organizations respond to these change by altering themselves. My investigations focus on knowledge transfer and innovation related firm responses with an emphasis on firms’ especially, Multinational Enterprises’ (MNEs) market strategies such as ownership, governance and location choices and their non-market strategies such as political networking and stakeholder management. I'm particularly interested in emerging countries and the changing institutional environment in those contexts. To study changes occurring in different speeds and varying firm responses to them, I have hand-collected longitudinal datasets for different industries and employed both qualitative and quantitative methodologies: my datasets covers both moderately-dynamic industries such as multinational construction and retailing and as well as more knowledge-intensive industries such as multinational pharmaceutical, electronics and computer & software industries. Chapter 1: MNE Legitimacy in the Eyes of the People: Insights from Libya about Surviving Association with an Overthrown Regime In the first chapter, I investigate how firms respond to changes that are less-anticipated and takes place in a rapid fashion. Differentiating between the learning that MNEs accumulate at the host-countries and related learning they transfer from similar locations, this paper is built upon and extend theories about how MNEs, cope with institutional voids and transitions in relation to their political connections, corporate social responsibility strategies and interactions with stakeholders in the emerging countries. In order to do so, I conducted an in-depth qualitative study on how different MNEs with different interaction levels to the Gaddafi Regime, society, tribes and the new government in Libya were affected by the Arab Spring. In this paper, using the Arab Spring as a natural experiment and employing Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) and Fuzzy-set methodology, we build new theory on how MNEs can survive and even thrive during times of fast institutional transitions. We introduce “the legitimacy of the government” as an alternative measure of host-country political environment assessment and suggest that MNEs that deepened, broadened and expanded their political connections and strategies to multiple political actors and complemented them with CSR related activities fare better major institutional changes at the host countries. In addition, the results suggest that host-country only specific learning can lock-in MNEs not to see the changing “tea leaves” if they don't complement it with their recent related experiences from their operations other countries. Chapter 2: The Effect of Different Post-Entry Experiences on Changing Market Entry Choices The second chapter focuses on post-entry operations of multinational retail firms that are required to offer a standardized service for an effective knowledge redeploying, but also need to recombine their HQ knowledge with the knowledge that the subsidiaries possess, to ensure adaptation to the local conditions at the same time. The change, now being the multiple uncertainties related with multinational retail chains’ internationalization into different locations, I first analyze how these firms decide on efficient firm boundaries and positioning after their entry into the host countries, and then investigate effects of these post-entry choices on their performance at the host-countries. Constructing a novel data-set of MNEs post-entry commitments in the host countries, my study reviews MNEs’ behavior after they have entered a foreign country and individually tracks their alteration of its ownership and retail format changes over time within that country starting from 1975 and until 2013. This paper provides a more process-based understanding of MNEs’ choices and strategies at the host countries, which extends the scant literature on mode-dynamics. The empirical results show that; MNEs are more likely to change their governance modes after the negative initial performance rather than after the positive initial performance, however, they tend to act completely in the reverse fashion for their decisions regarding changing their initial format choices at post-entry. I also show that the MNEs that change these initial market entry choices regardless of the initial performance have higher probability of survival at the host countries at post-entry, controlling for the dissimilarity between the home and the host countries and after taking into consideration of the possible selection effect of initial market entry decisions. Chapter 3: Differential Effects of Local, Foreign Firms and Supra-National Institutions on the Pace of Institutional Change in Developing Countries In the third chapter, I track changes in local innovation process and IP regime at the same time in the knowledge intensive patent areas such as pharmaceuticals, computer, software and electronics in developing countries. My focus is on Trade Related Intellectual Property Standards (TRIPS) agreement which was signed between developed and developing countries that made it compulsory in emerging countries the protection of product patents along with the process patents. Developing countries were given a 10-year allowance until January 1, 2005, in order to bring their patent system into line with TRIPS obligations as well as other flexibilities. Interestingly, while some of the developing countries such as India used these flexibilities and waited until the end of the 10-year allowance, some countries such as Brazil, Korea and Turkey ratified the TRIPS agreement and put the new regulations into action right away. We explain the variation in developing countries’ rate of TRIPS compliance by new institutionalism and co-evolutionary perspectives, by presenting a framework that shows effects of different actors within innovation systems on different trajectory and rates of institutional change. The results indicate that higher composition of local firms result in slower change of the IP Regime in developing countries, while higher the Advanced Country Multinationals, faster the change. I also find that supranational institutions such as IMF moderate this relationship. / Business Administration/Strategic Management

本論文探討台北市連鎖式便利商店的市場進入決策。研究發現在便利商店的產業裡，相較於多重市場接觸(亦即是否已同時出現在其他市場)的考量，與競爭對手門市的距離對廠商的進入決策有較大的影響。此外，上期競爭對手存在與否，也是廠商是否進入該市場的重要衡量依據。大型連鎖店會進入前一期競爭較激烈的市場，這些市場競爭對手的門市已有一家以上；而小型連鎖店通常不會依據對手的門市數目來決定其進入的決策。最後，利用不同的落後期變數設定，本文發現廠商的進入決策具有一致性。這表示在台北市，便利商店已經是相當成熟的產業了。 / In this paper we study entry decisions of the convenience store chains in Taipei. We find that the distance between store pairs is more relevant to firms' entry decisions than the multimarket contact (i.e., firms encounter each other in multiple markets) in this industry. In addition, the presence of a firm's rivals in the previous period plays an important role in the entry decision. The large convenience store chains are more likely to enter more competitive markets, such as markets consisting of more than one rivals' store. On the other hand, the small chains are indifferent to their rivals' presence when making their entry decisions. Lastly, firms' entry decisions are consistent when different measurements of lagged variables are used. We interpret that the convenience store industry may have reached a stable state in Taipei.