This paper examines factors and policies underlying the attractiveness of EU regions to foreign direct investment (FDI) in high-value knowledge-intensive sectors such as aerospace, pharmaceuticals, information and communication and software. Understanding what drives the location choice of FDI in high-value sectors is important for designing policies aimed at enhancing the competitiveness, innovation and productivity of regions. We analyse the location choice of 33,482 new greenfield FDI projects in high-value knowledge-intensive sectors across EU regions over the period 2003–2020. The main findings indicate that a region’s attractiveness to high-value FDI is positively associated with EU market potential, market growth, the participation rate of the working age population in education and training programmes, workforce skills, the presence of agglomeration economies, R&D expenditure in the public sector, government funding of business expenditure on research and development and broadband access. Our results indicate that investors from the EU value location factors differently to investors from non-EU countries.

The offshoring of high-value innovative activities, such as R&D is a relatively new business model that has gained significance in the last two decades (Rodgers et al., 2019). Theories of management and international business suggest that firms must retain control over their high-value innovative activities to maintain a competitive edge (Demirbag et al., 2020). However, recent decades have seen the dispersal of these high-value activities across different geographical locations (Grecu et al., 2020).
The aim of this article is to examine the variations in the level of routineness and innovativeness R&D projects that are offshored to emerging and developed countries. Additionally, the study aims to investigate the differences in the level of routineness and innovativeness of R&D projects that are offshored to foreign branches and non-integrated contractors.
In order to accomplish the goals of the research, a self-administered survey was disseminated. An electronic questionnaire was utilized to around 2500 Multinational Corporations (MNCs) to attain the goals of the study and 108 responses were collected. In addition to utilizing one-way ANOVA and factorial ANOVA for the analysis, post-hoc analysis and Helmert contrast were employed to further validate the structural models and measurement.

Drawing on Penrose's theory of firm growth, this study examines how key managerial constraints and resources influence the speed of an MNE foreign re-entry. We use a dataset of 7994 Japanese MNEs, covering 3089 re-entries from 1991 to 2020. Our findings indicate that recent re-entry events potentially create managerial constraints that delay subsequent re-entry. Additionally, cultural distance from the home base and the cultural diversity of MNEs' portfolio exacerbate this effect. In contrast, the presence of expatriate parent country nationals (PCNs) at the time of exit acts as a managerial asset and accelerates re-entry. These findings contribute to our understanding of factors influencing re-entry timing, offering a fresh perspective on the re-entry process and expanding the study of the Penrosean effect in MNE internationalization.

Extant literature highlights the importance of organizational learning capabilities in securing survival though, previous findings report various effects of foreign subsidiary age on its survival rate. Aiming to expand the boundaries of organizational learning theory, we scrutinize the multifaceted impacts observed at different life stages of foreign subsidiaries, unveiling their probabilities of survival. Precisely, we investigate the synergistic impacts of endowment resources, the evolution of learning capabilities, liabilities of newness and foreignness, as well as the challenges of senescence and obsolescence on the survival of foreign subsidiaries. We further claim that the subsidiary relatedness could modify the foreign subsidiary age–survival relationship due to its connectedness to the parent core businesses. Our findings reveal that foreign survival rates change at distinct life stages. Interestingly, subsidiary relatedness shapes the development of endowment resources and learning capabilities and acts as the key moderator in this intricate relationship. Our study contributes to the extension of organizational learning theory and the literature on foreign survival by showcasing the diverse development of learning capabilities among foreign subsidiaries, resulting in varied propensities for foreign divestment. Practically, we stress the need for MNE executives to recognize that foreign survival rates are subject to change and influenced by relatedness