We investigate how the enhancement of extraterritorial anticorruption enforcement act as a source of multinationals’ liabilities in foreign business. We backdrop U.S. banks’ global assets reallocation against the enforcement of Foreign Corrupt Practice Act (FCPA). We contextualize our study to the 9/11 attacks and antiterrorism legislations which unexpectedly enhanced the FCPA enforcement through both technical feasibility and U.S. government’s resolution. Analyzing a sample of firm-country pairs between 1998 and 2006 with a difference-in-differences approach, we find that U.S. banks lend significantly less to highly-corrupt countries than low-corrupt countries post the attacks. Further, we find this effect is weakened by the banks’ resilience to the heightened litigation risk (i.e., geographic dispersion) but strengthened by the banks’ vulnerability to the heightened litigation risk (i.e., network centrality of the bank in syndicated loans).

The paper involves taking a reflexive review on recent calls to decolonise international business. It adds context and variety to the decolonisation debate in the academic field of international business by engaging in a discussion of the decolonial thinking approach and proposing a broader framework for analysing the link between international business activities on the one hand and colonisation and decolonisation on the other. The aim is to inspire a more intensive engagement of international business scholarship with issues related to colonisation and decolonisation.

The paper argues that the current discussion of decolonisation should be extended beyond the decolonial thinking approach and its focus on knowledge and the cultural dimension towards a broader framework that covers both colonisation and decolonisation as well as the respective economic, political, social, and cultural dimensions. The paper suggests considering both colonisation and decolonisation processes as well as the respective economic, political, social, and cultural dimensions in research and teaching. It introduces the varieties of colonisation and decolonisation approach which considers the complexities of the phenomenon and covers the economic, social, political, and cultural dimensions. This provides a comprehensive and flexible alternative framework to analyse issues related to colonization and decolonisation.

This paper contributes to the recent debate on the role of Multinational Enterprises (MNEs) in addressing the grand challenge of green transition and explores the drivers of internationalization in the energy sector. We examine the influence of both firm-level and country-level factors on driving energy Foreign Direct Investment (FDI). Special attention is devoted to foreign energy investments made by MNEs operating in non-energy sectors. Our findings reveal distinctive motivations for energy FDI between energy and non-energy MNEs. Manufacturing and trade MNEs demonstrate lower responsiveness to host countries' energy support. However, they exhibit a greater likelihood of investing in energy FDI when they have pre-existing businesses in the same country, as well as in the presence of a significant technology gap in renewables and fossil fuel technology between the host and the original country. Financial and service MNEs are also less responsive to host countries' energy regulatory schemes, and less likely to invest in fossil fuel FDI. However, they place particular emphasis on the governance quality of the host country compared to other MNEs. These results provide valuable insights for motivating MNEs to actively participate in the global green transition.