"Multinational Corporations Nonmarket Strategies: A View from History"

Drawing on reflections by nonmarket strategy scholars on the state of the art of their field to determine important gaps in that literature, we maintain that they can be addressed with existing contributions of archival-based business historical studies. Those gaps include more nuanced understandings of how MNEs’ subsidiaries nonmarket strategies can differ or be consistent with those of the headquarters, a holistic understanding of the relationship between MNEs and the wider political and economic context, and ways by which MNEs intervene in diplomacy. We show that business historians explore those issues thanks to research methods that include archival-research and how they integrate the political context into the analysis of firms’ decisions. Based on a comprehensive literature review of business history in the light of issues of concern of the nonmarket strategy literature, we identify a range of nonmarket strategies employed by MNEs in volatile and often hostile host country environments.