The decision to expand operations into foreign markets, ie to globalize, is one of the most important strategic decisions made by companies. Thus, variables that influence how, when, where, and why to internationalize have attracted much attention in scholarly journals.

Recent research reveals that countries are attractive not only because of their own institutions, but also as a function of their serving as a platform for entry into other regions. Multinational enterprises (MNEs) thus make globalization decisions with special consideration in mind for how a particular region/country will facilitate the firm’s further globalization into other regions/countries.

(Arregle, Jean-Luc, Toyah Miller, Michael Hitt, and Paul Beamish (2013), “Do Regions Matter? An Integrated Institutional and Semiglobalization Perspective on the Internationalization of MNEs,” Strategic Management Journal, 34, 910-934).