Foreign direct investment (FDI) has soared and multinational enterprises (MNEs) have grown in numbers and complexity as globalization has intensified. This volume takes stock of important new issues relating to FDI and MNEs in a changing world. Contributors are distinguished international business scholars who have written specifically for the book in their areas of expertise. The volume focuses on four key areas: How do managers and firms make internationalization decisions? How does the national origin of MNEs affect their competitive advantages and strategies, particularly those spawned by emerging markets? How is the scope of MNEs changing, in terms of what gets done inside and outside the firm, product vs. geographic diversification, manufacturing vs. services, and the pace of internationalization? And finally, what can or should governments do to harness MNEs for the greater good? In each area, authors propose interesting and important questions for further research. The volume is a Festschrift to Yair Aharoni of Tel Aviv University, whose pioneering research, including the seminal book, The Foreign Investment Decision Process (1966), helped launch the systematic study of FDI and MNEs almost fifty years ago.

One of the fundamental issues in organization and strategy research is identifying the factors that influence the development of firms over time. The current book introduces a new perspective regarding the firm development process - the Firm Growth Profile (FGP). We define the FGP as: a pattern of growth common to a cluster of firms that take similar actions while retaining a degree of idiosyncraticity. We assert that external factors limit variance in the way firms grow, hence firm development is not a purely idiosyncratic firm-level process, but rather an evolutionary process influenced by the external environment. Accordingly, we expect to identify groups of firms that operate in a similar way under similar external conditions or in specific contexts. To demonstrate this point of view we analyze the growth patterns of Israeli Hi Tech firms. In one study we analyze the exploration and exploitation patterns of firm activities along the product life cycle, by distinguishing between "component" and "total solution" producers. In a second study we focus on another major type of action sequence taken by Hi Tech firms - financial liquidation.