Purpose

Cities remain an understudied unit of analysis for understanding the motives of multinational enterprises’ (MNE) foreign direct investment (FDI), with subnational locations in International Business (IB) research to date predominantly captured via the phenomenon of agglomeration. As regional integration projects, such as the European Union and to a lesser degree NAFTA, increasingly reduce the importance of national institutional environments, this paper argues regional and subnational levels become more important for studying MNE location choice. This paper aims to evaluate the explanatory contribution of regional and subnational levels of analysis to understanding MNE location choice.

Design/methodology/approach

A qualitative deductive bottom-up multiple-case study research design is adopted to study the city location choices and FDI motives of six automotive and six commercial banking companies. These purposefully sampled manufacturing and service MNEs have different home countries and regional orientations. Data on their foreign investments across the extended Triad of Europe, North America and Asia-Pacific were collected for the time period of 2000–2021.

Findings

Findings suggest that different classes of city tend to attract specific types of FDI and that these patterns might vary across sectors and be influenced by the regional strategic orientations of MNEs. Industry-specific findings reveal the importance of related and support industries and partners in a city location for the automotive MNEs, while the commercial banks seek investment opportunities in cities that allow acquisition targets that have an attractive customer based and will improve their local market knowledge.

Originality/value

The findings provide evidence in support of MNEs in manufacturing and service industries perceiving the attractiveness of three city types in different ways across the Triad regions.

中文翻译：

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汽车和商业银行业的外国直接投资动机和城市选址偏好

目的

城市仍然是理解跨国企业 (MNE) 外国直接投资 (FDI) 动机的一个未被充分研究的分析单位，迄今为止，国际商业 (IB) 研究中的地方位置主要通过集聚现象来捕捉。随着区域一体化项目，如欧盟和较小程度的北美自由贸易协定，越来越降低国家制度环境的重要性，本文认为区域和地方层面对于研究跨国公司选址变得更加重要。本文旨在评估区域和国家以下层面的分析对理解跨国公司选址的解释性贡献。

设计/方法/途径

采用定性演绎自下而上的多案例研究设计来研究六家汽车公司和六家商业银行公司的城市选址和 FDI 动机。这些有目的地抽样的制造和服务跨国公司有不同的母国和区域定位。收集了 2000 年至 2021 年期间他们在欧洲、北美和亚太扩展三角区的对外投资数据。

发现

研究结果表明，不同类别的城市往往会吸引特定类型的外国直接投资，并且这些模式可能因部门而异，并受到跨国公司区域战略方向的影响。针对特定行业的调查结果揭示了城市所在地的相关和支持行业及合作伙伴对汽车跨国公司的重要性，而商业银行则在城市中寻求投资机会，以实现具有吸引力的客户基础的收购目标，并将提高他们对当地市场的了解。

原创性/价值

调查结果提供的证据支持制造业和服务业的跨国公司以不同方式在三合会地区感知三种城市类型的吸引力。