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How firms respond to institutional turbulence while entering foreign markets remains a research gap in international business today. This is especially true due to the scarcity of understanding regarding the interaction between a firm's network development and its decision-making process. We employ a historical multiple-case study method to investigate three Swedish firms and their foreign market entry into China between 1980 and 2010. Our findings show that while firms followed the incremental pathwork suggested by the Uppsala Model, their internationalization shifted from causal prediction to effectual flexibility due primarily to institutional turbulence that led them to hiatus and reorganization of interrelated network relationships. Our research makes two significant observations related to firms establishing insidership network positions that deserve future research attention: On the one hand, firms' network development is influenced by institutional turbulence, and on the other hand, firms' network position also influences further significant institutional changes by themselves.

This paper investigates how information processing channels can be managed such that relevant and novel information about the environment is gathered despite attention biases of top managers and challenges to maintain motivation levels of information providers. We argue that organizations need open and transparent information processing channels, which make top managers accountable. Furthermore, middle managers dedicated to managing these channels who act as a bridge between the information providers and the top managers help to reduce the information overload for top managers. This increases the likelihood that top managers will take appropriate action on the information provided and give suitable feedback to the senders. Lastly, these actions will only be beneficial when they are aligned with company strategy and values.

We introduce the notion of attention dissonance, where the subsidiary within a headquarter-subsidiary relationship feels that headquarters’ attention at the cognitive level, reflected in its strategic intentions (attention perspective), is not aligned with the routine actions the headquarters performs vis-à-vis the specific subsidiary (attention engagement). Using a comparative case study design, we investigate a European organization with subsidiaries located in both emerging and advanced markets. We show how subsidiaries in the emerging markets face attention dissonance, which impedes their ability to get business opportunities across to headquarters, thereby compromising a necessary condition for realizing economic potential in these emerging markets.