Perspectives on Host Locations

Abstract

This chapter employs EG interpretative lenses to analyze host locations as key contexts for MNC subsidiaries’ innovation. In particular, it offers a general perspective on critical constructs such as place and space, distance and border effects and national and sub-national geographical scales. Moreover, it provides with a basic systematization of the different spatial configurations that, along the years, have been proposed for the study of innovation in the geographical space. Finally, building on recent insights calling for the integration between IB and EG in the study of MNCs in the geographical space, it argues that an approach encompassing both the IB theoretical focus on the organization and the EG emphasis on the location is especially relevant for the study of MNCs’ geographically distributed innovation activities.