Subsidiary Performance Measurement in International Business Research: A Systematic Review and Future Directions

Subsidiary Performance (SP) remains central to International Business (IB) research. Yet, exactly how to measure SP is a matter of some confusion in the academic literature. Indeed, to date, no review has offered a systematic overview of the variety of SP measures deployed in the IB literature. Based on a bibliometric study of 193 quantitative research articles published in top-tier journals from 1982 to 2022, this review provides a science mapping overview of SP measurements. By use of bibliographic coupling analyses, the review finds high variability of measurements within thematic clusters of research, for example within studies of knowledge transfer. This variation hampers the ability to both build and test IB theory. Furthermore, it is highly problematic in view of recent debates about replication within the social sciences. Therefore, the review proposes a range of questions to guide researchers in selecting the most appropriate SP measure(s) for future studies.