How do State Owned Enterprise Multinationals behave abroad? A Multi-dimensional framework for analysis

Abstract

Though State-Owned Multinational Enterprises (SOMNEs) make up around 15% of the world´s largest non-financial Multinational Enterprises (MNEs), little is known about why State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs) internationalize and how they behave once abroad. Whilst some scholars have claimed SOMNEs tend to behave as their private MNE counterparts, other scholars state SOMNEs transfer their “public mission” abroad. This article presents a novel, multi-dimensional framework designed to facilitate comparing the behaviour of SOEs and private enterprises abroad in the field of infrastructure.