full attention oftop executives,whereasothersmay go unheeded (McMullen,Shepherd,and
Patzelt2009;Hoffman and Ocasio 2001).Managers may also be blind-sighted to market(s) as a
result of inadequate attention.Strategic decision-makers may consequently and inadvertently end
up ignoring pertinentnationalor culturaldifferences thatcould eventually lead to business exit
(McMullen,Shepherd,and Patzelt 2009).Inadequate attention to each market may stem from the
firm overstretching its competences and capabilities into new geographicalspheres where ithad
limited knowledge and expertise (see Ocasio 1997).Nationalculturaldifferencesinfluence the
managementprocess necessary for organizationalsuccess.Managers can use culturalprofiles to
understand the motivations of consumers in a given country.A supermarket,for example,needs
to conduct adequate research about the culture and shopping habits in a country in order to be
successful(Deresky 2014).
A stream ofresearch has also indicated thatcross-culturalmisunderstanding is likely to stem
from inadequateattentionthat could hamperresourceallocation(Cavusgil,Knight, and
Riesenberger 2012).In essence,motivations and expectations may be misconstrued.This could lead
incongruentmarketing and merchandizing efforts.Such misallocation offinancialresources could
lead to operations at home suffering from attention deficits because executives,inadvertently,focus
on foreign growth and new market expansion.Therefore,the pursuits of both domestic and foreign
expansion require a high level of expertise to achieve the right balance (see Amankwah-Amoah and
Debrah 2017;Ocasio and Joseph 2005).This requires in-depth understanding of how culturaldif-
ferences could influence consumer motivations and expectations.
One relevanttheoreticallens is the dynamic capabilities perspective.By dynamic capabilities,
we are referring to “the capacity ofan organization to purposefully extend,create,or modify its
resource base” (Helfatet al. 2007,1). Dynamic capabilities also relates to the capacity to adapt
through well-developed internalknowledge transmission,socialization and motivationalmecha-
nisms (Gooderham 2007).To an extent,dynamic capabilities can be viewed as a firm’s ability to
develop and managea network ofvaluechain activitiesin differentmarketsand locations
(Prange and Verdier 2011).
It has been suggested that a firm’s ability to compete and succeed in a foreign market is predi-
cated on itsability to acquire and utilize marketknowledge (Osabutey,Williams,and Debrah
2014;Sapienza etal. 2006).Thus,dynamic capabilities can equip firms with knowledge making
the firms resilient.By resilient,we are referring to firms’ability to design robust systems to learn
and withstand environmentalupheavals,setback and failure in new markets (Lengnick-Hall,Beck,
and Lengnick-Hall2011).Becominga resilientorganization requiresstrategicresponsesto
changes in the business environment (Hameland Valikangas 2003).
Following Gibson and Birkinshaw (2004,375) we define OA as “an organization’s ability to be
aligned and efficientin its management oftoday’s business demands while simultaneously being
adaptive to changesin the environment.” Partly rooted in the notion ofambidexterity isthat
internationalization entails the ability to concurrently explore and exploit markets to deliver sus-
tainable competitiveness at home and abroad (He and Wong 2004).A centraltenet of this theory
is thatan ambidextrous firm should be able to engage,competitively,in both exploitation and
exploration activities in multiple markets (Amankwah-Amoah etal. 2019;Cao,Gedajlovic,and
Zhang 2009).Although there are competing demands for firms to spread risks,increase market
share and tap into opportunitiesin foreign markets,there isalso a need to ensure thatsuch
expansions do notdivertattention from domestic operations.Poorly strategized and/or imple-
mented internationalexpansion is likely to weaken competitive position athome (see Duhaime
and Grant1984).It is worth noting thatdeploymentof resources and capabilities to domestic
and internationaloperations are often inextricably linked to outcomes.Failure in one arena can
have devastating effects on the other.
The crux of our arguments is that expansion entails resource deployment and attention alloca-
tion to both the home and hostcountries.Inability to strike the rightbalance is more likely to
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Attention-based approach to multinationals' failures: new challenges and opportunities in the global marketplace

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