International growth of banks: From competence-exploiting to competence-enhancing strategies?

Like manufacturing multinational enterprises, multinational banks, although being more subject to local regulation and market preferences, are increasingly changing their international attitude. Namely, they rely on foreign activities not only as a means to exploit their own competitive advantages within foreign markets, but also to access exclusive assets, resources, and competencies that could be transferred back to the whole network to enhance and strengthen their competitive advantages. The reported research refers to data on the evolution of the Italian banks’ foreign initiatives in the 1998–2004 period. Using such data, the authors investigate the determinants of the coexistence of strategies that are both competence-exploiting and competence-enhancing, using the traditional eclectic approach.