How Do We Capture "Global Specialization" When Measuring Firms' Degree of Globalization?

The IB literature informs us of several ways to measure firms' degree of globalization. In this paper we make the argument that in fact none of the existing indices really measure firms' degree of "global specialization", that is, to what extent their allocation of resources is multidomestic or global. In order to remedy this we introduce a complementary index measuring how firms are configuring their value chains - whether they are replicating value chain activities from country to country or locating them in globally specialized units in order to exploit an international division of labor. We then test this "global specialization" index empirically on a sample of Danish MNCs. We find that the index is able to identify a distinct group of firms with significantly higher degrees of global value chain configuration. The firms in this group do not necessarily score high on conventionel internationalization measures.