New challenges and opportunities in the global marketplace: learning from developed-country multinationals’ failures

Abstract In this article, we integrate the attention-based view of the firm and the organizational ambidexterity literature to develop a perspective on the effects of unbalanced attention to both domestic and foreign expansion. We utilize the case of British supermarket Tesco’s expansions in the UK and USA to demonstrate divestment as an unintended outcome of unbalanced attention to both domestic and foreign markets. We demonstrate how emerging-market multinationals could learn from historical international expansion strategic failures by developed-country multinationals.