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Purpose The aim of this article is to encourage critical scholars of international business (IB) to engage with scholarship that turns to practice and situates knowledges. The paper contends that such undertakings have the potential to constructively politicize research in the field of international business. Design/methodology/approach The paper discusses the need for future research in the field to be studied more critically so as to be able to focus attention on those subjects detrimentally impacted by the operation of IB. It further identifies possibilities for doing so. Findings The paper argues that turning to practice and situating knowledges represents a move towards the emancipation of subjects marginalized – and, all too often, silenced – in the ordinary functioning of IB. Originality/value Moving against the grain of positivist orientated approaches to research in the field, whilst simultaneously building on the critical traditions to the study of IB, we consider how future scholarship might account for marginalized subjects.

Informal entrepreneurship is a persistent and extensive phenomenon in both developed and developing countries and considerable efforts have been made to understand it from an ecosystem perspective. Nevertheless, literature that analyzes networks within and among individuals in the informal economic sector has received less attention. This study presents an interesting extension of Granovetter's “strength of weak ties” hypothesis. Until now, strong ties are perceived to be constraining and less beneficial than weak ties for the entrepreneurial activity. However, this paper critically examines this assumption in the context of informal entrepreneurship to explore in detail this networking dynamic and how it affects their financial and social performance. A qualitative approach using 50 face-to-face interviews in Mexico was conducted. Our findings demonstrate that strong ties provide the resources, support and information informal entrepreneurs need to reduce their adversity and vulnerable conditions, having a positive impact on their financial and social outcomes.

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Today’s lifespan of companies tends to be low in the so-called micro-, small-, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs). Organizational life cycle (OLC) theory indicates that organizational aging is related, but not determined, by the firm chronological age or its size. Therefore, a firm’s aging should be analyzed by other factors such as flexibility. The literature considers flexibility as an essential capability, a source of competitive advantage, and an enabler of long-term growth for MSMEs. However, little attention in emerging economies has been paid to examine the nuances of this concept in relation to the OLC in this type of companies. Additionally, studies tend to analyze flexibility as a general term, ignoring that it is a polymorphic concept. That is why there is a need to research the different categories of flexibility. Drawing on a quantitative approach conducting a factor analysis, a two-step cluster, and decision tree analysis to interrogate data from 257 MSMEs in Mexico, this study provides evidence of different dimensions of strategic and structural flexibility that help to characterize and predict the growth, maturity, and declining stages of MSMEs. Our results show that mature firms present more strategic and structural flexible characteristics than those involved in growth or decline stages. The flexible factors that help classify and predict an MSME in the maturity stage include open communication, decentralized decision making, and formalization. We provide a model with these results to illuminate unaddressed issues regarding the broad term of flexibility and its relationship to OLC.