Jell-Ojobor, MariaHajdini, IlirWindsperger, Josef2025-01-202025-01-202022Jell-Ojobor, Maria, Ilir Hajdini, and Josef Windsperger. “Governance of International Franchise Networks: Combining Value Creation and Value Appropriation Perspectives.” Journal of Business Research 139 (February):267–79. 2022.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2021.09.001https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14490/858This study develops a new perspective on the franchisor’s choice of international governance modes as a value creation and value appropriation mechanism. Value creation refers to knowledge creation from the joint use of the franchisor’s intangible system-specific knowhow and foreign partners’ intangible local market knowhow; value appropriation refers to efficient knowledge exploitation based on transaction cost savings under conditions of uncertainty and transaction-specific investments. Based on primary data from 162 international franchise systems headquartered in eight countries, the results highlight the importance of intangible knowledge-based resources (franchisor’s system-specific knowhow and franchise partners’ local market knowhow) and transaction cost factors (transaction-specific investments, environmental uncertainty, and cultural uncertainty) for the franchisor’s choice between equity modes, such as wholly-owned subsidiaries, and joint venture franchising, and non-equity modes, such as single-unit franchising, area development franchising, and master franchising.enInternational governance modeFranchisingEquity versus non-equity modeValue appropriation perspectiveValue creation perspectiveArticle