Multinational enterprises (MNEs) are increasingly expected to make their global operations sustainable, while overcoming important obstacles in a rugged global landscape. In this perspective article, we argue that a focus on their corporate governance (CG) actors – i.e., owners, directors, and executives – is key for understanding the premises of MNEs’ sustainable value creation. We develop an actor-centered perspective on MNEs whereby factors inherent to and surrounding CG actors – e.g., their cognition, personality, and values, as well as their interactions and governance – will determine the pervasiveness of their bounded rationality and bounded reliability, thus influencing whether, how, and under what conditions these key actors will contribute through their decisions to sustainable value creation. Our perspective advances nascent actor-centered research on MNEs’ non-market strategies, including corporate social responsibility and sustainability. Exploring the underlying mechanisms at the source of individual-level variation (next to firm-, industry-, and country-level variation) related to sustainable value creation may support theory development that can ultimately break new ground in explaining the strategic behavior and sustainable performance of MNEs. We formulate future research suggestions toward that end.

人们越来越期望跨国企业(MNE) 能够实现可持续的全球运营，同时克服崎岖的全球环境中的重要障碍。在这篇观点文章中，我们认为，关注跨国公司的公司治理 (CG) 参与者（即所有者、董事和高管）是理解跨国公司可持续价值创造前提的关键。我们对跨国企业提出了一种以行动者为中心的视角，其中企业CG行动者固有的和周围的因素——例如他们的认知、个性和价值观，以及他们的互动和治理——将决定他们有限理性和有限可靠性的普遍性，从而影响这些关键参与者是否、如何以及在什么条件下将通过其决策为可持续价值创造做出贡献。我们的观点推动了以参与者为中心的新兴跨国企业非市场战略研究，包括企业社会责任和可持续发展。探索与可持续价值创造相关的个体层面差异（仅次于公司、行业和国家层面差异）的潜在机制可能支持理论发展，最终在解释战略行为和可持续绩效方面开辟新天地跨国企业。我们为此制定了未来的研究建议。