Foreign divestment and its implications: past achievement and research agenda

Purpose This paper aims to critically examine foreign divestment research, revealing significant gaps between its antecedents, processes and outcomes. It highlights overlooked areas and offers a theory-driven framework for future research, challenging existing assumptions and encouraging a more integrated perspective on how foreign divestment should be studied and applied in practice. Design/methodology/approach The study traces the intellectual development of the field using bibliometric techniques, including multidimensional scaling (MDS), and qualitative content analysis of 296 published studies on foreign divestment from 1979 to 2023. Findings The study distils the literature into three themes – antecedents, implementation process and outcomes – and identifies a clear temporal shift. Between 1979 and 2013, research focused on international joint venture dynamics and financial performance; from 2014 to 2023, it has pivoted to strategic outcomes such as re-internationalisation and de-globalisation, with emphasis on corporate strategy and equity structures. These patterns inform our framework, recasting foreign divestment as a multistage, strategically embedded process. Originality/value This study offers a more comprehensive synthesis of foreign divestment literature by connecting antecedents with implications. Unlike previous reviews, which focus on narrow themes or recent empirical studies, the study’s use of MDS across a broad timeframe enables a deeper understanding of the field’s evolution and provides a stronger foundation for future research.