Purpose This study aims to investigate the interpretation and reaction of European multinational corporations (MNCs) to the 2014–2016 EU-Russian sanctions regime, treating sanctions and countersanctions as institutional signals that may shape firm-level strategic responses. Design/methodology/approach Drawing on signaling, stakeholder and international business theory, the authors analyze 364 Russian subsidiaries owned by 212 EU-based MNCs. Subsidiaries operating in sanctioned sectors constitute the treatment group, while those in unaffected sectors act as controls. They estimate mixed-effects models of employment and current assets and apply a Monte Carlo EM algorithm to probabilistically identify which sanctioned subsidiaries complied with the signals (i.e. reduced activity) versus ignored them. Findings They find that few companies complied with the sanctions’ signals: only 1.3–2.7% of sanctioned subsidiaries reduced employment and 2.4–7.0% reduced assets. Yet, firms that did comply reduced headcount by approximately 65% and assets by up to 97%. The likelihood of a compliance-oriented response declines sharply as the subsidiary’s share of group revenue increases, whereas geographic, institutional and economic distance exhibit no consistent influence. Overall, most EU MNCs maintained their Russian operations despite policy signals. The findings have managerial implications and suggest that policymakers cannot assume that corporations will automatically align with foreign policy objectives. Originality/value The study shifts sanctions research from macroeconomic outcomes to firm strategy, introduces a novel latent-class estimator for quasi-experimental sanction settings and provides large-sample evidence on European corporate responses to the EU-Russian sanctions of 2014.
Bettecken et al. (2026) studied this question.