Danchi Tan

EXPLAINING THE UTILIZATION OF MANAGERIAL EXPATRIATES FROM THE PERSPECTIVES OF RESOURCE-BASED, AGENCY, AND TRANSACTION-COSTS THEORIES

This paper develops an integrative framework explaining multinational firms’ managerial staffing decisions in initial foreign-entry situations from resource-based theory, agency theory, and transaction-costs theory, and it offers a set of theoretically grounded, testable propositions concerning these staffing decisions. In particular, we maintain that managerial staffing decisions are influenced by: (1) the value that managerial expatriates and local hires could potentially add to the firm; and (2) the relative contractual risks associated with the use of managerial expatriates and local managers. This paper indicates that the use of managerial expatriates can improve contractual efficiencies in at least four ways. First, the use of expatriates helps align the economic incentives between the headquarters and the foreign subsidiaries. Second, the headquarters knows better the characteristics of expatriates relative to local hires. The use of expatriates reduces the uncertainty of the headquarters in recruiting managers and mitigates the incomplete contracting problem. Third, expatriates are better equipped with firm-specific capabilities than local hires, reducing contractual (small-numbers) problems. Fourth, expatriates have committed greater sunk cost investments in the multinational firm than local hires. These investments support their cooperative relationships with the firm and mitigate potential bargaining problems in employment contracting. However, although managerial expatriates can potentially improve contractual efficiency and may relieve a firm’s concern over its limited control on managers, expatriates may not have adequate abilities in managing local idiosyncrasy.

The relationship between location-bound advantages and international strategy: an empirical investigation

This paper examines the impact of location-bound advantage on the internationalization strategy of multinational enterprises (MNEs). The extant research literature suggests that an advantages location boundedness may be driven by: the nature of the firm advantage; organizational embeddedness, and environmental embeddedness. We posit that these different drivers of location boundedness exert different impacts on internationalization strategies. Our empirical results reveal that organizational embeddedness lowers the breadth of internationalization of MNEs, and increases the tendency of these firms to employ a global strategy. We also find that MNEs whose advantages are tacit and complex have a lower depth of internationalization and are more likely to expand into culturally similar countries. Finally, our results show that MNEs whose advantages are highly embedded in the home environment tend to adopt a multi-domestic strategy and decentralized organizational structures.

Re-conceptualising exploitative and explorative FDI: a balancing-process approach to firm internationalisation

Drawing on the Penrosean theory of the growth of the firm, this paper develops a balancing-process approach to explain the motivations and location choices of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI). In this approach, FDI is viewed as a means to balance a firms portfolio of resources and capabilities through utilising resources and capabilities available in international markets with the ultimate goal of achieving fast and sustainable growth. Based on the Chinese yin-yang perspective, this approach joins exploitative and explorative FDI as a dynamic unity and explains how exploitation and exploration jointly drive a firms motivation and location choice of internationalisation. Our balancing-process approach joins historically independent streams of research in a single framework and uncovers a new and more fundamental mechanism that drives FDI: the need to address resource constraints.