Katarina Blomkvist

Drivers and Motives for Chinese Outward Foreign Direct Investments in Africa

The authors set out to empirically test the degree of Chinese investments in Africa by systematically examining the explanatory value of existing theoretical motivations for foreign direct investment (FDI) for the period of 2003–2009. All else equal, the authors find that African countries enjoy a higher likelihood of Chinese outward FDI than the rest of the world. Moreover, they find that Chinese firms invest in African markets for market-seeking, natural resource–seeking, and strategic asset–seeking motives; hence, the motives for Chinese FDI in Africa seem to match those of Western firms’ investments in global markets.

Knowledge management in MNCs: the importance of subsidiary transfer performance

Purpose – The aim of this paper is to shed light on how subsidiary willingness to transfer knowledge is influenced by formal control mechanisms from headquarters, and how this affects knowledge transfer performance.Design/methodology/approach – The study highlights and tests the influence of two formal control mechanisms: formal demand to transfer knowledge from headquarters, and performance evaluation system related to knowledge transfer. This is tested by subjecting a dataset of 149 knowledge transfer processes to a two‐stage least square regression analysis.Findings – The robust results indicate that formal evaluation systems related to subsidiary knowledge transfer increases subsidiary willingness to transfer, and subsequently knowledge transfer performance, whereas formal demand by headquarters to share knowledge show a negative but not significant impact.Practical implications – The results highlight the strategic importance of eliminating motivational barriers in order to enhance knowledge transfer...

Influence of Cultural Distance on Chinese Outward Foreign Direct Investment

Since 2005, Chinese outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) has shown a striking positive trend, and today China is the main foreign investor in countries like Australia and South Africa (Evenett, 2009). This has triggered an increased interest among scholars and others to understand this development, and several studies have been performed to describe the trend and explain Chinese OFDI (Deng, 2004; Sauvant, 2005; Buckley et ah, 2007, 2008; Morckef ah, 2008; Voss, 2011). Although previous works indicate the potential role of culture and cultural differences for the internationalization of Chinese firms (e.g. Voss, 2011), a proper test of this explanatory factor has not been done. In this chapter, we test whether cultural distance (cf. Kogut and Singh, 1988; Hofstede, 2001; Drogendijkand Slangen, 2006) explains the investment behavior of Chinese companies.

Chinese outward foreign direct investments in Europe

This paper addresses Chinese outward foreign direct investments (OFDI) in Europe. We aim to provide more knowledge on the ongoing research discussion about Chinese OFDI, more specifically, we answer questions about what is driving Chinese firms to invest in Europe, and whether Chinese investment behaviour in Europe differs compared with their investments in other parts of the world. For our empirical study we use data from the 2012 statistical bulletin of Chinese OFDI, 20032012. Our results indicate that European countries generally receive lower levels of investment from Chinese firms compared with other regions of the world. We find, furthermore, that the main motives for Chinese investment in Europe are market seeking and strategic asset seeking, and that there are large differences among European countries in attracting Chinese investments.