A Balancing-Process Approach to Firm Internationalization

Drawing on the resource-based view 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 firm's portfolio of resources and capabilities through utilizing foreign strategic factor markets with the ultimate goal of achieving growth and sustainable competitive advantage. This approach joins exploitative and explorative FDI in a single framework and helps explain why a firm can conduct both types of FDI simultaneously.

Ethnic ties, location choice, and firm performance in foreign direct investment: A study of Taiwanese business groups FDI in China

This paper examines ethnic ties and their impact on FDI location choice and firm performance. Drawing on social network theory and using data from 88 Taiwanese business groups, the study tests the impact of ethnic ties on firm FDI location choice and performance outcomes in China. Results show that ethnic ties of top managers matter in facilitating firm FDI location choice. In contrast to our expectations however, ethnic ties do not help to improve firm performance in China. Implications of these results are discussed in view of existing literature and future research opportunities are delineated

Why a Multinational Firm Chooses Expatriates: Integrating Resource-Based, Agency and Transaction Costs Perspectives

This paper develops an integrative organizational economics framework explaining and predicting multinational firms' managerial resource deployments based on resource-based, agency, and transaction costs theories. Our empirical findings suggest that the governance decision for managerial services of multinational firms is influenced not only by the comparative capabilities of managers, but also by the economic costs to the firm of influencing the behaviours of managers through managerial contracting. Copyright Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2006.

Examining the Penrose Effect in an International Business Context: The Dynamics of Japanese Firm Growth in U.S. Industries

Penrose (1959) theoretically developed the research proposition that the finite capacities of a firm's internally experienced managers limit the rate at which the firm can grow in a given period of time. One empirical implication that follows logically from this line of reasoning is that a fast-growing firm will eventually slow down its growth in the subsequent time period because its firm-specific management team, which is posited to be inelastic at least in the short run, is unable to handle effectively the increased demands that are placed on these internally experienced managers due to increased complexity as well as the time and attention that the new managers require from these internally experienced managers. Consequently, inefficiency in the firm's current operations will follow if the firm maintains its high rate of growth. The research proposition that a firm cannot remain operationally effective if it maintains high rates of growth in successive time periods, and that consequently those firms with foresight typically will slow down their growth in the subsequent time period is known as the "Penrose effect" in the research literature, and this effect of dynamic adjustment costs has been examined and corroborated in a few empirical research studies. However, researchers have not yet examined the Penrose effect in an international business context. The current paper examines the Penrose effect in an international business context by exploring whether Japanese firms achieve high growth in consecutive time periods in the entered U.S. industries. The empirical results indicate that, consistent with Penrose's (1959) resource-based theory prediction, in general, Japanese firms did not maintain high employment growth in two consecutive time periods following their entry into U.S. industries. We also find empirically that for Japanese multinational firms that entered in U.S. industries where the extent of knowledge tacitness, globalization, and unionization was high, rapid expansion growth in one time period had negative impacts on growth in the subsequent time period. Thus, dynamic adjustment costs limit the rate of the growth of the firm and the development of dynamic capabilities in this international business context, which suggests that the Penrose effect may be widely applicable to international business and corporate strategy.

Country-of-origin and industry FDI agglomeration of foreign investors in an emerging economy

Foreign investors access local knowledge by co-locating with other foreign direct investment (FDI) firms. However, different aspects of local knowledge can be obtained from different local businesses. Thus some foreign investors co-locate with FDI firms from the same country of origin, while others co-locate with foreign industry peers. We argue that, relative to industry FDI agglomeration, country-of-origin agglomeration provides an effective channel for the sharing of sensitive and tacit knowledge about local business environments. Therefore foreign investors in need of such local knowledge are more likely to locate in country-of-origin agglomerations. Empirical evidence based on FDI in Vietnam indicates that foreign investors who perceive local institutions as particularly weak, and those with a high degree of outsidership in the local environment, are more likely to seek country-of-origin agglomerations than industry FDI agglomerations.

Business groups' outward FDI: A managerial resources perspective

Outward FDI strategies are driven by firms' resource endowments, which in turn are conditioned by their home environment. In emerging economies, thus, the pattern of outward FDI is shaped by local firms' idiosyncratic contexts and the resources that these firms developed to fit the contexts. This includes business groups, a dominant organizational form in many emerging economies, competing with context-bound resources. When they wish to transcend their home context, they need internationally valuable resources, especially managerial resources, which may be quite different than the resources that enable domestic growth. This paper thus explores what resources drive this international growth in the case of Taiwanese business groups. Starting from Penrosian Theory, we focus on managerial resources that are shared across the member firms of a group, and thus shape the profile of the group. We find that international work experience favors internationalization while international education does not. Moreover, domestic institutional resources distract from internationalization, presumably because they are not transferable into other institutional contexts, and thus favor other types of growth.Internationalization Business growth Resource-based view Institutional view Business groups

An Empirical Investigation of Expatriate Utilization: Resource-Based, Agency, and Transaction Costs Perspectives

This paper develops a new integrative framework explaining and predicting multinational firms' international staffing decisions based on resource-based, agency, and transaction costs theories. In this framework, a firm considers (1) the relative values that expatriates / local managers can bring to the firm, and (2) the relative control that the firm is able to exercise over expatriates and local managers through managerial contracting, when making strategic international staffing decisions. Accordingly, we identify a set of target industry characteristics and multinational firm characteristics that are predicted to influence international staffing decisions, and we examine these decisions on a sample of 365 Japanese manufacturing subsidiaries in the United States.

The Dynamics of Japanese Firm Growth in U.S. Industries: The Penrose Effect

This research paper explores the conditions under which a firm is more/less likely to incur the Penrose Effect when expanding in a foreign market. We posit that multinational firms that can accelerate the development of new managerial resources in their foreign operations have greater organizational capabilities to adjust their managerial resources timely in the process of expansion, and thus will be less vulnerable to a severe managerial constraint on the rate of growth. In contrast, factors that impede the development of new managerial resources in foreign operations will prevent multinational firms from growing fast in consecutive time periods. Based on a longitudinal sample of Japanese manufacturing entries in the United States, our empirical results indicate that Japanese firms were able to achieve growth in consecutive time periods when these firms sent more expatriates to the foreign operations at the time of entry, and when these Japanese firms had greater home experience prior to their entry into the U.S. market. On the other hand, Japanese firms were found to be less able to achieve growth in consecutive time periods when a high level of uncertainty characterized the U.S. markets that these Japanese firms entered.

Why Firms Make Unilateral Investments Specific to Other Firms: The Case of OEM Suppliers

This paper examines why and under what conditions firms will make unilateral relationship-specific investments to serve their transaction partners. We propose that firms are more likely to make unilateral relationship-specific investments when the investment yields economic spillover values for other transactions with the same exchange partners as well as for third-party transactions. We also model two types of positive inter-project spillover effects that a transaction may generate: knowledge spillovers and reputation spillovers. We find empirical support for our developed theory in the context of Taiwanese suppliers of Original Equipment Manufacturers.