The longer, the farther? The internationalization of Chinese firms
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to explore the internationalization of multinational enterprises (MNEs) from China and aims to examine the relationship between Chinese MNEs’ duration of internationalization and export intensity, and the contingent roles of the home country government.
Design/methodology/approach
By extending the springboard theory with institutional and cost-benefit analyses, the authors elaborate a two-phase framework of internationalization to explain how Chinese MNEs develop their international business under the influences of the home country government. Furthermore, the authors apply the Heckman two-stage method based on a panel data set of 19,994 firm-year observations of Chinese listed firms in 2008–2018 to test the hypotheses.
Findings
The research findings demonstrate an inverted U-shape relationship between the duration of internationalization and the export intensity of MNEs from China. The export intensity of MNEs from China increases during the initial phase of internationalization, and decreases during the subsequent. A further study reveals that the inverted U-shape of Chinese non-SOEs is steeper than that of SOEs, and this moderating effect is more salient after the Belt and Road Initiative. These results highlight the influence of the home government through state ownership and policies on the inverted U-shaped relationship.
Originality/value
This study helps to refine the understanding of Chinese MNEs’ global expansion by addressing time as an explicit dimension and revealing the mechanism of state ownership and the home country governmental policy in the dynamic internationalization process.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The authors appreciate the insightful comments and suggestions from the editor and anonymous reviewers.
Funding: This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 72271153 and 71972125), the Humanities and Social Sciences Research Project of the Ministry of Education of China (Grant No. 20YJC630099) and the Soft Science Research Project of Shanghai Science and Technology Innovation Program (Grant No. 23692110900).
Compliance with ethical standards: This study does not contain any studies with human participants performed by any of the authors.
Conflict of interest: The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
Citation
Ma, H., Zou, J. and Zou, H. (2024), "The longer, the farther? The internationalization of Chinese firms", Chinese Management Studies, Vol. ahead-of-print No. ahead-of-print. https://doi.org/10.1108/CMS-12-2022-0445
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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