State-owned (SO) multinational enterprises (MNEs) from emerging economies face two contradictory effects on their foreign operations due to their linkage with their home-country governments. Although home governments provide SO MNEs with resources, the affiliation also exposes SO MNEs to the legitimacy challenges in the host countries. Given this theoretical debate, we propose that home government support may facilitate SO MNEs’ post-entry operations in the host markets. Furthermore, because the legitimacy pressures directed at SO MNEs may be contingent on the interstate relations between the host and home governments facilitated by China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the BRI cooperative relations may shift the effect of home government support. Using survey and archival data, we find that home government support has a positive impact on the foreign performance of SO subsidiaries. This effect is weaker in countries that are cooperating with the BRI than in those that are not. Moreover, institutional distance weakens the negative interactive effect between BRI cooperation and home government support on the performance of SO MNEs’ foreign subsidiaries. These findings extend the institutional perspective by highlighting an alternative source of legitimacy for MNEs with distinctive attributes and in various host conditions.
abstract Business groups are the primary form of managing large business organizations outside North America. This paper provides a systematic and integrative framework for understanding business groups. We argue that existing theoretical perspectives of business groups pay attention to four critical external contexts, each of which draws from a specific theoretical perspective: market conditions (transaction cost theory), social relationships (relational perspective), political factors (political economy perspective), and external monitoring mechanisms (agency theory). Business groups adapt to these external forces by deploying various internal mechanisms along two key dimensions: one focuses on the distinctive roles of the group affiliates (horizontal connectedness) and the other focuses on coupling and order between the parent firm and its affiliates (vertical linkages). Based on these two dimensions, a typology of business group forms is developed: network (N-form), club (C-form), holding (H-form), and multidivisional (M-form). Utilizing this model we provide research questions which facilitate an improved future research agenda. 相似文献