Leadership positioning among U.S. firms investing in China

Rossitza Wooster () and Donna L. Paul

International Business Review, 2016, vol. 25, issue 1, 319-332

Abstract: This study investigates leadership positioning by U.S. firms in China using the awareness, motivation, capability (AMC) perspective. We define leadership as first in industry to invest in China, and find that leaders have characteristics associated with higher AMC, evidenced by pre-existing multinational experience, higher product market orientation, smaller scale of operations, and higher input cost structure. Notably, the motivation to lower input costs and the prior capability in multinational operations mattered only for the first wave of firms leading industry investment earlier in time, while firms with smaller scale of operations exhibited a preference to lead investment in less popular provinces. Overall, these results provide a unique view on how AMC characteristics influence international investment decisions, suggesting that firms both strategically lead and strategically follow. In additional analysis, we examine how leaders and followers positioned themselves with respect to ownership, and find that leaders were more likely to choose entry modes that offered ownership control over flexibility, consistent with internalization theories.

Keywords: Competitive dynamics; Entry order; Entry mode; Discrete choice models (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0969593115300068
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:iburev:v:25:y:2016:i:1:p:319-332

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/133/bibliographic
http://www.elsevier. ... me/133/bibliographic

DOI: 10.1016/j.ibusrev.2015.06.003

Access Statistics for this article

International Business Review is currently edited by P. Ghauri

More articles in International Business Review from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().