Larger, more internationalized, better behaved? A configurational study of em erging market multinational enterprises' involvement in corporate wrongdoing

Federica Nieri, Luciano Ciravegna, Ruth V. Aguilera and Elisa Giuliani

Discussion Papers from Dipartimento di Economia e Management (DEM), University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy

Abstract: We study emerging market multinational enterprises' (EMNEs) involvement in corporate wrongdoing, focusing on multiple explanatory antecedents identified by the literature, yet not explored from a configurational perspective. We use fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to examine firms from eight emerging markets between 2003 and 2012. We uncover three equifinal configurations of corporate wrongdoing, all involving highly internationalized EMNEs: (1) the struggling state owned EMNE – a large, old, underperforming SOE, operating in home and host markets with high quality institutions; (2) the striving EMNE - a young, small, high performing EMNE, operating in home and host markets with low quality institutions; (3) and the careless state owned EMNE - an old, large, high performing SOE, operating in home and host markets with low quality institutions. Our findings enrich existing and often conflicting theoretical explanations through a configurational perspective, shedding light on the causal conjunctions between EMNEs' internationalization, home and host markets institutions, and the other antecedents of wrongdoing identified by the literature. We contribute to the EMNEs literature by studying the antecedents of involvement in wrongdoing, which can potentially threaten their efforts to overcome the liability of origin and acquire legitimacy with international stakeholders.

Keywords: Corporate wrongdoing; emerging market multinationals (EMNEs); fuzzy sets qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA); institutions; internationalization; state owned enterprises (SOEs) (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F23 K40 M14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019-12-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-law
Note: ISSN 2039-1854
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.ec.unipi.it/documents/Ricerca/papers/2019-255.pdf (application/pdf)

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:pie:dsedps:2019/255

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Discussion Papers from Dipartimento di Economia e Management (DEM), University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().