An Empirical Study Of The Impact Of Organizational Learning Ambidexterity On OFDI Performance

Outward Foreign Direct Investment(OFDI)is an important manner for international expansion of multinational corporations,and it is also an important force to promote the national economic growth.Recently,with the institution transformation and the economic growth of emerging economies,more and more multinational corporations from emerging economies go abroad,aiming to search new development opportunities by OFDI.However,inconsistent with the increasing OFDI flows and speeding pace,the OFDI performance of multinational corporations is unsatisfactory.As the primary problem in the process of overseas operation of multinational corporations,liability of foreignness might threaten the OFDI performance in three aspects:unfamiliar hazards,relationship hazards and discrimination hazards.The way how to effectively recognize,correctly evaluate and adopt appropriate strategies to overcome liability of foreignness is important for multinational corporations to execute OFDI and ensure the corresponding investment performance.Therefore,since the concept of liability of foreignness has been presented,scholars from different fields have devoted to discuss the overcoming strategies,such as entry mode,organizational isomorphism.However,some studies on the internationalization field have indicated that the process of overcoming the liability of foreignness is essentially the process of organizational learning.As an important manner of knowledge acquisition and utilization,organizational learning can promote multinational corporations to reduce the liability of foreignness and successfully carry out OFDI.However,on the one hand,although organizational learning has been considered as an important way to overcome liability of foreignness,the previous studies preliminarily mentioned that "how organizational learning reduce unfamiliar hazards",lack of analyzing the other two aspects:"relationship hazards" and "discrimination hazards".On the other hand,organizational learning has an ambidexterity of "exploitation" and"exploration",and the mechanism of exploitative learning and explorative learning is different.However,there is no study on analyzing the relationship between organizational learning and liability of foreignness from the aspect of ambidexterity.Following two aspects(differentiation and integration),this thesis simultaneously considers the theory of“liability of foreignness" and "ambidexterity",with the aim to develop a new research line of "organizational learning-liability of foreignness-OFDI performance" based on the previous studies.In this paper,the main contributions of this thesis can be summarized as follows:(1)This thesis first analyzes the influence of liability of foreignness on OFDI performance with respect to the unfamiliar hazards,relationship hazards and discrimination hazards.Firstly,considering the fact that multinational companies are not familiar with the host country,while the host country stakeholders are not familiar with multinational companies,this paper concerns the influence of unfamiliar hazards on the information cost,contract cost,and political transaction cost based on the classification of transaction costs,which indicates that the liability of foreignness could cause a cost burden on OFDI performance.Secondly,this thesis divides the company’s resources and from the capital,human,customer knowledge,advanced technology,goodwill and other aspects to explain the impact of relationship hazards on the resources acquisition.Finally,from the aspects of country source discrimination and economic nationalism,this thesis elaborates the influence of discrimination hazards on the investment barriers.(2)In the differentiation level,the thesis constructs a conceptual model about organizational learning,investment region and OFDI performance.Firstly,it divides the knowledge involved in overseas operation of multinational corporations into two categories:business knowledge and institutional knowledge.Next,the thesis discusses the effect and timing that exploitative learning and explorative learning on OFDI performance based on liability of foreignness.At last,taking investment region as moderator variable,the thesis investigates the region difference between the relationship of organizational learning and OFDI performance.(3)In the integration level,this study constructs an conceptual model about organization learning,knowledge integration capability,industry knowledge intensity and OFDI performance.With such consideration,this thesis firstly studies a hypothesis that suggests the exploitative learning and explorative learning playing a complementary effect in reducing liability of foreignness,which based on the dynamic of oversea investment,the self-enhancement of organization learning and the heterogeneity of knowledge.Secondly,this thesis analyzes the synergistic effect of exploitative learning and explorative learning on the OFDI performance in view of knowledge transfer,knowledge reconstruction,knowledge sharing.Thirdly,based on the optimization of resource allocation and the timing complementary,the thesis investigates the equilibrium effect of exploitative learning and explorative learning in reducing the liability of foreignness and puts forward the hypothesis of the relationship between the organizational learning equilibrium and OFDI performance.Finally,with the knowledge integration ability and industry knowledge intensity as the moderator variables,this study discusses the differences in the ability of of organizational learning to OFDI performance,as well as the differences in the industry,and puts forward the corresponding research hypotheses.(4)The conceptual models proposed in theoretical part are tested empirically.At first,this study identifies the research sample,research variables and indicators according to hypothesis and conceptual model.Then,the main analysis method is determined,and the variable data can be processed.What’s more,it uses statistical analysis software Stata14.0 to carry on the descriptive statistical analysis to the sample characteristic and take t test.At last,the study builds panel models and takes smoothness test,F test,BP test,Hausman test and the corresponding regression analysis.The results of this thesis indicate as follows:Liability of foreignness can reduce the OFDI performance of multinational companies;The effect mechanism and timing on the OFDI performance between exploitative learning and explorative learning are different.The exploitative learning can help multinational companies to quickly reduce liability of foreignness,which can improve OFDI short-term performance.As the explorative learning,it can improve the OFDI long-term performance;The ambidexterity of organizational learning can promote the upgrading of OFDI performance;The effect of exploitative learning and explorative learning on the OFDI performance can be enhanced by intra-regional investment,and can be weakened by intre-regional investment;The complementary effect of organizational learning can be positively moderated by knowledge integration ability;The equilibrium effect of organizational learning can be negatively moderated by industry knowledge intensity.This paper provides a systematic framework for OFDI performance research.What’s more,surround aspects of reasonable choice of investment region and entry mode,pay attention to the industry characteristics and establishment of dynamic management mechanism,this paper points out the managerial implications to reduce the liability of foreignness and to improve OFDI performance.