| Strategic positioning of foreign firms in a host market is very important for their success in the host market. This dissertation investigates foreign firms' strategic positioning as generalists or specialists; and its performance implication in a host market. An integrative approach, which combines resource partitioning theory and resource-based view, is adopted as theoretical base. The extant literature of resource partitioning theory, which is derived from an organizational ecology perspective, falls short of exploring firm heterogeneity. Further, performance implication of strategic positioning of foreign firms, in the context of a resource partitioning process, is also inconclusive and under-explored beyond firms' survival and founding rates in the extant literature. This dissertation addresses these research gaps and thus contributes to the extant literature by incorporating firm heterogeneity into resource partitioning theory in a multi-industry analysis. In particular, this dissertation attempts to answer these research questions: What factors exert impact on foreign firms' adoption of generalist or specialist strategy in a host market? What is the performance implication of foreign firms that adopt generalist or specialist strategy in the host market?;This dissertation applies logistic regression for data analysis. The U.S. market is adopted as the underlying context for the empirical investigation. Foreign firms in the U.S. market are the primary units of analysis. The findings largely support major hypotheses based on the theoretical base of resource partitioning theory and resource-based view. Specifically, the results indicate that (1) heterogeneous resources of foreign firms and market concentration in a host market jointly affect foreign firms' strategic positioning and performance in the host market; (2) institutional distance between host and home countries exerts confounding moderating effects on the relationship between firm resources and strategic positioning in the host market; (3) market concentration in the host market acts as an antecedent for the strategic positioning - performance relationship. |
