Nonmarket Capital, Acquisition Strategy, and Firm Performance in Emerging Economies: Evidence from China

Acquisitions are regarded as a strategy to redeploy a firm's intangible assets, apart from tangible assets. A critical intangible asset to be redeployed in acquisitions is nonmarket capital, particularly in emerging economies. Nonmarket capital, defined as political capital, social capital and reputational capital that increase firm's institutional relatedness, has been viewed as an intangible asset of salient importance in emerging economies, for it can help firms enhance legitimacy, access market information and resources, and reduce uncertainty. And yet, the role of nonmarket capital in corporate acquisitions has been understudied. The main objective of this dissertation is to provide a comprehensive analysis of functions and dimensions of nonmarket capital, and examine how nonmarket capital is related to an emerging economy firm's acquisition strategy and performance.;Drawing from resource-based view and the signaling theory, I posit that substantial nonmarket capital generates value via substantial functions execution and by directly facilitating business transactions, while symbolic nonmarket capital helps signal a firm's underlying attributes and reduce market uncertainties. Accordingly, acquiring firms should leverage their nonmarket capital such that its substantive and symbolic functions can be effectively redeployed in target firms. In this study, I focus on three main target attributes, i.e. state ownership, product relatedness, and listing status that represent the uniqueness of strategic factor markets---political, product, and capital markets---in emerging economies.;Using China as the empirical context, data of615 listed firms for 2003-2006 show that: (1) symbolic, instead of substantial, political capital interacts with state-owned targets and is positively related to firm performance; (2) substantial social capital is positively related to product-unrelated targets and such strategy leads to superior firm performance; and (3) symbolic, as opposed to substantial, reputational capital positively affects firm performance in case of unlisted targets.;This dissertation aims to offer several contributions. First, this study enriches the concept of nonmarket capital by theorizing its different functions and dimensions, using the resource-based view and the signaling theory. Second, the study extends the acquisition literature to emerging economies context by highlighting nonmarket capital as a unique intangible asset to be redeployed in acquisitions and effects of nonmarket capital on corporate acquisitions. Finally, the study also offers strategic implications to managers in emerging economies by suggesting how they can leverage (or deploy) their nonmarket capital portfolios in pursuing corporate acquisition strategy.;Key words: nonmarket capital, acquisitions, China...