The Effect Of Social Embeddedness On Post-Entry Growth In CMNEs

Under the national "The Belt and Road" initiative,increasing Chinese companies are entering or entered overseas markets and accelerating their international business.After entering foreign markets,multinational enterprises are directly exposed to the unfamiliar and complex overseas environment,their defects and weaknesses will be further magnified,and international growth will face greater risks and threats.Although existing studies have made multidimensional analyses of the post-entry development drivers of MNEs' internationalization,these perspectives focus on MNEs' attributes and concentrate on the firm-specific resource advantages that already exist,i.e.,the expanded exploitation of their internal advantages.Chinese Multinational enterprises(CMNEs)face a huge challenge of lack of internationalization resources and incumbent constraints in the post-entry phase of internationalization due to the liability of emergingness and the liability of origin.These firms can hardly rely on long and difficult internal resource cultivation to gain a competitive advantage overseas;they need more to leverage and utilize outside resources in the network through social embeddedness and drive internationalization knowledge learning to achieve post-entry growth of aggressive internationalization.Therefore,based on the social embeddedness theory and inter-organizational knowledge management perspective,this dissertation explores the potential drivers and mechanisms of CMNEs' post-entry growth of internationalization.This dissertation follows the research logic of "growth drivers","connection mechanism","interaction mechanism",and "continuous process".The research logic consists of the following three areas of sub-study:First,under the learning-based perspective,this dissertation explores synergistic strategies for structural embeddedness to drive CMNEs' post-entry growth of internationalization.CMNEs need to achieve both post-entry degree growth by minimizing risk to provide solutions for limited resources,as well as post-entry scope growth by seeking growth opportunities in broader markets to escape incumbent constraints.Besides,due to organizational learning,scope growth and degree growth are interactive,compensating for the limitations of CMNEs' insufficient internationalization knowledge.Developing structural embeddedness enhances firms' coordination of external resources,reduces information asymmetry,and thus enhances resource sharing.To this end,this sub-study uses a survey dataset of 206 CMNEs and synthesizes statistical methods using SEM,PLS-PM,and instantaneous mediation tests to explore how structural embeddedness directly affects post-entry scope growth and degree growth,and how it indirectly affects post-entry growth through scope growth and degree growth,respectively,under the effect of learning.Second,based on the knowledge acquisition perspective,this dissertation reveals the mechanism of relational embeddedness in driving CMNEs' post-entry growth of internationalization.CMNEs exhibit an aggressive internationalization growth in the post-entry stage,and they seek degree growth while also chasing scope growth.Relational embeddedness provides CMNEs with reliable channels to flexible leverage and utilize external resources to support their aggressive internationalization development.In addition,relational embeddedness helps these firms acquire the knowledge needed to internationalize,reduce their overseas market operating costs and identify new internationalization opportunities,thereby facilitating their post-entry growth.To this end,this sub-study uses a survey dataset of more than 200 Chinese multinational firms to explore the mechanisms of relational embeddedness in driving CMNEs' post-entry growth through seemingly uncorrelated regression and structural equation modeling,analyze the mediating effects of knowledge acquisition,and reveal the differential effects of explicit and tacit knowledge acquisition.Third,based on the knowledge conversion lens,this dissertation analyzes the interaction process between structural embeddedness and relational embeddedness of CMNEs.Social embeddedness is not a universally beneficial approach for the growth of multinational enterprises.Excessive pursuit of network configuration optimization can result in structural over-embeddedness of firms and damage their ability to adapt to environmental changes;relational over-embeddedness can restrict firms' openness to new information and potential ways of access,limiting their ability to develop potential opportunities.A healthy interaction between the two is the key for CMNEs to achieve sustained post-entry growth of internationalization.Indeed,social embeddedness and knowledge development evolve together,and knowledge conversion provides a reasonable perspective for understanding the dual embeddedness interaction.To this end,this sub-study explores the process pattern of the interaction between structural embeddedness and relational embeddedness of CMNEs under the knowledge conversion lends by analyzing a typical Chinese multinational enterprise's journey of sustained post-entry growth in Southeast and South Asia markets.There are three main innovations of this study.First,this dissertation focuses on the post-entry growth of CMNEs' aggressive internationalization,analyzes the need for these firms to simultaneously seek post-entry growth in the scope and degree of internationalization,enriching the current scenario of post-entry research on corporate internationalization.Second,this dissertation introduces social embeddedness theory into the study of post-entry growth of firm internationalization and reveals the postentry growth determinants of CMNEs' aggressive internationalization.This dissertation focuses on the mechanisms of structural embeddedness and relational embeddedness that drive the post-entry growth of CMNEs,and analyzes the interaction process of dual embeddedness that supports the sustained post-entry growth of CMNEs,beyond the limitations of existing studies about post-entry internationalization growth that focus on firm internal attributes.Third,this dissertation focuses on the inter-organizational knowledge management perspective of multinational enterprises and analyzes the potential mechanisms of social embeddedness that influence the post-entry growth of CMNEs.Based on summarizing the literature related to inter-organizational knowledge management,this dissertation provides insight into the important role played by knowledge acquisition as well as knowledge transformation from the perspective of constructing potential mechanisms by which social embeddedness affects post-entry entry growth of CMNEs' aggressive internationalization.