The Influence Of Managers’ Background,Nature Of Ownership On Enterprises’ Internationalization

With the development of economic globalization, more and more Chinese enterprises have the demands of "Go-out", for they can integrate the world’s resources in the international process, and seek new marketing opportunity worldwide, enhancing core strength to participate in the international competition. Our country’s rapid growth in economy cannot be without improvement of enterprises’competitive strength, so researching the international developmental strategies of our country’s enterprises has important theories and realistic meanings for their growth.This article firstly reviewed the national and foreign literatures about enterprises’internationalization, including the impacting factors of enterprises’ internationalization, the choices of enterprises’international behaviors and the results of enterprises’internationalization, and then the author summarized the literatures in the aspects of organizational factors and strategic choices in enterprises’internationalization, according to the researching focus of this article.In the process of reviewing the international literatures, the author found most literatures presumed the managers were homogeneous, ignoring the influences of the managers’heterogeneity on the enterprises’strategies. In reality, the managers’ educational background, working experiences, gender, age, and so on can influence their cognitive level and values formation, which can exert an influence on the enterprises’behaviors.Secondly, based on the Upper Echelons Theory as our study perspective, this research tries to explore the relationship between managers’background and enterprises’internationalization. Upper Echelons Theory indicates managers’ cognitive level and values formation can influence the enterprise strategy and performance. This literature, based on the statistical method of the Upper Echelons Theory, divides the managers’background into several characteristic, such as educational background, working experiences, gender, age, and so on. The author tries to explain the relationship between these factors and enterprises’ internationalization, and brings forward the model and hypotheses of empirical research.Finally, most literatures about Upper Echelons Theory are originated from the western country. In China, the transition economy presents a special institutional environment, which is different from the perfect market economy in western countries. This paper needs to explore the applicability of the Upper Echelons Theory in China and also discuss how the managers’characteristics background impacts the state-owned enterprises’internationalization.According to the eventually ownership properties, this paper divided the listed companies into state-owned enterprises and non-state-owned enterprises. Compared with the non-state-owned enterprise, the state-owned enterprise’s top manager focus more on individual rights, career development, social status and reputation. Thus, they may use resources which are the original used for internationalization strategy for service political objectives, and they may also concern about short-term performance assessment, and avoid apply the resources into high-risk and high return international operation.The innovative research perspective of this paper is to use the international theory and Upper Echelons Theory to conduct a study under our unique cultural and constitutional environment. Until now, there is no systematic and specific literature about managers’background and enterprises’internationalization under the ownership situations. This paper, based on the Upper Echelons Theory, and fully considered our culture and system characteristics, deeply discusses the background characteristics of the manager and enterprises’internationalization. Based on a sample of listed manufacturing companies in China, the author uses the date to do the statistical analysis, including descriptive statistics, correlation analysis, multiple regression analysis, etc. Also the author tries to analyze the results, examines the economic significance, and puts forward some suggestions.Based on the international theory and Upper Echelons Theory, this paper presents the behavior characteristics of top management in state-owned enterprise and uses the data of listed manufacturing companies to test the influence of manager’s background on international strategy choices in empirical method. The conclusion reveals that:(1) The international education and work background of manager has a great positive effect on the international strategy choice;(2) The education level manager received has a great negative effect on the enterprises’ internationalization;(3)The major background has positive effect on international strategy choice.manager with major of international trade, the international finance and so on will participate in higher level of the international activities.(4) In non-state-owned enterprise, the relationship between the age of manager and international strategy choices presents a high significance level, however, in the state-owned enterprise, the relationship is statistically insignificant.(5) The female chairman prefers enterprises’internationalization in state-owned enterprise, however the gender factor has a litter effect on the international strategy choice for non-state-owned enterprise.(6) Manager’s international working experience in non-state-owned enterprises has a significant positive effect on enterprise’s internationalization, but in state-owned enterprise this factor is not statistically significant. Besides, considering control variables, the scale of the non-state-owned enterprises has more influence on the internationalization than that of the state-owned enterprise, reasons may be the pursuit of maximum personal interest, excessively job consuming in the state-owned enterprise.This paper is also the application and development of the Upper Echelons Theory, which has great importance in testing the applicability and limitations of Upper Echelons Theory in different state systems, enriching and expanding the theoretical studies of Upper Echelons Theory. On the basis of considering the behavior characteristics of state-owned managers, this article has analyzed the internal mechanism of the influence of managers’background characteristics on internationalization, which has provided the attempt of methods and expanding ideas to the existing theory. Moreover, the conclusion of the text can provide not only a reference for the selection criteria of business executives, but also incentives of executives for the enterprise which has international strategic planning.Inevitably, there are some research limitations in this paper. First, this article chose single indicator called FSTS to analyze enterprise internationalization, we could examine the multiple indicator analysis system in future research; Secondly, the author chooses the listed company whose ownership haven’t changed in the selected years, but in the later study we could compare and then analyze the effect before and after the ownership changes. Finally, the author examines the relationship between the internationalization of the enterprise and the manager characteristics such as educational background, work experience, education and professional experience, but there is no in-depth analysis of the internal mechanism between the manager background characteristics and internationalization. In future studies the use of psychological science, sociology, human resources and other knowledge in analyzing and explaining the operational mechanism will enhance and improve the model, which may become the future direction of research in this field.