Research On The Realization Configuration Of Collaborative Allocation Between China's Multinational Enterprises' Location Strategy CSR Strategy

Facing the increasingly fierce international competitive environment and the non-market environment in which the requirements of stakeholders are increasing day by day,multinational enterprises need not only to cope with the malicious competition from western developed countries and the different institutional and cultural environments of the host countries,but also to maintain and further enhance their competitiveness and expand their competitive advantages.In the new stage of development and under the international situation,enterprises need to consider both market strategy and non-market strategy,and to think about the shaping of competitive ability and competitive advantage from a higher strategic level.As an international market competition strategy,many studies have clearly demonstrated the important role of location strategy in shaping competitive advantages from the perspective of international competition.As a typical non-market strategy,CSR strategy has also attracted attention for its role in promoting corporate legitimacy and performance.However,the existing researches mostly distinguish them and do not discuss their resource allocation and synergistic compensation effect from the overall level of the enterprise.This paper holds that only by balancing the competitive strategy with the legitimate strategy can Chinese enterprises achieve the goal of "going up" and truly become world-class enterprises.Therefore,based on the optimal differentiation theory,this paper studies the synergy and integration of location strategy and CSR strategy in the internationalization of enterprises.This paper constructs a theoretical model based on location strategy and CSR strategy,in which location strategy is divided into four types of strategies according to two indicators of geographic dispersion and system distance direction:region-surplus-oriented,region-deficit-oriented,global-surplus-oriented and global-deficit-oriented.CSR strategy is divided into owner responsibility,direct stakeholder responsibility and indirect stakeholder responsibility according to different responsibility dimensions of stakeholders.Using the qualitative comparative analysis method of clear set,143 enterprises with overseas subsidiaries of more than 5 in 2017 and CSR scores of Hexun from 2014 to 2016 are selected for integrated analysis.The study found that in the high-level performance of Chinese multinational enterprises,there are four realization configurations of coordinated allocation of location strategy and CSR strategy,namely:global-commercial resource advantage-driven,global-political resource advantage-driven,regional-innovation-driven and regional-market-seeking.Global-business resource advantage-driven enterprises have business resource advantages that focus more on resource investment in the dimension of competitive strategy and appropriately weaken the investment in the dimension of legitimacy.Global-political resource advantage-driven enterprises need to take into account and coordinate the dimensions of competition and legitimacy.In the dimension of market competition,it relies on the advantages of political resources to carry out international operation.In the dimension of legitimacy,it takes into account stakeholders in different sub-dimensions,especially focusing on CSR input to direct stakeholders.Regional-innovation-driven enterprises are more embodied in the internationalization of innovation,focusing on investment related to innovation and research and development in the dimensions of competition and legitimacy,such as innovation ability,research and development ability and the responsibilities of owners related to them.Regional-market-seeking multinational enterprises are dominated by brand competence,channel supply competence and sales competence in the competition dimension,supplemented by CSR behaviors of indirect stakeholders in the legitimacy dimension.The research not only extends the knowledge of the optimal differentiation theory,but also discusses the coordinated allocation of resources and the synergy of strategic dimensions between the two types of strategies,filling the theoretical gap.Moreover,this paper makes up for the deficiency of the previous research on the location strategy of multinational enterprises from two aspects:the orientation of institutional distance and the overall location layout of emerging economies.In addition,this study also provides guidance for the internationalization of emerging economies,especially Chinese enterprises,from the aspects of government policy formulation,enterprise strategy implementation and personnel training,which are closely related to the internationalization operation.