Knowledge Distance and Innovation Performance of Chinese Acquirers after International M&As:A Thoroughfare or Natural Moat?
Numerous Chinese enterprises have"gone out"to carry out international mergers and acquisitions(M&As)in the past decades,trying to acquire strategic assets such as technical knowledge of the host country and target firms,to rapidly improve their innovation performance and international competitiveness.Prior research reveals the critical impact of location choices in this process,and extensively sheds light on the influence of knowledge distance between the home country and the host country on acquiring firms'innovation performance.However,inconsistent conclusions exist.From the perspective of institutional theory,some scholars argue that knowledge distance will make acquiring firms face greater liability of foreignness and difficulties in knowledge transfer and integration,which is not conducive to the im-provement of their innovation performance after international M&As.Other scholars,based on the springboard theory,sug-gest that the greater the knowledge distance,the more opportunities for the acquiring firm to explore new knowledge and realize reverse knowledge transfer,and thus the more they can promote innovation performance after M&As.In response to the inconsistent conclusions,this paper suggests that scholars should return to the theoretical basis of the concept of knowledge distance itself-the national innovation system theory that focuses on one specific dimension of the national institutions,and combine with the current situation that the international M&A practices of Chinese multina-tionals have gradually shown similar characteristics to that of multinational enterprises in developed countries,and choose the institutional theory rather than the springboard theory to discuss the impact of knowledge distance in Chinese multina-tionals'international M&As.Meanwhile,prior literature also pointed out that when exploring the impact of institutions such as the national innovation system,other theoretical perspectives should also be combined to explain the outcomes of multinationals'international strategy more robustly.The knowledge-based view(KBV)is the most widely used theory.Based on the KBV,the impacts of the characteristics of acquiring firms'technological knowledge,especially the technical knowledge stock,are frequently concerned.However,few studies have focused on the impact of acquiring firms'techno-logical knowledge structure(i.e.,technological diversification and technological specialization).In addition,the cunent complex institutional environment also makes the impact of state-owned enterprise identity more prominent.The article also explores the impact of acquiring firms'ownership on the relationship between knowledge distance and innovation perfor-mance.To explore the above research questions,this research adopts the institutional theory perspective and takes China's A-share listed manufacturing enterprises from 2008 to 2017 as samples and uses the method of PSM-DID to conduct em-pirical analysis.It finds that knowledge distance has a significant negative impact on the innovation performance of Chi-nese acquirers.Furthermore,the results show that the degree of technological diversification of the acquirer will deepen the negative impact,while the degree of technological specialization and absorptive capacity can weaken the impact.At the same time,the relationship between knowledge distance and acquirers'innovation performance is heterogeneous among firms with different ownership,namely,compared with non-state-owned firms,knowledge distance has a stronger negative impact on the innovation performance of state-owned firms.Based on the above conclusions,this paper makes two core contributions.Firstly,this paper responds to the call for the deconstruction of institutional distance in international business research,focusing on the impact of the specific dimen-sion of knowledge distance on the post-merger innovation performance of acquiring firms.By tracing the source of knowledge distance-the national innovation system,it focuses on the impact of institutional differences between coun-tries in improving innovation and creating knowledge on the knowledge transfer and integration of acquiring firms,responding to the current research on the relationship between knowledge distance and acquiring firms'innovation per-formance.Secondly,by focusing on the role of acquiring firms'technical knowledge structure,absorptive capacity,and ownership,this paper aims to deepen and supplement the KBV in the context of international M&As and provide impor-tant enlightenment for emerging economy multinationals to realize the matching of their technical knowledge characteris-tics and international M&A location decisions.
万方数据
维普
