Drawing on the concept of institutional work, which refers to purposive actions aimed at creating, maintaining, and disrupting rules and norms in the society, this study explores the strategies Chinese hotel multinational enterprises (MNEs) adopted while managing competing institutional logics in overseas markets. Through document analysis (Study 1) and in-depth interviews (Study 2) with senior executives, managers, government officials and industry experts involved in hotel internationalization in and from China, findings show that Chinese hotel MNEs can respond to and manage their surrounding institutional complexity through four distinct institutional strategies: institutional innovation, institutional withdrawal, institutional cooperation, and institutional manipulation. Two key conditional factors drive these strategic responses: the levels of institutional complexity faced by the MNEs and the MNE's position in the field (i.e., favorable, unfavorable). Our findings contribute to the hospitality literature by illuminating how hotel multinationals adapt to institutional challenges and develop strategic responses during the course of internationalization. • Examines Chinese hotel MNEs facing institutional complexity. • Uses institutional work lens to explain firm strategic responses. • Identifies four institutional strategies. • These strategies depend on field conditions and social position. • Hotel MNEs adopt these strategies to manage host country institutional pressure.
Wang et al. (Sun,) studied this question.