Foreign Ownership and the Long-Term Orientation of Firms

Abstract In many firms around the world, foreign owners have become an influential investor group. Foreign owners often differ from domestic owners and potentially impact firm outcomes in different ways than domestic owners. In the present paper, we examine whether and how foreign ownership is associated with firms’ long-term orientation, a central element of firms’ dominant logic and strategic orientation. We use arguments from stewardship theory to develop our hypotheses on a positive relationship between foreign ownership and long-term orientation. Our empirical analysis of panel data from European firms provides support for this predicted association. To offer a more nuanced perspective, we further incorporate insights from institutional theory to account for the heterogeneity among foreign investors. Our data reveals that investors from institutionally similar countries are more strongly linked to firms’ long-term orientation than those from institutionally distant countries. Moreover, we ascertain that foreign passive investors rather than foreign active shareholders promote long-term orientation in their investees. By highlighting the importance of institutional origin and investor type, this study contributes to the nascent but growing literature on foreign ownership and its impact on firms. Our findings suggest that foreign ownership positively fosters long-term orientation, but it does so in a non-uniform way as its effects depend critically on boundary conditions.