Formation of International Joint Ventures at Home and Emerging-Market Multinational Corporations’ Entries Into Developed Countries: A Resource Dependence Approach

The most distinctive feature of emerging-market multinational corporations as a new wave of cross-border investors is their home-country context, and exploring how the unique characteristics of emerging markets shape their internationalization may extend the literature built on developed-market multinational corporations. In this article, we examine the role of emerging-market multinational corporations’ formation of international joint ventures at home—a product of developed-market multinational corporations’ earlier penetration into emerging markets—in shaping their location choices during internationalization. Drawing on resource dependence theory, we propose that emerging-market multinational corporations’ formation of international joint ventures at home with developed-market multinational corporations predicts their subsequent entry into these partners’ countries of origin. Furthermore, emerging-market multinational corporations’ propensity to enter the developed countries from which their joint venture partners originate is contingent on the level of regional institutional voids in emerging markets. Using a sample of Chinese listed firms, we find empirical evidence supporting these hypotheses.