CUFE-BS Academic Seminar: From global exploitation to local exploration: Evidence fromforeign subsidiaries in China

Time: 26September 2019, 2:00-4:00 PM

Location:Room 615, CUFE Business School

Speaker:Professor J. T. LI, HKUST

Abstract:This study investigates the relationship between global exploitation and localexploration of foreign subsidiaries. We first argue that global exploitationhelps foreign subsidiaries develop absorptive capacity, which further leads tolocal exploration in the host country. Next, we point out too much globalexploitation could hinder local exploration due to inertia and resourceconstraints. Therefore, global exploitation and local exploration follow aninverted U-shape relationship. We further consider two moderators of therelationship: headquarter age and cross-national institutional distance betweenhost and home countries. We test the hypotheses using a sample of foreignsubsidiaries of large multi-nationals in China between 2008 and 2016 and findsupport for our hypotheses.