Emerging Economy

This dissertation investigates how institutional environments and firm resources influence firm scope. Building on strategy and international business literatures, I propose that institutional environments influence firm scope through the impacts on both the development of internal resources and the availability of external resources. In Chapter 2, I disaggregate the concept of institutional distance into different dimensions from an institutional perspective and empirically test the validity of the multi-dimensional approach in the sample of U.S. and Chinese firms by exploring the effects of distance on the foreign expansion strategies. The results also show that Chinese firms do have different strategic choices from U.S. firms when they invest abroad. In Chapter 3, I focus on government and international diversification in emerging economies. Compared with partially privatized enterprises (PPEs) and fully privatized enterprises (FPEs), state-owned enterprises (SOEs) are less likely to go abroad as a result of their risk-averse nature. In addition, different types of government corporations rely on different types of resources when they invest abroad: while SOEs reply on external resources such as debts, PPEs rely on internal resources such as intangible assets. An empirical investigation of the FDI activities of Chinese listed firms in high-tech industries between 1991 and 2007 supports the arguments. Finally, in Chapter 4, I focus on firm capability and related product diversification i