School of Business, Hohai University, Nanjing, Jiangsu, China.
PLoS One. 2024 Feb 9;19(2):e0295443. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0295443. eCollection 2024.
Multinational enterprises frequently divest their foreign assets in the current economic environment. Existing research, based on friction theory, has mainly focused on the impacts of political and economic disparities on foreign divestment while neglecting the nuanced influence of cultural factors. To address this gap, this paper draws on the cultural friction perspective to capture the diverse cultural resistance faced by each enterprise and explore the relationship between cultural friction and foreign divestment. Data from Chinese publicly listed enterprises engaged in foreign investment are leveraged, and a dual-level analysis is conducted using Logit panel regression and Cox survival analysis to examine the relationship between cultural friction and foreign divestment from both the viewpoints of the parent company and the overseas subsidiary. Additionally, the paper examines the marginal factors that affect the relationship between them from an institutional perspective. The findings reveal that cultural friction has a positive influence on the propensity of multinational enterprises to divest from foreign markets. Interestingly, a "formal institutional distance paradox" is demonstrated in our study, and politically connected enterprises are found to be more vulnerable to foreign divestment due to the "curse of political affiliations".
跨国企业在当前经济环境下频繁剥离其外国资产。现有研究基于摩擦理论，主要关注政治和经济差异对外国撤资的影响，而忽略了文化因素的细微影响。为了解决这一差距，本文借鉴文化摩擦视角，捕捉每个企业所面临的多样化文化抵制，并探讨文化摩擦与外国撤资之间的关系。利用中国对外投资的上市公司数据，采用 Logit 面板回归和 Cox 生存分析进行双重层次分析，从母公司和海外子公司的角度检验文化摩擦与外国撤资之间的关系。此外，本文还从制度角度考察了影响两者关系的边际因素。研究结果表明，文化摩擦对跨国企业从外国市场撤资的倾向有正向影响。有趣的是，我们的研究还表明了一个“正式制度距离悖论”，并且发现政治关联企业由于“政治关联的诅咒”更容易受到外国撤资的影响。
