Nguyen, Ha Thi Thu, Larimo, Jorma and Ghauri, Pervez (2022) Understanding foreign divestment: the impacts of economic and political friction. Journal of Business Research, 139. pp. 675-691. ISSN 0148-2963

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Abstract

Past research on foreign divestment has recognized the impact of economic and political differences1. However, the prior findings remain equivocal. We adopt the Positive Organizational Scholarship perspective to provide more contextualized insights into the effects of economic and political differences on foreign divestment. Specifically, we consider the juxtaposition of national differences and levels of firm interaction with the different contexts. Thus, we develop the concept of friction to assess levels of economic and political differences. We further argue that economic friction will have a curvilinear (U-shaped) effect on foreign divestment, whereas political friction will produce a monotonic (positive) effect. Moreover, we introduce ownership level as a moderator into the main hypotheses. Drawing on data from 2400 foreign subsidiaries of 310 Finnish multinational enterprises, from 1970–2010, we provide support for our main hypotheses, although the moderating effect of ownership levels is not supported. We further compare the effects of differences measured by friction with those measured by distance. Accordingly, our research highlights the importance of detecting specific conditions for the investigation of the impact of economic and political differences in the foreign divestment literature.

Item Type:	Article
Schools and Departments:	University of Sussex Business School > Strategy and Marketing
SWORD Depositor:	Mx Elements Account
Depositing User:	Mx Elements Account
Date Deposited:	15 Feb 2023 12:03
Last Modified:	15 Feb 2023 12:15
URI:	http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/110700

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