Kang Rae Cho, Chia-Hsing Huang, and Prasad Padmanabhan
International Business Review, Volume 23, Issue 2, Pages 371–380

We propose an alternate context-based extension to the agency theory-grounded explanation of foreign ownership mode choices proposed in the literature. Using a sample of Taiwanese firms investing in the greater China region over the 2001–2009 period, we show that both economic and non-economic factors influence the choice of foreign ownership mode. In addition, we document that higher institutional ownership percentages motivate Taiwanese firms to select shared ownership in the greater China region. Further, no long term compensation mix/ownership structure link is found. These findings run counter to a theory provided for foreign ownership mode choices of US based firms. Our findings provide support for the validity of stewardship and social capital theory, but not financial incentives-based agency theory, for Taiwanese firms investing in the greater China region.

Kang Rae Cho
Journal of Contemporary Management,Vol. 6, Issue 1, Pages: 39-50.

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Cho, Kang Rae and Padmanabhan, Prasad
International Business Review, June 2005, Vol. 14 Issue 3, pp. 307-324.

This study investigates potential moderating effects of firm’s experience levels in the relationship between cultural distance and foreign ownership mode choice. Using the well established Japanese FDI data base, it is found that higher levels of experience, particularly decision-specific experience (prior experience with a particular ownership structure mode), mitigates potential impacts of uncertainty and costs caused by the high level of cultural distance, thus uncovering one possible answer to the national cultural distance paradox reported in the literature. These findings reinforce similar findings of interaction effects between key variables and cultural distance in studies involving other important strategic decisions of the MNC. The decision-specific experience-moderated cultural distance variable, and not the absolute cultural distance variable, is found to be an important determinant of a firm’s foreign ownership mode choice. Furthermore, this variable dominates the other experience-moderated cultural distance variables (international business experience and host county experience-moderated cultural distance variables) in the ability to discriminate between full ownership and shared ownership modes. Based on this moderated cultural distance measure, we find strong evidence that cultural distance is positively associated with full ownership of Japanese foreign manufacturing entities.