Completion of high-tech M&As by chinese firms: knowledge distance, industry attractiveness and government involvement

Abstract This paper draws upon institutional theory to incorporate the multi-level influences of institutional environment (i.e., knowledge distance at the country level, industry attractiveness at the industry level, and government involvement at the firm level) in order to examine the determinants that affect acquisition completion. Based on a sample of 797 outward M&As in the high-tech industry initiated by Chinese firms from 1991 to 2018, we found that the likelihood of completing an acquisition increases when the knowledge distance between China and the host country decreases and in the presence of a high attractiveness of the Chinese high-tech industry involved. In addition, we found that government involvement in the acquiring firms has different influences from that in the target ones on the likelihood of acquisition completion. Specifically, we only found that the likelihood of acquisition completion decreases in the presence of government involvement in the target firm. The influence of government involvement in the acquiring firms on acquisition completion was not significant. The implications of this study of high-tech M&As enacted by firms from emerging markets are thus discussed.