Board Interlock Tenure and Firm Internationalization

ABSTRACT To overcome liabilities of foreignness and outsidership during internationalization, board interlock is an effective conduit of foreign knowledge inflows and organizational learning that firms require. We focus on the time dimension of such influence and hypothesize that the tenure of board interlocks with firms with experience in outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) in a country promotes the OFDI decision of the focal firm to that particular country. However, such an effect diminishes as the tenure of interlock ties increases. Moreover, as an alternative knowledge source, OFDI knowledge from the focal firm's neighboring region may weaken the baseline effect. Based on longitudinal data of listed firms in China, our empirical results support the hypotheses. This study enriches the literature on social network learning by identifying its temporal nature and the substitution between different knowledge sources. It also demonstrates the importance of rotating a firm's board members, so that knowledge acquisition and learning remain fresh. 摘要 为了克服企业在国际化过程中遇到的外来者劣势或局外人劣势，企业常常通过建立连锁董事进行组织学习并获取国际知识。本研究关注连锁董事任职时间长短的效应，假设虽然与其他拥有对某一国家的对外直接投资经验企业建立连锁董事会促进本企业对同一国家的对外直接投资决策，但这种影响会随着连锁董事任期的增长而减弱。与此同时，企业拥有的对所在区域的对外直接投资知识可以削弱连锁董事任期对企业国际化决策的影响。本研究采用中国上市公司的面板数据进行了回归分析，结果证实了所提假设。本研究表明，企业在社会网络中学习的时间维度和不同知识来源之间的替代都会影响企业的决策，因此丰富了社会网络学习的相关文献。同时，本研究也阐述了企业董事会成员轮换的重要性，因为只有这样才能获取知识并保持习得知识的新颖性。