The Effect of Nationalism on Governance Choices in Cross-Border Collaborations

We examine how nationalism influences governance choice in cross-border collaborations. While nationalism has historically been within the purview of political scientists, we demonstrate its relevance to management scholars by theorizing how nationalist attitudes and behaviors among decision-makers might shape strategic decisions about collaborations with foreign partners. Drawing on insights from the social psychology literature, we theorize how two attitudes commonly associated with nationalism, that is, lower levels of trust and an unwillingness to work with foreigners, may increase decision-makers’ concerns about opportunistic behavior and invasiveness in cross-border collaborations. Integrating these insights into two key theories of governance choice—transaction cost economics (TCE) and resource dependence theory (RDT)—we derive two competing effects of nationalism: TCE suggests that a heightened concern about opportunistic behavior will make equity alliances preferable, whereas RDT predicts that a greater sensitivity to invasiveness would prioritize non-equity alliances. Examining 11,469 cross-border collaborations over a 25-year period, we find, in line with the RDT-based prediction, that firms from countries with stronger nationalist sentiments prefer non-equity alliances. We also find that cross-country dissimilarities and prior conflict between the firms’ home countries strengthen this negative association. Our findings advance research on cross-border collaborations by demonstrating why and when nationalism may influence governance mode choice. We also contribute to efforts to establish nationalism, specifically in the form of nationalist sentiments, as an important theoretical concept within the management literature.