{"title":"Bilateral political tension and the signaling role of patenting in a host country","authors":"Nan Zhou, Jiatao Li, Jue Wang","doi":"10.1057/s41267-023-00657-4","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The current increasing volatility in international politics makes it more important to understand how multinational enterprises respond to political tension between host and home countries. This paper explains the impact of macro-level bilateral political tension on micro-level strategy of multinationals in the host country. We developed the idea that patenting may be used to signal a firm’s commitment and contribution to the host country’s economy and development. Data on 437 large multinationals and interviews with senior managers of 20 foreign subsidiaries in China show that patenting local innovation does indeed help an investing firm signal its usefulness to the host country government. It can thus serve as a response to bilateral political tension. The relationship between political tension and local patenting also depends on the relative trade dependence of the home and host countries and on the investing firm’s technology level and its stake in China. The greater the dependence of an MNE and its home country government on the host country, the more likely patenting of local innovations would increase in times of bilateral political tension.","PeriodicalId":48453,"journal":{"name":"Journal of International Business Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":8.6000,"publicationDate":"2023-11-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of International Business Studies","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1057/s41267-023-00657-4","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"BUSINESS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Abstract The current increasing volatility in international politics makes it more important to understand how multinational enterprises respond to political tension between host and home countries. This paper explains the impact of macro-level bilateral political tension on micro-level strategy of multinationals in the host country. We developed the idea that patenting may be used to signal a firm’s commitment and contribution to the host country’s economy and development. Data on 437 large multinationals and interviews with senior managers of 20 foreign subsidiaries in China show that patenting local innovation does indeed help an investing firm signal its usefulness to the host country government. It can thus serve as a response to bilateral political tension. The relationship between political tension and local patenting also depends on the relative trade dependence of the home and host countries and on the investing firm’s technology level and its stake in China. The greater the dependence of an MNE and its home country government on the host country, the more likely patenting of local innovations would increase in times of bilateral political tension.
期刊介绍:
The Selection Committee for the JIBS Decade Award is pleased to announce that the 2023 award will be presented to Anthony Goerzen, Christian Geisler Asmussen, and Bo Bernhard Nielsen for their article titled "Global cities and multinational enterprise location strategy," published in JIBS in 2013 (volume 44, issue 5, pages 427-450).
The prestigious JIBS Decade Award, sponsored by Palgrave Macmillan, recognizes the most influential paper published in the Journal of International Business Studies from a decade earlier. The award will be presented at the annual AIB conference.
To be eligible for the JIBS Decade Award, an article must be one of the top five most cited papers published in JIBS for the respective year. The Selection Committee for this year included Kaz Asakawa, Jeremy Clegg, Catherine Welch, and Rosalie L. Tung, serving as the Committee Chair and JIBS Editor-in-Chief, all from distinguished universities around the world.