IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/worbus/v44y2009i1p51-62.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Minimizing effects of 'liability of foreignness': Response strategies of foreign firms in the United States

Author

Listed:
  • Elango, B.

Abstract

While anecdotal and research evidence exists supporting the difficulties faced by foreign firms in host nation environments due to liability of foreignness, it is clear that many foreign firms have been successfully operating in the U.S. over the years. This study seeks to understand the strategies foreign firms use to cope with liabilities of foreignness in an alien environment and compete successfully with domestic firms, specifically through boundary spanning. Using a sample of 3861 firms in the U.S., we find that foreign firms on the average underperform compared to domestic firms. We also find these firms take a differing strategic posture to cope with the disadvantages of being a foreign firm compared to domestic rivals. Multiple mediation models indicate that once this strategic posture of foreign firms is controlled for, performance differentials do not exist between foreign and domestic firms.

Suggested Citation

  • Elango, B., 2009. "Minimizing effects of 'liability of foreignness': Response strategies of foreign firms in the United States," Journal of World Business, Elsevier, vol. 44(1), pages 51-62, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:worbus:v:44:y:2009:i:1:p:51-62
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1090951608000151
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Lilach Nachum, 2003. "Liability of foreignness in global competition? Financial service affiliates in the city of London," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 24(12), pages 1187-1208, December.
    2. J. Carlos Jarillo, 1988. "On strategic networks," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 9(1), pages 31-41, January.
    3. Petersen, Bent & Pedersen, Torben, 2002. "Coping with liability of foreignness: Different learning engagements of entrant firms," Journal of International Management, Elsevier, vol. 8(3), pages 339-350.
    4. Mauro F Guillén, 2003. "Experience, imitation, and the sequence of foreign entry: wholly owned and joint-venture manufacturing by South Korean firms and business groups in China, 1987–1995," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 34(2), pages 185-198, March.
    5. Berger, Allen N & Cummins, J David & Weiss, Mary A, 1997. "The Coexistence of Multiple Distribution Systems for Financial Services: The Case of Property-Liability Insurance," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 70(4), pages 515-546, October.
    6. Calhoun, Mikelle A., 2002. "Unpacking liability of foreignness: identifying culturally driven external and internal sources of liability for the foreign subsidiary," Journal of International Management, Elsevier, vol. 8(3), pages 301-321.
    7. David Cummins, J. & Sommer, David W., 1996. "Capital and risk in property-liability insurance markets," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 20(6), pages 1069-1092, July.
    8. Krupa S. Viswanathan, 2006. "The Pricing of Insurer Demutualization Initial Public Offerings," Journal of Risk & Insurance, The American Risk and Insurance Association, vol. 73(3), pages 439-468, September.
    9. B. Elango, 2003. "The Effects of Host Country factors on the Internationalization of the U.S. reinsurance Industry," Journal of Insurance Issues, Western Risk and Insurance Association, vol. 26(2), pages 93-113.
    10. Geert Duysters & John Hagedoorn, 2001. "Do Company Strategies and Structures Converge in Global Markets? Evidence from the Computer Industry," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 32(2), pages 347-356, June.
    11. Luo, Yadong & Shenkar, Oded & Nyaw, Mee-Kau, 2002. "Mitigating liabilities of foreignness: Defensive versus offensive approaches," Journal of International Management, Elsevier, vol. 8(3), pages 283-300.
    12. Miller, Stewart R. & Richards, Malika, 2002. "Liability of foreignness and membership in a regional economic group: Analysis of the European Union," Journal of International Management, Elsevier, vol. 8(3), pages 323-337.
    13. Mezias, John M., 2002. "How to identify liabilities of foreignness and assess their effects on multinational corporations," Journal of International Management, Elsevier, vol. 8(3), pages 265-282.
    14. Eden, Lorraine & Molot, Maureen Appel, 2002. "Insiders, outsiders and host country bargains," Journal of International Management, Elsevier, vol. 8(4), pages 359-388.
    15. Mayers, David & Smith, Clifford W, Jr, 1990. "On the Corporate Demand for Insurance: Evidence from the Reinsurance Market," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 63(1), pages 19-40, January.
    16. Balasubramanian Elango & S. Prakash Sethi, 2007. "An exploration of the relationship between country of origin (COE) and the internationalization-performance paradigm," Management International Review, Springer, vol. 47(3), pages 369-392, June.
    17. J. David Cummins & Richard D. Phillips, 2005. "Estimating the Cost of Equity Capital for Property‐Liability Insurers," Journal of Risk & Insurance, The American Risk and Insurance Association, vol. 72(3), pages 441-478, September.
    18. Cassandra R. Cole & Kathleen A. McCullough, 2006. "A Reexamination of the Corporate Demand for Reinsurance," Journal of Risk & Insurance, The American Risk and Insurance Association, vol. 73(1), pages 169-192, March.
    19. Hennart, Jean-François & Roehl, Thomas & Zeng, Ming, 2002. "Do exits proxy a liability of foreignness?: The case of Japanese exits from the US," Journal of International Management, Elsevier, vol. 8(3), pages 241-264.
    20. Luo, Yadong & Tan, J. Justin, 1998. "A comparison of multinational and domestic firms in an emerging market: A strategic choice perspective," Journal of International Management, Elsevier, vol. 4(1), pages 21-40, July.
    21. Sethi, Deepak & Guisinger, Stephen, 2002. "Liability of foreignness to competitive advantage: How multinational enterprises cope with the international business environment," Journal of International Management, Elsevier, vol. 8(3), pages 223-240.
    22. Chen, Tain-Jy, 2006. "Liability of foreignness and entry mode choice: Taiwanese firms in Europe," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 59(2), pages 288-294, February.
    23. Byeongyong Paul Choi & Mary A. Weiss, 2005. "An Empirical Investigation of Market Structure, Efficiency, and Performance in Property‐Liability Insurance," Journal of Risk & Insurance, The American Risk and Insurance Association, vol. 72(4), pages 635-673, December.
    24. Gene C. Lai & Piman Limpaphayom, 2003. "Organizational Structure and Performance: Evidence From the Nonlife Insurance Industry in Japan," Journal of Risk & Insurance, The American Risk and Insurance Association, vol. 70(4), pages 735-757, December.
    25. Srilata Zaheer & Elaine Mosakowski, 1997. "The Dynamics Of The Liability Of Foreignness: A Global Study Of Survival In Financial Services," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 18(6), pages 439-463, June.
    26. B Elango & Chinmay Pattnaik, 2007. "Building capabilities for international operations through networks: a study of Indian firms," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 38(4), pages 541-555, July.
    27. Vincenzo Perrone & Akbar Zaheer & Bill McEvily, 2003. "Free to Be Trusted? Organizational Constraints on Trust in Boundary Spanners," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 14(4), pages 422-439, August.
    28. Mark Browne & James Carson & Robert Hoyt, 2001. "Dynamic Financial Models of Life Insurers," North American Actuarial Journal, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 5(2), pages 11-26.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Jane W. Lu & Hao Ma & Xuanli Xie, 2022. "Foreignness research in international business: Major streams and future directions," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 53(3), pages 449-480, April.
    2. Denk, Nikola & Kaufmann, Lutz & Roesch, Jan-Frederik, 2012. "Liabilities of Foreignness Revisited: A Review of Contemporary Studies and Recommendations for Future Research," Journal of International Management, Elsevier, vol. 18(4), pages 322-334.
    3. Demirbag, Mehmet & McGuinness, Martina & Akin, Ahmet & Bayyurt, Nizamettin & Basti, Eyup, 2016. "The professional service firm (PSF) in a globalised economy: A study of the efficiency of securities firms in an emerging market," International Business Review, Elsevier, vol. 25(5), pages 1089-1102.
    4. de Jong, Gjalt & van Houten, Jerry, 2014. "The impact of MNE cultural diversity on the internationalization-performance relationship," International Business Review, Elsevier, vol. 23(1), pages 313-326.
    5. Robert-Nicoud, Frédéric & Olarreaga, Marcelo & Carrère, Céline & Fugazza, Marco, 2016. "On the heterogeneous effect of trade on unemployment," CEPR Discussion Papers 11540, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    6. Reddy, Kotapati Srinivasa, 2016. "Institutional Voids and Tax litigation in Emerging Economies: The verdict of Vodafone cross-border acquisition of Hutchison," MPRA Paper 74264, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 2016.
    7. Wolfgang Sofka & Joerg Zimmermann, 2007. "Regional Dimensions of Liability of Foreignness: Between a Rock and a Hard Place?," Jena Economics Research Papers 2007-023, Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena.
    8. Sofka, Wolfgang & Zimmermann, Jörg, 2008. "Regional economic stress as moderator of liability of foreignness," Journal of International Management, Elsevier, vol. 14(2), pages 155-172, June.
    9. Jisun Yu & Sung Kim, 2013. "Understanding liability of foreignness in an Asian business context: A study of the Korean asset management industry," Asia Pacific Journal of Management, Springer, vol. 30(4), pages 1191-1217, December.
    10. Andrei Panibratov & Natalia Ribberink & Anna Veselova & Konstantin Nefedov, 2018. "Entry Modes And Liability Of Foreignness Effects: Evidence From Russian Firms On The German Market," Organizations and Markets in Emerging Economies, Faculty of Economics, Vilnius University, vol. 9(1).
    11. Maruyama, Masayoshi & Wu, Lihui, 2015. "Overcoming the Liability of Foreignness in International Retailing: A Consumer Perspective," Journal of International Management, Elsevier, vol. 21(3), pages 200-210.
    12. Cao, Mingchun & Alon, Ilan, 2021. "Overcoming the liability of foreignness – A new perspective on Chinese MNCs," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 128(C), pages 611-626.
    13. Barnard, Helena, 2010. "Overcoming the liability of foreignness without strong firm capabilities -- the value of market-based resources," Journal of International Management, Elsevier, vol. 16(2), pages 165-176, June.
    14. B. Elango & Yu‐Luen Ma & Nat Pope, 2008. "An Investigation Into the Diversification–Performance Relationship in the U.S. Property–Liability Insurance Industry," Journal of Risk & Insurance, The American Risk and Insurance Association, vol. 75(3), pages 567-591, September.
    15. Sofka, Wolfgang & Zimmermann, Jörg, 2005. "There's no Place Like Home: A Strategic Framework to Overcome Liability of Foreignness in the German Car Market," ZEW Discussion Papers 05-84, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
    16. Sethi, Deepak & Judge, William, 2009. "Reappraising liabilities of foreignness within an integrated perspective of the costs and benefits of doing business abroad," International Business Review, Elsevier, vol. 18(4), pages 404-416, August.
    17. Pankaj Kumar & Swanand J. Deodhar & Srilata Zaheer, 2023. "Cognitive sources of liability of foreignness in crowdsourcing creative work," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 54(4), pages 686-716, June.
    18. Schmidt, Tobias & Sofka, Wolfgang, 2009. "Liability of foreignness as a barrier to knowledge spillovers: Lost in translation?," Journal of International Management, Elsevier, vol. 15(4), pages 460-474, December.
    19. Dash, Rupanwita & Ranjan, Kumar Rakesh, 2019. "An Effectual–Causal View of Managerial Decisions in the Internationalization of Indian MNEs," Journal of International Management, Elsevier, vol. 25(1), pages 101-120.
    20. Byeongyong Paul Choi, 2010. "The U.S. Property and Liability Insurance Industry: Firm Growth, Size, and Age," Risk Management and Insurance Review, American Risk and Insurance Association, vol. 13(2), pages 207-224, September.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:worbus:v:44:y:2009:i:1:p:51-62. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/620401/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.