What determines the establishment of Chinese multinational enterprises' Asia regional headquarters?

Conference Contribution ResearchOnline@JCU
Wang, Pengji
Abstract

Although regionalization has gained interests from many scholars, little research has been done to examine why MNEs set up regional headquarters out of their home country but within their home region. We develop a theoretical framework to examine the determinants of Chinese MNEs' Asia regional headquarters (ARHQs). We argue that the establishment of ARHQs is a logical choice based on Chinese MNEs' strategic intent of regional strategy. We differentiate two regional strategies: investing-regionalization with efficiency improvement as the strategic intent and trading-regionalization with legitimacy gaining as the strategic intent. Based on survey responses from 226 Chinese MNEs, we find that investing-regionalization in Asia would promote MNEs to build ARHQs, while MNEs would set up ARHQs when they have high trading-regionalization outside of Asia. In addition, we find that home-base regional integration and MNEs' international management capability will not only directly impact the establishment of ARHQs, but also moderate the relationship between trading-regionalization outside of Asia and the establishment of ARHQs.

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The 29th Euro-Asia Management Studies Association (EAMSA) Annual Conference

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Singapore

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EAMSA

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