How Overseas Background Of Top Management Team Affects Internationalization Process Of Chinese Companies

Outward foreign direct investment has gradually become one of the ways of internationalization of listed companies in China.While enterprises are internationalizing,a large number of returnees return,and they become the managers of enterprises,which influences the internationalization decision of the enterprises.Under such background,it is necessary to study the role of the overseas background of the top management team in the internationalization process of the enterprises.Based on upper echelons theory,managerial power theory and knowledge-based view,this paper uses panel data regression model to study the impact of overseas background of top management team on the internationalization process of Chinese enterprises through the OFDI data and executives’ overseas background data of Chinese listed companies from 2008 to 2017.We find that:(1)The overseas background of the top management team can expand the scope of internationalization,but also slow down the internationalization speed of the enterprises;(2)The ownership of overseas executives can expand the scope of internationalization of the enterprises;(3)The ownership of overseas executives will speed up the international commitment speed of the enterprises,while the key positions took by overseas executives will slow down the internationalization commitment speed of the enterprises.In the further study,this paper analyses the types of corporate ownership,overseas background of managers and industry,and finds that in state-owned enterprises,the longer the tenure of overseas executives is,the greater the scope of internationalization of the enterprises is;in non-state-owned enterprises,the more shares overseas executives hold,the greater the scope of internationalization of the enterprises is.At the same time,the overseas working experience of the executives can expand the scope of internationalization of the enterprises.The overseas studying experience and working experience of the executives can reduce the internationalization speed of the enterprises.In addition,the overseas background of the top management team can play a more important role in manufacturing enterprises.Then,this paper tests the robustness of the regression results by the methods of propensity score matching and so on.Finally,this paper puts forward corresponding suggestions from the government and enterprises.