| As the main mode of capital flow in the world and an important way for Chinese enterprises to "go global",OFDI has become an important way for a country to participate in international division of labor and optimize resource allocation,and is crucial to China’s economic development and the rise of the global value chain status.As one of the important business strategies in the process of international operation of enterprises,the choice of OFDI entry mode has an important impact on the success of investment and the future development of enterprises.At the same time,as a complex issue,the choice of the entry mode of enterprises’ OFDI is jointly affected by many factors.Every choice of entrymode for enterprises’ OFDI is a relatively rational decision based on its current situation.So,how to identify the "rational choice" of OFDI entry mode? What are its characteristics? Will entry modes with different characteristics have a differentiated impact on business performance?In response to the above problems,this paper selected 252 OFDI data of Chinese enterprises with more than US $100 million from 2008 to2020,and introduced the fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis(fs QCA)and the necessity condition analysis(NCA)to explore the complex mechanism of multidimensional factors on the choice of entry mode for enterprises’ OFDI and the performance of OFDI from the perspective of configuration.The main conclusions are as follows:(1)An integrated analysis framework of the "rational choice" of the entry mode of Chinese enterprises’ OFDI has been constructed,providing a new integrated perspective for analyzing the choice of the entry mode of Chinese enterprises’ OFDI.(2)The choice of entry mode for Chinese enterprises’ OFDI is characterized by "different paths leading to the same destination".Enterprise ownership,experience of large-scale foreign direct investment,enterprise productivity,cultural distance,institutional environment of the host country and growth opportunities are not the necessary conditions for the choice of entry mode for enterprises’ OFDI.(3)Through the fs QCA analysis,a total of seven "rational choices" for Chinese enterprises to choose cross-border M&A to enter the host country’s market were obtained.Combined with existing research theories,the complex reasons for choosing cross-border M&A as the entry mode under various antecedent configurations were revealed respectively,and further analysis was carried out from the national market situation and the characteristics of enterprise ownership.(4)According to the specific characteristics of cross-border M&A under different "rational choices",it is divided into five types: high-productivity leading,opportunity catching up,experience driven,external environment leading and resource seeking.It is found that the relationship between cross-border M&A under different types and the improvement rate of business performance after M&A presents a differentiated feature.Finally,the article analyzed the typical cases under each "rational choice" to provide reference for the development of OFDI activities of transnational enterprises in the same situation. |
