Managing Culture and Interspace in Cross-border Investments

Building a Global Company

Martina Fuchs, Sebastian Henn, Martin Franz, Ram Mudambi

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781138929463
• eBook ISBN: 9781317399452
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

This book focuses on the dialectics between spatio-organisational gaps and local contexts that characterise cross-border investments. "Interspatial" investments – be it mergers & acquisitions (M&A) or greenfield investments – are usually characterised by what is referred to as "otherness", i.e. organisational and cultural distances of the firms involved in relation to their regional contexts.

At the same time, economic, political and socio-cultural linkages are decisive for attracting cross-border investments to regions and for providing firms with conditions supportive of their market success. As a consequence of being locked into complex structures of proximities, cross-border investments are situated in contested terrain. This terrain triggers learning processes in both regional actors and investors, which can result in the convergence of mindsets and organisational issues.

This book is unique in that it combines interspace (defined as the distance between the new owner and the cross-border venture), place (the target region), interpretation (perception and understanding of the investment by the actors involved) and context (institutions, actor networks and interaction), thus offering better understanding of recent processes of globalisation. Crossing disciplinary boundaries by integrating economic geography and management studies, the volume adopts an innovative and spatially informed perspective on foreign direct investments (FDI).

This perspective will be of great value to scholars, students and practitioners. The volume is inventive in its approach in that it offers fresh readings from interdisciplinary theoretical approaches and combines these with valuable empirical insights from developed as well as Emerging Economies.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• List of Contributors
• Abbreviations
• 1 Introduction: Managing Culture and Interspace in Cross-border Investments: Building a Global Company
• 2 Othering FDI in the Media: How Chinese Investors Are Constructed as Deviating Others in German Dailies
• 3 Behind the Scenes: Managers’ Interpretations of Foreign Takeovers by Investors of Emerging Economies
• 4 Industrial Relations and FDI From China and India in Germany
• 5 Cultural Frictions in Post-merger Integration Processes: A View on “Face” When Dealing With Asian Counterparts
• 6 Multiple Organisational Identities After M&As
• 7 Becoming a National Champion yet Remaining a Global Player: The Acquisition of Volvo Car by Zhejiang Geely
• 8 Asymmetric Effects of Cultural Distance: A Comparison of German and Austrian Inbound and Outbound Cross-border Transactions and the Diverging Effect of Integration of Wholly Owned Target Firms
• 9 Brownfield Investments in the German Automotive Parts Industry: Private Equity as a Door Opener
• 10 Reactions to China’s Cross-border Investment and International Investment Law
• 11 Chinese Outward FDI in Germany and the U.S.: An Assessment of National and Subnational Location Strategies
• 12 The Perception of Local Institutional Quality by Multinationals in a Transition Economy Context: Empirical Evidence From Three Regions in Ukraine
• 13 Realities of Responsible Business: Institutional and Structural Conditions in MNE–Local Government Bargaining
• 14 Between Embeddedness and Otherness: Internationalisation of Grocery Retailers in Emerging Markets
• 15 Making Sense of Local Customer Relationships in Cross-border Acquisitions
• 16 Evolving Forms of Collaborative Finance in Corporate Networks: Insights From the Automotive Industry in Germany and Brazil
• 17 Synopsis: Building a “Global” Company: Challenges of Interspace and Regional Embeddedness
• Index