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Learning to internationalise: the pace and success of foreign acquisitions

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Abstract

We argue that firms engaged in international acquisitions can benefit from foreign acquisition, domestic acquisition, and international joint venture experiences, but that their learning process is prone to biases. Only once companies learn what part of their knowledge about national cultures and entry modes can successfully be applied to new settings will they become truly successful abroad, in terms of both the rate and the frequency of their foreign acquisitions. The hypotheses were tested using negative binomial regression and hazard rate models on data on 1038 foreign acquisitions of 25 firms over a period of more than three decades.

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Notes

  1. Firm dummies are defined at the parent company level (not at the subsidiary level).

  2. As part of our sensitivity analysis, we also estimated models with experience in a cultural block instead of experience in the host country. The support for our hypotheses (not reported here) remained unchanged.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to Guest Co-Editor Thomas Hutzschenreuter, Editor-in Chief Professor Arie Y. Lewin and three anonymous reviewers for their great feedback and guidance. Mark Boons, David Kroon and Thijs Peeters provided excellent research assistance.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Strategic Management and Business Environment, RSM Erasmus University, Rotterdam, The Netherlands

    Anna Nadolska

  2. Department of Organisation and Strategy, Tilburg University, Tilburg, The Netherlands

    Harry G Barkema

  3. Department of Technology and Innovation Management, Rotterdam School of Management, Rotterdam, The Netherlands

    Harry G Barkema

  4. Department of Management, London School of Economics, London, UK

    Harry G Barkema

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  1. Anna Nadolska
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Correspondence to Anna Nadolska.

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Accepted by Thomas Hutzschenreuter, Torben Pedersen and Henk Volberda, Guest Editors, 19 June 2007. This paper has been with the authors for two revisions.

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Nadolska, A., Barkema, H. Learning to internationalise: the pace and success of foreign acquisitions. J Int Bus Stud 38, 1170–1186 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.jibs.8400318

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