IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jbrese/v91y2018icp8-18.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Foreigners in the boardroom: The implications of attitudes toward immigration and conservatism in firms' sub-national context

Author

Listed:
  • Thams, Yannick
  • Kelley, Keith
  • Von Glinow, Mary Ann

Abstract

International Business (IB) research has surveyed firms' internationalization by examining the geographical dispersion of their sales and assets. However, less attention has been devoted to an important facet of their internationalization: the globalization of boards of directors. Drawing on institutional theory, we study the determinants of board foreign diversity by focusing on firms' sub-national socio-cultural context. We theorize on factors such as: attitudes toward immigration and conservatism that may impact the legitimacy of certain governance practices and may exert an influence on firms' propensity to internationalize their boards. Using a sample of S&P1500 from 2004 to 2014, we find support for our theory after using several controls. By bringing to the fore the interplay between sub-national factors and the globalization of boards, our study offers several implications for IB research. More broadly, our research delves into factors related to firms' sub-national environment that are likely to challenge their internationalization.

Suggested Citation

  • Thams, Yannick & Kelley, Keith & Von Glinow, Mary Ann, 2018. "Foreigners in the boardroom: The implications of attitudes toward immigration and conservatism in firms' sub-national context," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 91(C), pages 8-18.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jbrese:v:91:y:2018:i:c:p:8-18
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusres.2018.04.028
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0148296318302042
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jbusres.2018.04.028?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Mihail Miletkov & Annette Poulsen & M. Babajide Wintoki, 2017. "Foreign independent directors and the quality of legal institutions," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 48(2), pages 267-292, February.
    2. Douglass C. North, 1991. "Institutions," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 5(1), pages 97-112, Winter.
    3. Tomasz Lenartowicz & Kendall Roth, 2001. "Does Subculture Within a Country Matter? A Cross-Cultural Study of Motivational Domains and Business Performance in Brazil," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 32(2), pages 305-325, June.
    4. Caroline Flammer & Jiao Luo, 2017. "Corporate social responsibility as an employee governance tool: Evidence from a quasi-experiment," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 38(2), pages 163-183, February.
    5. Oliver E. Williamson, 2000. "The New Institutional Economics: Taking Stock, Looking Ahead," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 38(3), pages 595-613, September.
    6. Steven A. Weldon, 2006. "The Institutional Context of Tolerance for Ethnic Minorities: A Comparative, Multilevel Analysis of Western Europe," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 50(2), pages 331-349, April.
    7. Xingqiang Du, 2016. "Does Confucianism Reduce Board Gender Diversity? Firm-Level Evidence from China," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 136(2), pages 399-436, June.
    8. Benjamin E. Hermalin & Michael S. Weisbach, 1988. "The Determinants of Board Composition," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 19(4), pages 589-606, Winter.
    9. Xufei Ma & Tony W Tong & Markus Fitza, 2013. "How much does subnational region matter to foreign subsidiary performance? Evidence from Fortune Global 500 Corporations’ investment in China," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 44(1), pages 66-87, January.
    10. Abrahim Soleimani & William D. Schneper & William Newburry, 2014. "The Impact of Stakeholder Power on Corporate Reputation: A Cross-Country Corporate Governance Perspective," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 25(4), pages 991-1008, August.
    11. Sjoerd Beugelsdijk & Tatiana Kostova & Kendall Roth, 2017. "An overview of Hofstede-inspired country-level culture research in international business since 2006," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 48(1), pages 30-47, January.
    12. Margarethe F. Wiersema & Harry P. Bowen, 2008. "Corporate diversification: the impact of foreign competition, industry globalization, and product diversification," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(2), pages 115-132, February.
    13. Oxelheim, Lars & Randoy, Trond, 2003. "The impact of foreign board membership on firm value," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 27(12), pages 2369-2392, December.
    14. Estélyi, Kristína Sághy & Nisar, Tahir M., 2016. "Diverse boards: Why do firms get foreign nationals on their boards?," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 39(C), pages 174-192.
    15. Sunil Venaik & David F Midgley, 2015. "Mindscapes across landscapes: Archetypes of transnational and subnational culture," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 46(9), pages 1051-1079, December.
    16. Rosalie L Tung & Alain Verbeke, 2010. "Beyond Hofstede and GLOBE: Improving the quality of cross-cultural research," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 41(8), pages 1259-1274, October.
    17. van Veen, Kees & Sahib, Padma Rao & Aangeenbrug, Evelien, 2014. "Where do international board members come from? Country-level antecedents of international board member selection in European boards," International Business Review, Elsevier, vol. 23(2), pages 407-417.
    18. Masulis, Ronald W. & Wang, Cong & Xie, Fei, 2012. "Globalizing the boardroom—The effects of foreign directors on corporate governance and firm performance," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(3), pages 527-554.
    19. Jiatao Li & J. Richard Harrison, 2008. "National Culture and the Composition and Leadership Structure of Boards of Directors," Corporate Governance: An International Review, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 16(5), pages 375-385, September.
    20. John A. Pearce & Shaker A. Zahra, 1992. "Board Composition From A Strategic Contingency Perspective," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(4), pages 411-438, July.
    21. Jensen, Michael C. & Meckling, William H., 1976. "Theory of the firm: Managerial behavior, agency costs and ownership structure," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 3(4), pages 305-360, October.
    22. Luis Rodriguez-Dominguez & Isabel Gallego-Alvarez & Isabel Garcia-Sanchez, 2009. "Corporate Governance and Codes of Ethics," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 90(2), pages 187-202, December.
    23. Simon Deakin, 2005. "The Coming Transformation of Shareholder Value," Corporate Governance: An International Review, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 13(1), pages 11-18, January.
    24. Thams, Yannick & Bendell, Bari L. & Terjesen, Siri, 2018. "Explaining women's presence on corporate boards: The institutionalization of progressive gender-related policies," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 86(C), pages 130-140.
    25. Loughran, Tim & Schultz, Paul, 2005. "Liquidity: Urban versus rural firms," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 78(2), pages 341-374, November.
    26. Winfried Ruigrok & Simon Peck & Sabina Tacheva, 2007. "Nationality and Gender Diversity on Swiss Corporate Boards," Corporate Governance: An International Review, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 15(4), pages 546-557, July.
    27. Fainshmidt, Stav & Judge, William Q. & Aguilera, Ruth V. & Smith, Adam, 2018. "Varieties of institutional systems: A contextual taxonomy of understudied countries," Journal of World Business, Elsevier, vol. 53(3), pages 307-322.
    28. Greve, Peder & Biemann, Torsten & Ruigrok, Winfried, 2015. "Foreign executive appointments: A multilevel examination," Journal of World Business, Elsevier, vol. 50(4), pages 674-686.
    29. Lars Oxelheim & Aleksandra Gregorič & Trond Randøy & Steen Thomsen, 2013. "On the internationalization of corporate boards: The case of Nordic firms," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 44(3), pages 173-194, April.
    30. Nelson, Thomas E. & Clawson, Rosalee A. & Oxley, Zoe M., 1997. "Media Framing of a Civil Liberties Conflict and Its Effect on Tolerance," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 91(3), pages 567-583, September.
    31. Jens Hainmueller & Daniel J. Hopkins, 2015. "The Hidden American Immigration Consensus: A Conjoint Analysis of Attitudes toward Immigrants," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 59(3), pages 529-548, July.
    32. Aviad Pe'Er & Oliver Gottschlag, 2011. "Red and Blue: the relationship between the institutional context and the performance of leveraged buyout investments," Post-Print hal-00631579, HAL.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Srivastava, Saurabh & Singh, Shiwangi & Dhir, Sanjay, 2020. "Culture and International business research: A review and research agenda," International Business Review, Elsevier, vol. 29(4).
    2. Zhang, Yameng & Sharma, Piyush & Xu, Yekun & Zhan, Wu, 2021. "Challenges in internationalization of R&D teams: Impact of foreign technocrats in top management teams on firm innovations," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 128(C), pages 728-741.
    3. Oh, Seungjoon & Ding, Keli & Park, Heungju, 2021. "Cross-listing, foreign independent directors and firm value," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 136(C), pages 695-708.
    4. Kent Baker, H. & Pandey, Nitesh & Kumar, Satish & Haldar, Arunima, 2020. "A bibliometric analysis of board diversity: Current status, development, and future research directions," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 108(C), pages 232-246.
    5. Cheng Zhang & Le Luo, 2021. "Board diversity and risk-taking of family firms: Evidence from China," International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal, Springer, vol. 17(4), pages 1569-1590, December.
    6. Stefan Schmid & Simon Mitterreiter, 2020. "International Top Managers on Corporate Boards: Dissimilarity and Tenure," Management International Review, Springer, vol. 60(5), pages 787-825, October.
    7. Fujiao Xie & Ying Guo & Shirley J. Daniel & Yuanyang Liu, 2024. "The dynamic relation between board gender diversity and firm performance: the moderating role of shareholder activism," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 62(1), pages 225-246, January.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Hooghiemstra, Reggy & Hermes, Niels & Oxelheim, Lars & Randøy, Trond, 2019. "Strangers on the board: The impact of board internationalization on earnings management of Nordic firms," International Business Review, Elsevier, vol. 28(1), pages 119-134.
    2. Du, Yan & Deloof, Marc & Jorissen, Ann, 2015. "The Roles of Subsidiary Boards in Multinational Enterprises," Journal of International Management, Elsevier, vol. 21(3), pages 169-181.
    3. Rekha Handa, 2021. "Does Presence of Foreign Directors Make a Difference? A Case of Indian IPOs," Business Perspectives and Research, , vol. 9(1), pages 111-127, January.
    4. Dorota Dobija & Karolina Puławska, 2022. "The influence of board members with foreign experience on the timely delivery of financial reports," Journal of Management & Governance, Springer;Accademia Italiana di Economia Aziendale (AIDEA), vol. 26(1), pages 287-313, March.
    5. Areneke, Geofry & Kimani, Danson, 2019. "Value relevance of multinational directorship and cross-listing on MNEs national governance disclosure practices in Sub-Saharan Africa: Evidence from Nigeria," Journal of World Business, Elsevier, vol. 54(4), pages 285-306.
    6. Schmid, Stefan & Roedder, Felix, 2021. "Gaijin invasion? A resource dependence perspective on foreign ownership and foreign directors," International Business Review, Elsevier, vol. 30(6).
    7. Badar Nadeem Ashraf & Ningyu Qian, 2021. "The Impact of Board Internationalization on Real Earnings Management: Evidence From China," SAGE Open, , vol. 11(3), pages 21582440211, July.
    8. Hermes, Cornelis & Oxelheim, L. & Randoy, Trond & Hooghiemstra, Reginald, 2015. "The impact of board internationalization on earnings management," Research Report 15010-I&O, University of Groningen, Research Institute SOM (Systems, Organisations and Management).
    9. Chunhui Huo & Tariq H. Malik & Xiaorui Wang, 2021. "Foreign Independent Directors (FID) on Chinese Firms: The Isomorphism and Conformance-Performance Conflict," SAGE Open, , vol. 11(3), pages 21582440211, September.
    10. Afzali, Haaron & Martikainen, Minna & Oxelheim, Lars & Randoy, Trond, 2020. "On the Role of Internationalization of Firm-Level Corporate Governance – The Case of Audit Committees," Working Paper Series 1370, Research Institute of Industrial Economics.
    11. Geofry Areneke & Abongeh A. Tunyi, 2022. "Chairperson and CEO foreignness and CG quality of emerging markets MNCs: Moderating role of international board interlocks," International Journal of Finance & Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 27(3), pages 3071-3092, July.
    12. Adams, Mike & Baker, Paul L., 2021. "Does boardroom nationality affect the performance of UK insurers?," The British Accounting Review, Elsevier, vol. 53(5).
    13. Elnahass, Marwa & Alharbi, Rana & Mohamed, Toka S. & McLaren, Josie, 2024. "Women directors’ attributes and demographics: New insights into bank risk," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 71(C).
    14. Dauth, Tobias & Pronobis, Paul & Schmid, Stefan, 2017. "Exploring the link between internationalization of top management and accounting quality: The CFO’s international experience matters," International Business Review, Elsevier, vol. 26(1), pages 71-88.
    15. Belaounia, Samia & Tao, Ran & Zhao, Hong, 2024. "Director foreign experience: Geographic specificity and value implication," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 91(C).
    16. Ghosh, Chinmoy & He, Fan & Zhou, Haoyong, 2021. "On the role of foreign directors: Evidence from cross-listed firms," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 63(C), pages 177-202.
    17. Alharbi, Rana & Elnahass, Marwa & McLaren, Josie, 2022. "Women directors and market valuation: What are the “Wonder Woman” attributes in banking?," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 80(C).
    18. Florence Villesèche & Evis Sinani, 2023. "From Presence to Influence: Gender, Nationality and Network Centrality of Corporate Directors," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 37(2), pages 486-504, April.
    19. Nguyen, Thi Tuyet Mai, 2017. "An examination of independent directors in Vietnam," OSF Preprints ay6dv, Center for Open Science.
    20. Muhammad Haris & Hongxing Yao & Gulzara Tariq & Hafiz Mustansar Javaid & Qurat Ul Ain, 2019. "Corporate Governance, Political Connections, and Bank Performance," IJFS, MDPI, vol. 7(4), pages 1-37, October.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:jbrese:v:91:y:2018:i:c:p:8-18. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/jbusres .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.