Why Enterprises Do Not Invest in Europe? Management Claims and Countries Conditions in Developed and Emerging Markets

The choice of location of foreign direct investments is still one of the most explored topics in the economic and managerial literature. However, these studies focus on the variables that positively influence the choice of investing in a foreign country but rarely analyze factors that lead to the decision to not invest. While the economic literature considers the decision to invest as a linear process, the organizational approach recognizes complex factors in the decision-making processes. The present study is positioned within this debate. More specifically, the aim is to understand if the variables claimed as threats by managers are really barriers to investments and then if they negatively influence the level of inward FDI in the European countries, with a specific focus on differences between developed and emerging countries. The context analyzed is represented by the 28 countries of the European Union, including a set of 12 variables that were collected and tested through a stepwise regression model. Subsequently, the differences between emerging and developed countries are analyzed by means of cluster analysis. The findings highlight the existence of a mismatching between management claims on FDI barriers and the actual institutional and economic situations in European countries, due to informational and cognitive shortages or the opportunity to provide socially desirable answers. The cluster analysis underlines how managers claim on barriers to FDI seem to have a greater matching with conditions of emerging countries, showing a possible deepened knowledge of these contexts, compared to developed countries.