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Forms of corporate ownership and radical boundary spanning of multinational corporations: A multilevel study of the petroleum industry
Abstract
This research examines the relationship between corporate ownership and radical boundary spanning of multinational corporations (MNCs). Hypotheses are developed based on a multi-theoretic approach that uses the concepts of boundary spanning exploration, resource dependence theory (RDT), and corporate ownership from the management literature with the resource triangle from the field of geology. It is hypothesized that the form of corporate ownership is associated with radical boundary spanning. Corporate ownership is also proposed to be associated with the firm's commitment to radical boundary spanning. Finally, the location's resource attractiveness is hypothesized to moderate the relationship between the form of corporate ownership and commitment to radical boundary spanning. A multilevel, two-part model is used to test the hypotheses. The data for this study are collected from international market-based transactions of petroleum resource deposits including buyers and sellers from the petroleum industry from the years 2005-2012, inclusively. The results of this study suggest family or individual owned buyer MNCs are significantly less likely to radically boundary span, corporate owned buyer MNCs are significantly less committed to radical boundary spanning than both state and financial owned buyer MNCs, and that miscellaneous owned MNCs are less committed to radical boundary spanning in target countries that are more resource attractive. This study offers three theoretical contributions. First, this study adds to RDT by suggesting that more progressive evaluation of external resources is needed. Second, in existing RDT, dependence is assumed to stem from a simple reliance on more powerful firms. The findings from this study suggest that dependence also stems from reliance on a functioning market in which external resources can be bought and sold. Finally, this study adds a fifth type of resource constraint, the availability of natural resources, and suggests that resource constraints can actually become greater because of firm activities.
Subject Area
Management|Commerce-Business
Recommended Citation
Bass, A. Erin, "Forms of corporate ownership and radical boundary spanning of multinational corporations: A multilevel study of the petroleum industry" (2014). ETD collection for University of Nebraska-Lincoln. AAI3616790.
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/dissertations/AAI3616790