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The University of Tampa Institutional Repository Guide
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Recent Submissions
What’s in a name? Cross-national distances and subsidiary’s corporate visual identity change in emerging-market firms’ cross-border acquisitions
(Emerald Publishing Limited, 2018) Liou, Ru-Shiun; Rao-Nicholson, Rekha; Sarpong, David
Purpose – Addressing the unique challenge facing emerging-market firms (EMFs) of branding and marketing in their foreign subsidiaries, this study evaluates the foreign subsidiary corporate visual identity (CVI) transitions during the post-acquisition period.
Design/Methodology/approach – Data on 330 cross-border acquisitions from five emerging-markets, namely, Brazil, China, India, Russia and South Africa (BRICS) are used. The cross-sectional multivariate analyses are used to test the hypotheses.
Findings – Utilizing a sample of worldwide acquisitions conducted by EMFs originated from BRICS, this study establishes that various cross-national distances do not consistently cause the targets to take on the parent’s CVI. While economic distance and formal institutional distance increases the likelihood of an acquired subsidiary’s CVI change, cultural distance decreases the likelihood of CVI change.
Practical implications – Lacking international experience and shaped by national differences between the host and home markets, EMFs often grant foreign subsidiaries substantial autonomy to respond to diverse stakeholder demands in subsidiary branding. Contrary to extant literature, the findings show that some distances are more pertinent to CVI transformation in the subsidiaries than others in the context of the EMFs.
Originality/value – This research shows that the formal institutional distance and economic distance, will increase the likelihood of CVI changes in the subsidiaries, whereas, the cultural distance requiring soft skills like the cultural adaptability from the EMFs will decrease the CVI change possibility. The findings presented in the paper have significant implications for future research and strategic application.
UTWrites with Liv Coleman
(The Macdonald-Kelce Library, The University of Tampa, 2023-11-16)
Political Science Professor Liv Colman gives a talk entitled "Putting Parents in Charge: Right-Wing Populist Education Movements in Japan and the United States."
Age Matters: The Contingency of Economic Distance and Economic Freedom in Emerging Market Firm’s Cross-Border M&A Performance
(Springer Nature, 2019) Liou, Ru-Shiun; Rao-Nicholson, Rekha
The primary studies on emerging market multinational firms (EMFs) thus far have depicted a picture of accelerated internationalization in which EMFs conduct a series of aggressive cross-border acquisitions to further enhance their competitive advantage. However, it is not clear whether the EMFs which conducted the acquisitions at a young age experience better performance. EMFs constrained by their home market development in economic institutions may encounter different challenges in their cross-border acquisitions. Using a sample of South African firms’ acquisitions between 1994 and 2012, we find support for the benefit of foreign acquisitions at a young age as well as the moderation effects of economic distance and economic freedom. While early inorganic growth provides an excellent opportunity to propel South African firms’ growth, the country level factors present important boundary conditions to examine the benefit of early internationalization. While facing a significant economic distance, older firms are better at utilizing their experience and experience better post-acquisition operating performance. By contrast, the younger firms benefit more from the post-acquisition when the home country has weaker economic freedom.
Multinational enterprises and Sustainable Development Goals: A foreign subsidiary perspective on tackling wicked problems
(Springer Nature, 2021) Liou, Ru-Shiun; Rao-Nicholson, Rekha
To address the unique challenge facing multinational enterprises (MNEs) in managing their foreign subsidiaries’ implementation of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), we propose a framework based on the foreign subsidiary identity transitions driven by the competing demands of parent and local stakeholders. Our work provides policymakers with a framework to better understand the links between the changes in the institutional level and the MNE’s strategy to attain SDG goals. The separate local identity driven by local stakeholder demands is conducive to the localized implementation of SDGs in the host country, while the subsidiary’s identification with its parent MNEs plays a critical role in achieving SDGs that impact the operations of the company and their business networks like suppliers and customers. By linking subsidiary identity with SDGs, we identify mechanisms that can be adopted by the parent firms and subsidiaries to engage with SDGs in the host country as well as how parent firms can transfer better practices to their subsidiaries. As such, policymakers can identify SDG gaps in the local environment, and as MNEs establish processes engaging with local SDGs, policymakers can encourage MNEs in the policy uptake. Similarly, policymakers can support MNEs align their local context strategies with SDG gaps.
What to Say and How to Say It? Corporate Strategic Communication through Social Media during the Pandemic
(Taylor & Francis Group, 2022) Liou, Ru-Shiun; Shang, Yanyan; Rao-Nicholson, Rekha
Studying the COVID-19 pandemic differs from past studies on emergency management because this crisis event, compared with the terrorist attack or natural disasters, unfolds in a longer period and with a wider spread of geographic regions. This study explores what and how the information was communicated in the corporate strategic communication through social media across three phases of the global public health crisis, including the early phase, shelter-in-place phase, and reopening phase. The content analysis on corporate Twitter accounts of selected publicly listed firms in the US suggests that corporate social media communication is functional, information-based, direct, and of lower richness during the earlier phase of the pandemic. As the pandemic evolves, corporate tweets, though still functional, are altered to improve customer engagement via the addition of videos and embedded links. For low media richness data formats, the replies/retweet ratio is less than 20%, while high media richness data formats produce the replies/retweet ratio of more than 50%. Implications for future research and practices are offered.