British Multinationals in South East Asia: Strategy, Subsidiaries and Performance

AIB Insights Vol. 13, No. 3 this disseRtation aims to contRibute to the theoretical and empirical literature of the multinational subsidiary strategy and performance. First, this study adopts an innovative approach to theory development by integrating internalization theory (Buckley & Casson, 1976; Hennart, 1982; Rugman, 1981) in the international business literature with the pecking order theory on capital structure and financing sources in the finance literature (Myers & Majluf, 1984). Second, the focus on testing the performance of subsidiaries has led this research to advance on the theoretical concept of subsidiary-specific advantages (SSAs) as developed by Birkinshaw (1997) and by Rugman and Verbeke (2001). These concepts have not been tested in any systematic way for emerging economies. Third, this research focuses on the recombination capability which is the highest-order firm-specific advantages (FSAs) in economic value creation in an international environment (Verbeke, 2009; Rugman, Verbeke & Nguyen, 2011). Specifically, this dissertation has three empirical studies: