Institutional Environments, Staffing Strategies and Subsidiary Performance

Journal of Management, Vol. 33, No. 4, pp. 611-636, 2007

40 Pages Posted: 19 Nov 2007 Last revised: 4 Apr 2008

See all articles by Ajai Gaur

Ajai Gaur

Rutgers Business School - Newark and New Brunswick

Andrew Delios

National University of Singapore (NUS) - Department of Business Policy

Kulwant Singh

affiliation not provided to SSRN

Abstract

We adopt and develop an institutional perspective to advance our understanding of how host country environments influence subsidiary staffing strategies. We propose and find that firms rely more on parent company nationals (expatriates) in institutionally distant environments for reasons related to the efficient transfer of management practices and firm-specific capabilities. Further, we find that the positive influence of expatriate staffing levels on subsidiary performance (subsidiary labor productivity) is dependent on the institutional distance between the host and home country, and subsidiary experience. We base our findings on our analysis of expatriate employment levels and performance in 12,997 foreign subsidiaries of 2,952 Japanese firms in 48 countries.

Keywords: Regulative distance, normative distance, subsidiary staffing, experience, subsidiary performance

Suggested Citation

Gaur, Ajai S. and Delios, Andrew and Singh, Kulwant, Institutional Environments, Staffing Strategies and Subsidiary Performance. Journal of Management, Vol. 33, No. 4, pp. 611-636, 2007, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=961850

Ajai S. Gaur (Contact Author)

Rutgers Business School - Newark and New Brunswick ( email )

Newark, NJ
United States

Andrew Delios

National University of Singapore (NUS) - Department of Business Policy ( email )

1 Business Link
Singapore 117591
Singapore
(65) 6874-3094 (Phone)
(65) 6779-5059 (Fax)

Kulwant Singh

affiliation not provided to SSRN

No Address Available