Huiqian Liu’s research while affiliated with Zhejiang University and other places

Promoting home-country industrial innovation via overseas mergers and acquisitions (M&A) integration is crucial for latecomers. However, the transmission mechanism for innovation remains unclear. Taking the resource-based view, we apply network theory to illustrate this cross-level process. Based on technology-sourcing overseas M&A samples in China, a mediating effect model shows that with a lower resource similarity level, a higher resource complementarity level and a lower external network embeddedness, the acquirer should choose a lower integration degree to improve internal and external knowledge-network reconfiguration, thus benefiting home-country industrial innovation. Our findings help enrich overseas M&A research on enterprise’s dual-network embeddedness and help latecomers catch up.

Overseas mergers and acquisitions (M&A) integration is an effective way to promote home-country industrial innovation. However, much remains unknown about this mechanism. We provide a comprehensive understanding, by taking a resource-based view, focusing on the role of internal and external networks as bridge, and exploring the moderating effect of home-country institution. Based on 119 samples in China and 311 samples in the U.S. of technology-sourcing overseas M&A, structural equation model analysis reveals that in a more developed home-country institution, American acquirers’ appropriate integration matched with resource relatedness significantly improves internal network cohesion and external network position, promoting industrial innovation. In contrast, constrained by a less developed home-country institution, Chinese acquirers’ internal network cohesion improvement is only significant in low-degree integration matched with high-resource-complementarity and low-resource-similarity, and the mediating effect of external network position improvement is significantly weaker than that of American. Research conclusions provide insights into the catching-up of latecomers.

Chinese enterprises’ technology-sourcing overseas mergers and acquisitions (M&A) integration is an important force to accelerate the high-quality industrial development. However, the existing theories lack a thorough explanation of this mechanism. Based on four typical cases in Chinese manufacturing industry, this study applied a multiple-case study method to explore the relationships among the four basic categories of ‘resource relatedness’, ‘integration degree’, ‘innovation network position’ and ‘industrial technology innovation’ by in-depth interviews with enterprise executives and second data analysis. We find out that acquirers’ appropriate integration degree which matches different combinations of resource similarity and complementarity, will efficiently enhance centrality and structural holes of the acquirers in the global innovation networks, and thus promote home-country industrial technology innovation in the three functional areas of research and development (R&D), operations, and upstream and downstream activities. Based on resource-based view and by emphasising acquirers’ centrality and structural holes improvement in the global innovation networks as the crucial links, this study deepens the overall understanding of the entire process of enterprises using overseas M&A integration to promote the home-country industrial technology innovation and provides insights into the technological leapfrogging of latecomers from developing countries.