Acquisitions by EMNCs in Developed Markets: an Organisational Learning Perspective

Building on an organisational learning perspective, we argue that emerging market firms' international experience and home-country characteristics are core sources of learning. Furthermore, we argue that these factors constitute important determinants of emerging market firms' acquisition behaviour in developed countries (south-north acquisitions). We test our hypotheses on a sample of 808 south-north acquisitions. The acquisitions were undertaken in Europe, Japan and North America (Canada and the US) between 1999 and 2008 by firms from the emerging economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China. As suggested by the internationalisation process model, our results show that emerging market firms undertake acquisitions in developed countries in an incremental fashion. Acquisition experience in developed markets increases the likelihood of exploitative expansion, while acquisition experience in developing markets does not appear to have any effect. The results also show that a lack of market and knowledge-based resources at home curbs explorative acquisitions by firms in emerging markets.