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Factors affecting the change of top executive nationality in MNCs’ foreign affiliates in Japan

  • ZfB-Special Issue 3/2011
  • Published:
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Abstract

Using archival data published in 2003 and 2007, we investigated factors that influence the change of nationality of the most senior executives in foreign affiliates of MNCs operating in Japan. Our results show that as the length of operation in Japan increased, the likelihood of a non-Japanese top executive in the affiliate being replaced by a Japanese one, was higher than that of a Japanese top executive being replaced by a non-Japanese one. We also found that when an affiliate had a Japanese top executive at time one, it was more likely that a non-Japanese executive replaced the Japanese one if the affiliate’s foreign ownership ratio increased at time two. In addition, there were notable differences between affiliates of Asian, North American and European MNCs in top executive staffing patterns of Japanese affiliates. Implications from this study and future research directions are discussed herein.

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Acknowledgments

We thank participants of the Joint Workshop on Human Resource Management Issues of Foreign Firms in Japan, co-hosted by Research Institute for Economics and Business Administration, Kobe University, and the University of Duisburg-Essen in February 2010. We also thank Prof. Dr. Ralf Bebenroth, Prof. Dr. Werner Pascha, Prof. Dr. Donghao Li and one anonymous reviewer for their valuable feedback. This research has been supported by the Grand-in-Aid for Scientific Research (No. 20530341), The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, Japan.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Graduate School of Economics, Osaka University, 1-7 Machikaneyama, Toyonaka, 560-0043, Osaka, Japan

    Tomoki Sekiguchi

  2. Department of Management and Marketing, University of Melbourne, Level 10, 198 Berkeley Street, VIC 3010, Parkville, Australia

    Sachiko Yamao

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  1. Tomoki Sekiguchi
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  2. Sachiko Yamao
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Correspondence to Tomoki Sekiguchi.

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Sekiguchi, T., Yamao, S. Factors affecting the change of top executive nationality in MNCs’ foreign affiliates in Japan. Z Betriebswirtsch 81 (Suppl 3), 27–48 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11573-011-0453-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11573-011-0453-z

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