Who the hell are YTL?

The Daily Telegraph, March 31, 2002.

Introduction

How can newcomers signal high status to audiences in host countries? A firm’s domestic status is difficult to transfer across borders, especially when foreign audiences do not know the firm (Alvarez-Garrido & Guler, 2018). As outsiders, firms entering new geographic markets have few status markers for relevant audiences and automatically incur low status in the absence of reliable information to the contrary (Bitektine, 2011). This status dynamic aligns with a prevalent view of internationalization, suggesting that newcomers will be liable for outsidership until they can build new business networks to gain trust and local knowledge (Johanson & Vahlne, 2009; Li & Fleury, 2020). Status scholars suggest another option open to newcomers that international business (IB) scholars have overlooked. When information on a firm's quality is obscure, audiences rely on social affiliation to rank outsiders seeking a place in a new social hierarchy (Sauder, Lynn, & Podolny, 2012). Accordingly, status signaling theory (Podolny, 2005) predicts that actors and organizations can accumulate status by communicating their social affiliations to new audiences (Shipilov & Li, 2008). We apply this to a visual case analysis of a family-run emerging-market multinational and contribute to the IB literature by theorizing novel status signaling mechanisms to address the liability of outsidership in host countries.

Status is associated with prestige accorded by audiences due to a position in a social hierarchy (Gould: 2002). Organizational scholars suggest it is a desirable intangible asset (Piazza & Castellucci, 2014) that is challenging to build (Sauder et al., 2012), especially among new audiences (Alvarez-Garrido & Guler, 2018). One tactic to accumulate status is to signal affiliations with high-status actors (Shipilov & Li, 2008). We apply status signaling theory in IB and distinguish between social affiliations to signal status in different industries (proximal and distal) and geographies (host countries, world society). We do this through a longitudinal visual annual report analysis of YTL, a leading Malaysian business group whose prominent owner engaged in extensive networking to expand the group’s international scope over three decades. We utilize a visual affiliation analysis of networks depicted in YTL's annual report photographs (Greenwood, Jack, & Haylock, 2019; Shortt & Warren, 2019) to elicit the visual rhetoric of shifting status-markers, a novel approach in IB. Our study argues that multinationals entering new markets can use their annual reports as channels for status signaling by establishing visible links with high-status alters.

While the liability of outsidership literature emphasizes the merits of building business networks in host countries (Johanson & Vahlne, 2009; Li & Fleury, 2020), our findings suggest three signaling mechanisms that extend the repertoire of a newcomer’s entry strategies. First, we describe a bypass mechanism where newcomers seek to benefit from status spillovers through visual affiliations with high-status alters within the host country situated in distal industry categories. Secondly, we propose an allusion mechanism, where the newcomer projects non-business affiliations with high-status actors situated in “world society,” a normative elite space comprising global norms and values (Meyer, 2010). Such actors, often celebrities, are known to host country audiences but are unconnected to that country or the business activities of the newcomer. Thirdly, we depict an aspiration mechanism, where newcomers seek to associate with globally prominent high-status alters situated in world society from a proximal business category. We suggest these circuitous signaling mechanisms may be especially salient in the context of family firms from emerging markets. Such contexts may possess a poor home-country reputation, and CEOs may lack international experience yet aspire to accumulate global status.

We make one core and several secondary contributions. Primarily, we extend the IB literature by theorizing status-enhancing mechanisms that address firms’ liability of outsidership as they enter new markets. Scholars working on the status construct predict broadly consistent processes with the liability of outsidership perspective. Specifically, without appropriate network connections, status cannot easily travel across social hierarchies (Johanson & Vahlne, 2009; Li & Fleury, 2020) or industry categories (Jensen, 2010). We apply insights from status signaling theory about third-party associations in response to calls to clarify how the liability of outsidership can be addressed (Forsgren, 2016; Li & Fleury, 2020). We argue that executives of firms lacking insidership in host-country business circles may use an indirect signaling approach to accumulate organizational status with foreign audiences by connecting to well-known elites in world society.

Moreover, our work contributes to the family firm internationalization literature, which had hitherto focused primarily on internationalization barriers, partly due to network limitations (Arregle, Chirico, Kano, Kundu, Majocchi, & Schulze, 2021). We argue that family owners' identity overlaps with the firm (Deephouse & Jaskiewicz, 2013; Zellweger, Nason, Nordqvist, & Brush, 2013), rendering status signaling a viable strategy to address the liabilities of outsidership, especially under resource constraints. Finally, we pioneer a novel form of visual analysis through photographic evidence of social affiliations. While established in anthropology and sociology, visual methods are underrepresented in management research (Meyer, Höllerer, Jancsary, & Van Leeuwen, 2013) and relatively new to IB (Minefee & Bucheli, 2021). We expect our visual network analysis will open new avenues for visual research to impact IB scholarship.

Literature review

Organizational status

Status is a fundamental construct in sociology, which refers to “the prestige accorded to individuals because of the abstract positions they occupy” (Gould: 2002: 1147), where abstract position refers to a ranking in a status hierarchy (Gould, 2002). Washington and Zajac (2005) emphasize that status is an unearned ascription of social rank. Organizational sociology scholars apply the status construct on multiple levels of analysis, including interpersonal, informal groups, organizations, markets, communities, and institutions (Sauder et al., 2012). In the context of organizational status, scholars variously depict the function of status as a signal of quality (Sauder et al., 2012), an intangible asset (Piazza & Castellucci, 2014; Pollock, Lashley, Rindova, & Han, 2019) and a mobile resource (Bothner, Smith, & White, 2010).

In line with the idea that status has value, the management literature focuses on organizational status antecedents, tactics, and outcomes (Piazza & Castellucci, 2014). Scholars show that a favorable ranking in a status hierarchy is a valuable intangible asset (Piazza & Castellucci, 2014; Pollock et al., 2019; Sharkey, 2014). This insight is consistent with research in adjacent fields, such as reputation, which also suggests that positive audience evaluations have value for firms (Deephouse, 2000). Indeed, organizational sociologists theorize that firms will proactively engage in status accumulation tactics through prosocial behavior as firms may value status more than material outcomes (Chung, Lee, & Zhu, 2021).

Status signaling through social affiliations

While valuable, status accumulation is also challenging. Sociologists find that high-status actors prefer homophily, meaning they tend to affiliate with one another (McPherson, Smith-Lovin, & Cook, 2001), thereby producing robust boundaries that exclude low-status newcomers (Bothner et al., 2010). However, research viewing status as a mobile resource draws attention to the dynamics of status transfer (Bothner et al., 2010). Consequently, organizational scholars identify various status accumulation tactics to facilitate status transfer across status hierarchies, including signaling status to audiences to influence their ranking process. Signaling theory suggests that market participants exercise agency to convince audiences of their underlying quality, especially under conditions of information asymmetry (Bergh, Connelly, Ketchen, & Shannon, 2014). While these actors can be individuals, status signaling also extends to organizations that proactively seek to increase their legitimacy (Pollock & Gulati, 2007) by transmitting information about unobservable quality attributes (Connelly, Certo, Ireland, & Teutzel, 2011).

One aspect of status signaling theory is that organizations can accumulate status by signaling their affiliations with high-status actors (Castellucci & Ertug, 2010; Shipilov & Li, 2008; Shipilov, Li, & Greve, 2011). For instance, Podolny and Phillips (1996) investigated underwriting syndicates, finding lower-status banks could signal greater status through their participation in a syndicate, as higher-status banks implicitly gestured their approval by including them. Since this simultaneously implied a status transfer from a higher to a lower-status actor, the higher-status banks leading the syndicates had to trade off the advantages of more partners with the disadvantages of status dilution.

When actors have no prior position in a social hierarchy, sociologists suggest that audiences rely more on an actor's visible social affiliations to categorize their status, given the absence of observable information on their quality (Sauder et al., 2012). However, this idea is under-researched in studies of organizations, where scholars have primarily focused on existing status hierarchies. The puzzle of how actors without any prior position in an existing status hierarchy can accumulate status is crucial for firms seeking to enter new markets. While the IB literature finds that networking is essential for new market entry (Johanson & Vahlne, 2009), IB scholars have yet to consider the idea that status signaling through affiliations could be a valuable tactic for new actors seeking to penetrate an existing status hierarchy.

Status signaling across geographic boundaries

Sociologists suggest that geographical proximity can be a source of status homophily since co-located organizations have better information about each other. However, geographic distance can reduce the likelihood of tie formation (McPherson et al., 2001). In the context of organizations, several studies document signaling strategies by low-status incumbents in new ventures seeking affiliation with prominent financiers (Chahine, Filatotchev, Bruton, & Wright, 2021). However, signaling strategies by status-seeking newcomers entering new geographies have received scant attention. Accordingly, we understand little about whether and how such newcomers can employ signaling tactics to accumulate status in a host country.

What is clear from prior studies is that cross-border status portability is limited. Firms cannot readily transfer domestic status positions across borders as status evaluations are contingent upon the trusted partner’s visibility and familiarity among the target audience. For instance, one study found that the effectiveness of market signaling by European filmmakers in foreign markets depended on their cultural distance (Kim & Jensen, 2014). Another study found that start-ups with high-status venture capital financiers only benefit when they originate in higher-status countries and when home audiences are familiar with them (Alvarez-Garrido & Guler, 2018). Even when information asymmetry is low, a cognitive bias may persist against outsiders (Kumar, Deodhar, & Zaheer, 2023). Thus, when foreign audiences are equivocal about status signals, new entrants tend to be allocated a lower place in social hierarchies. This idea complements the notion of “liabilities of outsidership” as firms do not merely suffer from liability by being ‘foreign’ (i.e., the liability of foreignness), but outsiders also need acceptance into relevant networks in the new host country's social hierarchies (Johanson & Vahlne, 2009).

Even though status-building mechanisms are important for entrants in new markets, we know little about how and with whom newcomers build trust through visible status-enhancing affiliations. Indeed, IB scholars suggest that potentially insightful concepts, such as status, are underutilized in explaining organizational dynamics in international networks (Cuypers, Ertug & Cantwell, 2020: 727) and that the liability of outsidership concept could benefit from a deeper engagement with social network theories (Forsgren, 2016; Li & Fleury, 2020).

Status dynamics within and across social hierarchies: Industry categories and geographies

In the context of organizations, status is tied to the multiple social hierarchies in which the organization is situated (Sharkey, 2014). Jensen (2010) suggests that it is helpful to distinguish between horizontal industry categories and vertical status hierarchies. We define industry broadly to include categories such as business, social movements, entertainment, and government. Sociologists have shown that audiences use these socio-cognitive industry categories to interpret an organization’s rank, as some industries are more prestigious than others (Sharkey, 2014). Audiences also simultaneously assess an organization’s vertical status position within that industry category (Jensen, 2010).

As noted above, other status researchers have focused on cross-country evaluations by different audiences. One finding suggests that audiences in one country may evaluate the status of European films differently than those in another (Kim & Jensen, 2014) so that the esteem allocated to actors within similar industry categories will vary across geographies. Thus, multiple overlapping status hierarchies underline the importance of signaling that attracts a high volume of support – or centrality – and its robustness in the form of support from diverse audiences (Piazza & Castellucci, 2014; Sauder et al., 2012). Indeed, research generally accepts that positive status assessments in multiple categories are better than in one. Accordingly, scholars have called for greater insight into the social structure of interrelated status hierarchies (Bothner et al., 2010; Sauder et al., 2012).

One approach in sociology that transcends status hierarchies while combining status accumulation across geographies and industries is the institutional theory of world society (Drori, Meyer, & Hwang, 2006; Meyer, 2010). World society scholars suggest that individuals and organizations are situated in a global cultural context where interconnected global elites adhere to progressive ideals by enacting cultural scripts. World society scripts provide rationalized organizational models carried and diffused by senior executives, management consultants, and policy communities (Bromley & Meyer, 2015). For instance, Delmestri (2014) suggested that multinational managers project themselves as global cosmopolitans in local and multicultural settings.

World society theorists suggest global elites manifest in arenas such as the World Economic Forum (WEF), where business, government, and civil society actors congregate to promote values such as sustainability, diversity, inclusion, and equality (Bromley & Meyer, 2021; Meyer, 2010). Accordingly, actors seeking to accumulate status at a global level will try to affiliate themselves with high-status actors from world society while aligning with the latter’s normative scripts in an arena that transcends geographic and industry boundaries. While world society has been an influential theory in sociology for decades, it is relatively unknown among IB scholars. We primarily draw on status signaling theory, and, secondarily, on world society theory, to better understand the rationales, mechanisms, and outcomes of status accumulation tactics by organizations aspiring to be global players.

Thus, in this study, we apply status signaling theory, particularly the idea that actors seeking status in new social hierarchies can signal their quality by displaying affiliations with high-status actors. We distinguish between affiliations within industry categories rooted in professional classifications (Delmestri & Greenwood, 2016; Jensen, 2010) while incorporating status affiliations across geographies (Alvarez-Garrido & Guler, 2018; Kim & Jensen, 2014) and at the global elite level (Meyer, 2010). We aim to improve our understanding of status signaling through social affiliations in the specific context of international business by asking: How can newcomers in a host country use visible social affiliations to signal high-status to address their liability of outsidership?

Methods

Research design: Photographic analysis

Scholars interested in qualitative research emphasize that visual sources are a valuable but underutilized research method in organization studies (Meyer et al., 2013; Ray & Smith, 2012). We use longitudinal visual affiliation analysis to uncover an organization's signaling mechanisms as it internationalizes. In doing so, we recognize appeals for greater application and diversity of qualitative methods in IB research (Reuber, Alkhaled, & Barnard, 2022; Welch, Piekkari, Plakoyiannaki, & Paavilainen-Mäntymäki, 2011).

Visual manifestations contain rhetorical codes that convey meanings to audiences while differing from other communication types in form and content (Meyer et al., 2013). Like verbal communication, visual strategies are performative – with actors constructing, selecting, and displaying the visuals to convey an intended narrative to audiences. Visual cues influence the construction of organizational identities in an implicit, powerful, and often symbolic manner, rendering a valuable tool to influence annual report audiences by highlighting desired corporate narratives alongside factual reporting (McKinstry, 1996). Thus, annual reports can be an important strategic medium to channel status signals to a firm’s audiences. Annual reports are readily available and used by partners, journalists, and analysts to scrutinize new investors in a host country.

Annual reports are one of several communication channels firms can use to project a firm’s status. However, they have particular scholarly interest due to the format that includes non-mandatory visuals; the company’s level of control over the signals sent; and the regular issuance, which allows for temporal and systematic investigation. Other communication channels, such as media, may also feature visuals and reach a wider audience, but firms have less control over the message conveyed as media reputation represents an evaluation of the firm by various stakeholders (Deephouse, 2000).

Photographic research methods have many advantages, including textured and richer data containing symbolic messages, comparing hard-to-measure organizational phenomena across time, and capturing the concealed voices of certain actors (Ray & Smith, 2012). Photos are a useful legitimation tool due to their apparent “objective” nature, with powerful, persuasive qualities to convey complex meanings with little space and time (Jones, Meyer, Jancsary, & Höllerer, 2017; Minefee & Bucheli, 2021). The selection and projection of specific images in annual reports is a purposeful strategy to convey subjects or organizations' status and identity, with archival photographic research uniquely positioned to uncover and decode such visible cues. We align with the archaeological visual research tradition that retrospectively constructs meaning behind visual artifacts (Meyer et al., 2013; Shortt & Warren, 2019) by analyzing how organizations signal status through visual social affiliation cues.

We analyze the annual reports of a single organization over 34 years. Annual reports are publicly available materials that provide a narrative about the organization to business partners, investors, and the general public. Being publicly available and read widely by interested parties, annual reports directly influence audiences wishing to evaluate a company and inform intermediaries, such as equity analysts or journalists, that interpret the signals and narratives in these reports for a broader audience.

Visuals in these reports may stand out from financial reporting, with CEOs perceiving annual report images as a performative opportunity to project their achievements (Chatterjee & Hambrick, 2007). We focus on images depicting YTLs network partners and surrounding text and/or photo captions (i.e., multimodal communication). Management researchers rarely use photographic analysis despite its unique opportunities to highlight subtle and persuasive visual narratives (Meyer et al., 2013; Ray & Smith, 2012). Prior studies in management that used photographic analysis of annual reports (Chatterjee & Hambrick, 2007) can be rudimentary (e.g., photo size, number of people depicted). Few scholars attempt to interpret the visual rhetoric inherent in corporate reports (Greenwood et al., 2019), including its visual codes such as dress, spatial ordering, and interpersonal relations (Davison, 2010). The notable exception to this pattern has appeared in a sub-stream of accounting. For instance, Preston and Young (2000) analyzed annual report images to study a corporation's visual identity construction through subtle images depicting its international scope. We build on these studies to craft our design, which to our knowledge, is the first to focus on visualizing social ties in annual reports in IB research.

Case selection and context

We selected YTL, a Malaysian family business group, as our focal case. YTL is among Malaysia's most prominent multinational enterprises. Over time, YTL established an extensive presence in developed markets such as the UK, Australia, and Asia, such as China and Indonesia. We selected this case for observability, consistency, and data availability.

Regarding observability, YTL illustrated the use of social affiliation signals during its internationalization more clearly than others. Family business scholars suggest that family members identify more strongly with the family firm, especially when it carries the family name, thus motivating them to improve its reputation (Deephouse & Jaskiewicz, 2013). Favorable stakeholder evaluations are important to family firms, generating socio-emotional wealth (Chung et al., 2021). We argue that family firms enjoy a unique position due to family owners' long tenure and their level of power and identification with the firm, enabling them to build and combine personal and organizational ties over extended periods. Indeed, the family business literature has a long tradition of combining both the individual and organizational levels of analysis due to the identity and reputation overlaps between owners and organizations (Zellweger et al., 2013). Asian businesses place a high value on social relations, making such patterns even more visible than they might otherwise be.

Further, YTL’s overseas investments were primarily in the utility industry, where outsiders from overseas seeking entry have a higher need for legitimacy, given the substantial social and economic costs of unsuccessful projects. The value of favorable audience evaluations is even more salient for investors from emerging markets, which may suffer from a liability of origin that requires sophisticated strategies toward host-country stakeholders (Kolk & Curran, 2017). In short, our chosen case is precisely one where we would expect status accumulation and networking to be significant.

Second, YTL stood out with a consistent approach. Second-generation leader Francis Yeoh, who became managing director in 1986, is currently the executive chairman of the holding company YTL Corp Berhad (hereafter: YTL), having succeeded founder Yeoh Tiong Lay after the latter's passing in 2017. Thus, our selection of this family firm provides a unique setting to observe social networks over several decades. We have noted that high-profile displays of social ties of a firm’s leaders are common among family-run emerging-market multinationals. However, many are sporadic and haphazard in depicting firm leaders with high-status alters.

Third, we gathered sufficient visual network data from YTL’s annual reports, partly due to a publicly listed holding company that reported on the entire group’s internationalization patterns (other groups had scattered listed companies and a private holding). We could access these reports from 1986 onward before the firm initiated international expansion. Founded in Malaysia in 1955 as a construction company, YTL subsequently listed on the stock exchange and diversified into real estate development, hotel operations, and utilities, becoming well known domestically. YTL reported foreign investments from the 1990s, first in emerging markets (mainly less developed Commonwealth countries) and later in developed markets, including the UK and Australia. In 2002, it announced the acquisition of UK company Wessex Water (a £1.2 billion deal), which prompted the Daily Telegraph, a newspaper of the English establishment, to publish an article entitled “Who the hell are YTL?” – the opening quote of this article. The headline triggered our interest in how this family firm sought to surmount its liability of outsidership in host countries.

Data sources

Our primary sources are YTL Corp annual reports between 1986 and 2019. We retrieved all photos and their caption descriptions in YTL's annual reports that displayed prominent individuals. During the 34 years of annual reports available, we found photographs depicting social affiliations in 28 (most years from 1990 onward), with a total of 452 images depicting 520 unique non-YTL individuals and 56 YTL representatives (see Table 1). For this study, which focuses on internationalization, we mainly considered the non-Malaysian individuals pictured in the annual reports.

Table 1 Characteristics of the data
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Because we combine the photos and their captions, our data can be considered composite visuals, combining visual, textual, and graphic design elements into a multimodal message (Christiansen, 2018). We also gathered information on the internationalization pattern of YTL through the annual reports, particularly the geographical segment reporting section. The reports show that YTL initially reported no sales outside Malaysia. The 2003 report shows more than 50% of revenues are derived from overseas.

Data analysis

Visual communications, such as photos, convey an intended narrative. Narration is particularly salient in annual reports, where financial data disclosure and compliance with corporate governance regulations are mandatory. However, photographs are discretionary (Davison, 2010) and may function as a rhetorical tool to signal the organization's achievements to relevant audiences (Greenwood et al., 2019). Consistent with studies on annual report visuals, we suggest that the selection and display of photographs represent a combination of documenting past achievements and projecting a desired narrative of success (Preston & Young, 2000).

As a first step, we first identified the individuals' names and positions depicted in the photos. We then code individuals by category, where we distinguished between three broad industry categories: business (financial professionals, business leaders, media companies, and others), government (politicians, bureaucrats, diplomats, royalty, and others), and civil society (artists, athletes, NGO representatives, and others). By categorizing the photos this way, we investigated the longitudinal development of ties depicted across multiple categories.

Our second coding strategy involved geography. We coded the nationality of very important persons (VIPs) depicted (using the captions and descriptions) into three categories: home country, host countries, and other countries. This grouping enabled us to view YTL's international trajectory by country and investigate the width and depth of ties with particular host markets. Table 2 provides an overview of VIP ties visualized in different periods according to industry category and nationality.

Table 2 Social network signaling: Industry categories and nationalities
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We emphasize that simple coding and counting do not tell the entire picture. More important is the interpretation of these different pictures' intended messaging. For instance, a small picture with ten business contacts in Korea sends a different signal than a large and prominently placed photo of a YTL leader together with a member of the British royal family. Thus, our third lens was the photo's narrative, where we further considered the context (e.g., formal/informal; YTL-owned or external venue, location of the photo) and the link to YTL (business-related or personal). This approach aligns with Davison (2010), who suggests identifying photographic codes for annual report portraiture, such as dress codes, interpersonal (communicative/emotive, including group portraiture revealing status distances), or spatial codes (props and backgrounds in photos such as chairs, venues, or logos). Such codes convey symbolic meanings about the status levels of the subjects depicted. Conforming to rhetorical codes (or standing out) projects signals about the leader's and the firm’s status (Rafaeli & Pratt, 1993). We probed further into the meaning by analyzing the photo's composition and intended narrative by connecting it with the accompanying caption, which often revealed more about the venue and the photo’s setting, sending verbal signals to the audience and augmenting visual cues.

We then investigated patterns (how) and placed these in the context of YTL’s internationalization (why). After that, we link these patterns to theory, extending IB theory on addressing the liability of outsidership by identifying status signaling mechanisms and their context (Table 3). Our theoretical generalization strategy aligns with the critical realism model for theorizing by placing causal mechanisms into a specific context and reflecting on the underlying conditions (Welch et al., 2011). Our analysis follows relevant guidance for grounded visual pattern analysis (Shortt & Warren, 2019).

Table 3 Propositions and illustrative captions
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We clarify the nature of our research design choices with several caveats. First, we cannot fully assess the photographic narratives' effectiveness in influencing audience status evaluations of YTL. Moreover, we do not suggest that the database of social ties we constructed from the annual report fully captures the scope of YTL’s social networks. While we interpret the inclusion of visuals in the annual reports as a purposeful selection to support a desired narrative, we have no visibility on the full range of photographs available to select from. Thus, our analysis is limited to the retrospective interpretation of strategic communication tactics, in line with the archaeological visual research tradition that seeks to reconstruct intended meanings (Meyer et al., 2013). After discussing the findings in their context, we reflect on limitations and future research.

Findings: Visual social affiliation patterns

We focus our analysis on the internationalization efforts of YTL and the associated networking activities. We present the findings chronologically, grouped into three periods, followed by observations that overlap these periods.

1990–2000

Initially a domestic construction and real estate group, YTL started its internationalization by aligning with Malaysia's foreign policy priorities. YTL had established a strong reputation in Malaysia and ties with Prime Minister Mahathir, who advocated South-South partnerships. YTL began with small construction projects for the Malaysian government in less developed countries such as Papua New Guinea and Zimbabwe. Extending these initiatives, the annual reports show that YTL leaders met several African presidents in the 1990s (including Nelson Mandela, Robert Mugabe and others). Photographs featured in the annual reports (hereafter: AR) occurred at public political events (such as the Langkawi Dialogues initiated by Mahathir in the 1990s; or Mahathir’s official visits to less-developed Commonwealth nations). Beyond the Commonwealth, we noted pictures with senior political leaders from nearby Cambodia (AR 1994), followed by a signing ceremony for a hotel project (AR 1995). However, none of these early emerging-market ventures became significant markets for YTL. Given the prominent presence of politicians in annual reports, we suggest that these initial initiatives were motivated by Malaysia’s political priorities and business opportunities flowing from them. Yet, the images and verbal cues indicated YTL's increasing international ambitions.

In 1992, YTL signed a contract to build Malaysia's first privately owned power plant. In the years between signing the deal and inaugurating the power plant in 1996, YTL searched for further power generation projects in Asia and Africa, documented in many photos of “discussions” with influential people, including Robert Mugabe (Zimbabwe's President) and Shi Dazhen (China’s Minister for Electric Power). The Malaysian power project used technology from Siemens. The annual reports in 1993 and 1994 contained various pictures with Siemens representatives, with YTL leaders projecting themselves as teaming up with Siemens (emphasizing its German origins) while searching for further investments in the region (“With a view to venturing into neighboring Asian countries we are currently in discussions with China to build a power station there in conjunction with our overseas partner Siemens AG of Germany”). Francis Yeoh was pictured with Siemens' Chairman and the CEO on a visit to Germany.

The Malaysian power project increased the size of the company significantly, and its ambitions to invest in utility projects beyond Malaysia produced pictures in the annual reports of 1997 and 1999 with high-status financiers sharing meals with Francis Yeoh, including the Chairmen/CEOs of Société Générale, Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, and Standard Chartered. The captions subtly emphasized YTL's aspirational position with VIPs (for example: Mr. Winthrop H Smith Jr., Chairman of Merrill Lynch International Inc. paying a courtesy call on Tan Sri Dato' Francis Yeoh).

Global ambition also came to the fore in YTL's annual “celebration concerts,” featuring local elites, famous opera artists and royal guests (e.g., Luciano Pavarotti in AR 1994; His Royal Highness Prince Michael of Kent in AR 1996; Jose Carreras in AR 1997). During rapid growth, YTL acquired a portfolio of hotels and resorts in Malaysia, including Marriott brands such as Ritz-Carlton. Subsequently, 5-star resorts and luxury hotels formed the material backdrop for many photos. For instance, hosting foreign political leaders in YTL properties in Malaysia as part of official state visits (Dignitary visit, Pangkor Laut Resort, Perak. Tan Sri Dato' Francis Yeoh Sock Ping with HE Thabo Mbeki, Deputy President of the Republic of South Africa on their arrival at the award-winning Pangkor Laut Restaurant). Others depicted business discussions (Courtesy call: Tan Sri Dato' Francis Yeoh Sock Ping discusses with Mr. J Mark Mobius, President, Templeton Emerging Markets Fund, Hong Kong, at the Penthouse, YTL Plaza in January 1999).

2001–2010

After completing the Malaysian power project, the group tried a very different type of market: bidding for utilities in more developed markets and winning tenders in the UK (Wessex Water, 2002) and Singapore (Power Seraya, 2009). As each of these tenders was over a billion dollars, YTL attracted attention as a newcomer, as our opening quote from a UK newspaper headline “who the hell are YTL” illustrated. Before the announcement of these contracts, annual reports depicted high-status social ties in these three countries. We see YTL representatives portrayed with heads of state and prominent politicians from these countries. For instance, Francis Yeoh is featured with Queen Elizabeth of the United Kingdom (AR 1998) and former prime minister John Major (AR 2001). He was also depicted with Ong Teng Cheong, the former President of Singapore (AR 1994). Each of the photos was taken in Malaysia. Besides, we see few visible connections to these markets before the investment.

Once YTL had entered the market with a significant acquisition, it staged high-profile concerts with opera stars, bringing business and political elites together. Examples include the UK concert with the famous three tenors following the Wessex deal and a similar concert following the Power Seraya acquisition from Singapore's state-owned Temasek. The celebrity opera stars were among the more frequently recurring VIPs depicted (Pavarotti 4x, Jose Carreras 3x, Julio Iglesias 2x, Placido Domingo 2x, Russell Watson 3x, conductor/flautist Griminelli 3x), and each was photographed in different international locations.

We note YTL's annual report images are becoming increasingly global with developed countries featuring more prominently as photograph venues. Just seven of 33 overseas photographs were taken in North America, Europe or Japan in the previous period (1990–2000), whereas 25 photographs were taken in developed markets and 24 in emerging markets (excluding Malaysia) from 2001 to 2010. We also observe that the photographs more prominently depict YTL's owners as embedded in a global elite. For instance, one telling photo caption in the 2007 annual report reads: “(From left to right) Marcel Ospel, Chairman of UBS AG, his wife Adriana Ospel, Tan Sri Dato' (Dr) Francis Yeoh Sock Ping, Managing Director of YTL Corp, and Jacob Yeoh Keong Yeow, Director of Syarikat Pembenaan Yeoh Tiong Lay Sdn Bhd, a wholly owned subsidiary of YTL Corp, at a dinner hosted by Marcel Ospel at his residence in Klosters, Switzerland.” The spatial codes (a private residence, in Switzerland), interpersonal codes (familial group setting with the wife of the UBS chairman and Francis Yeoh's son) and the informal dress codes visible in the photograph (the hosts are wearing sweaters) signal an intimate friendship.

This trend continues as later annual reports feature abundant global business connections, including photos with prominent financiers (e.g., Jamie Dimon – JPMorgan Chase & Co.; Charles Prince – CitiGroup; Tian Guoli – Bank of China; Mervyn Davies – Standard Chartered). Many appear photographed at events attended by Francis Yeoh in formal conference-style settings. Francis Yeoh also features as a panelist in Forbes’ Global CEO forum. Annual reports illustrate recurring social ties with the Forbes family (1998, 2006, 2008, 2009, 2017). For instance, in 2001, the annual report pictures Forbes’ forum panelists from a lower angle, visually elevating the stage. The captions provide additional information on the elite status (Top CEOs from leading companies around the world are featured). Later, in 2007, the AR text states that: The [Forbes] forum has become the region's most sought-after business event and a benchmark in its industry. The text lists the names and positions of the other CEOs on the panel alongside Francis Yeoh. The picture and text provide the audience with a high-status peer group and cues about Francis Yeoh's position in it. There are also “courtesy visits” of high-profile business leaders, including luxury industry leaders such as Hayek (Swatch Group), and Pinault (Kering).

We also observe a greater emphasis on international philanthropy concerning environmental sustainability and breast cancer (Francis Yeoh's wife passed away due to this disease – the 2005 annual report shows her with the late wife of former Malaysian Prime Minister Badawi, who also succumbed to breast cancer, and Cherie Blair, Patron of Breast Cancer Care). Subsequently, various photos followed with representatives of environmental NGOs such as WWF. In parallel, sustainability emerged as a recurring theme in this internationalization phase (Dieleman & Koning, 2020), partly because this was expected from global companies and became a prominent topic discussed in settings such as the World Economic Forum. We also see pictures of Francis Yeoh participating in international forums that promote private–public cooperation, such as the World Economic Forum and the Asia Society. These conferences assemble businesses, civil society, political elites, and public intellectuals representing different interests, providing ample opportunity for VIP photos.

2011–2019

In the final period, we note that the philanthropic activities mentioned above resulted in specific status-enhancing awards, pictured in annual reports, accompanied by captions that augment the visual message. For example, TAN SRI DATO' (DR.) FRANCIS YEOH SOCK PING NAMED PRIMUS INTER PARES (FIRST AMONG EQUALS) HONOUREE. Per L. Saxegaard, Chairman of the Oslo Business for Peace Award Foundation, presents the award to Tan Sri Dato' (Dr) Francis Yeoh Sock Ping, 2011. We also continue to see conference-style photos with global leaders, but less often celebrities from civil society and more often from the business world (such as Stan Shih of Acer; Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase & Co.). YTL leaders and their families also visit well-known companies overseas. For example, a visit to Google showed Francis Yeoh with then VP and later CEO Sundar Pichai in 2013. While earlier photographs chiefly show Francis Yeoh and his father among VIPs, photos in this period increasingly feature other YTL leaders (Francis Yeoh's siblings and YTL's operational executives receiving corporate awards) with VIPs. These later photographs connect more closely to YTL’s business operations.

Over the last decade, YTL had extended the international scope of its luxury hotel and resort portfolio to the UK, France, Singapore, Japan, Thailand, and Australia. Another interesting feature in this period is the use of YTL-owned hotels as a backdrop for photos, especially those outside Malaysia. For instance, in 2010, YTL opened a hotel in St. Tropez (France), which was a recurring venue for photos with celebrities (“legendary singer George Benson”). Table 2 illustrates the above trends with simple counts of individuals pictured by industry affiliation (business, government, civil society) and nationality (home country, host countries and global elites from other countries).

Observations across time periods

With some notable exceptions, few of YTL's visible ties are recurring (401 out of 520 VIPs appear only once), with many unconnected to significant YTL income streams (royalty, ambassadors, celebrities). These photos were included without a direct link to YTL’s business activities, which suggests that the company sent a purposeful signal to its audiences. In particular, we suggest that the photos combine network inclusion based on achieved status (signing of business deals or other milestones) and the selective depiction of network ties with desired status peers (fellow panelists in CEO forums, royalty, celebrities).

The frequency of non-business celebrities (especially from 2001–2010, when YTL entered various developed markets) underpins our premise that many of the annual reports' photos had few direct links to YTL business activities. We suggest the photos provide content for an impression management tactic demonstrating the global elite status of YTL's owning family (particularly Francis Yeoh, who appears in 264 of the 452 photos). These global elites are not from relevant host countries but are well known to audiences in host countries due to their celebrity status. Figure 1 illustrates the diversity of YTL’s social affiliations according to their geographic origins and their industry category with a few examples.

Fig. 1
figure 1

Selection and categorization of YTL’s social affiliations

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Interpretation: Status signaling mechanisms

In this paper, we seek to theorize status-enhancing mechanisms that address the liabilities of outsidership as new firms enter a range of international markets. In particular, our study argues that internationalizing groups, such as YTL, can use their annual reports as channels for status signaling by establishing visible links with high-status alters. We contribute to a growing body of research findings that annual report visuals have a performative function (Meyer et al., 2013) and that portraiture in annual reports serves as a rhetorical tool to shape audiences’ impressions of a particular organization (Davison, 2010; Greenwood et al., 2019). We suggest that the annual reports’ visuals are part of a broader strategy to construct a global corporate identity (Preston & Young, 2000).

We interpret annual report visuals as one channel of status signaling. We maintain that studying this channel has the potential to advance IB theory on how firms’ status signaling facilitates new market entry. While our visual method is archival and thus unable to elicit the intended motivation behind the images placed in annual reports, our retrospective archival analysis shows a pattern to these photos linked to the firm’s internationalization. Specifically, we interpret that the photos are evidence of status signaling mechanisms aimed at projecting insidership in a global world society elite, which addresses the liability of outsidership in host markets. Our analysis shows several links between internationalization and the high-status alters depicted as social ties in the annual reports. First, high-status overseas individuals (e.g., prime ministers) are visualized before announcements of major deals in these countries or depicting global celebrities in host markets during high-profile events. Thus, photos showing YTL’s leaders with high-status alters are not directly illustrative of the firm’s overseas performance – we believe their inclusion should be interpreted as the socially constructed visualization of a desired global elite identity.

The wide range of VIPs portrayed in the annual reports suggests the employment of diffuse status markers (see: Keister & Cornwell, 2009), where visible status cues are not necessarily associated with specific competencies or tasks. Interestingly, the low repetition of images of specific elites in annual reports, and the fact that many photos appear to be opportunistic VIP photo opportunities taken at conferences suggests that a firm does not need to possess deep social connections in the business sphere to signal associations with a high-status global elite. Complementing scholarly insights about coping with the liability of outsidership (Johanson & Vahlne, 2009), we suggest that organizations aspiring to ascend a status hierarchy may instead persuade audiences with a display of ephemeral ties to present an impression of association in a category of high-status alters. We posit that the recurrent presentation of photographs containing high-status associations without apparent connection to the organization’s business activities will likely illustrate a desired placement in a status hierarchy rather than documenting business achievements. This view forms the basis of our theorizing.

We respond to calls by Connelly et al. (2011) that scholars dissect a portfolio of signaling strategies regarding sequences, patterns, and motifs. We suggest that the signaling mechanisms juxtaposing YTL leaders with high-status alters can create a pathway to accumulate status with new audiences. IB scholars of business networks tend to focus almost exclusively on “strong ties” in which parties link in a trusted knowledge- and resource-sharing exchange relationship (Johanson & Vahlne, 2009). Such ties with host-country actors enable new actors to develop the capacity to navigate new environments (Li & Fleury, 2020). Hence, the implication is that accessing such business networks is time-consuming and requires substantial resources. However, network theorists (Dacin, Ventresca, & Beal, 1999) distinguish between relational embeddedness (resource exchange between partners, i.e., relationship depth) and structural embeddedness (who you know, i.e., relationship existence). Forsgren (2016) claims that the literature on the liability of outsidership primarily focused on the former but argues that both are relevant. Our interpretations of YTL’s social affiliation patterns align with and extend Forsgren’s speculation. Specifically, relatively weak network ties can result in tenuous structural embeddedness. We contend that this tangential networking approach may help newcomers in a target market when employed as a signaling tool when quality signals are not yet available to audiences. Thus, our base argument is that newcomers attempt to address the liability of outsidership in host countries by visually displaying the company's leaders alongside high-status alters.

We frame our findings in Fig. 2. The horizontal dimension is a range of industry categories, moving from proximal categories, including the firm’s industry on the left-hand side, to somewhat distant (e.g., suppliers and finance). On the extreme right are increasingly distal categories representing industries unrelated to YTL’s corporate activities, including spheres of civil society such as artists and celebrities. The vertical axis represents geography – whether the visualized connections are from a host country that a focal firm invested in or an unrelated jurisdiction. We direct our theoretical generalization toward IB theory, focusing on social ties beyond the home country (i.e., host countries or countries unrelated to YTL’s geographic footprint). The bottom left quadrant in Fig. 2, labeled inclusion, is the usual starting point for international expansion where firms hold strong same-industry ties in host countries. However, our study suggests a range of signaling affiliations beyond this quadrant, providing opportunities to enrich IB theory. Our findings identify three status signaling mechanisms: bypass, allusion, and aspiration.

Fig. 2
figure 2

Theoretical generalization: High-status social affiliation signaling mechanisms

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The bypass mechanism: Distal host-country affiliations

In the first wave of internationalization, visible political ties in host countries coincided with investments in emerging commonwealth markets. Meetings with heads of state and senior political figures in Africa and other Commonwealth countries preceded investments, apparently often tied to Malaysia's foreign policy priorities. As YTL invested in developed markets, its liability of outsidership became more significant. We saw that before entry, YTL also mainly visualized government ties in the target markets (UK, Singapore, Australia). The substantial number of government connections in this early period reflects that most large acquisitions were public utilities, where unfamiliar outsiders' admission created significant political risks.

The IB literature on the liability of outsidership acknowledges the difficulties of unconnected newcomers. However, it concentrates primarily on the actors operating in the sphere of business, with Johanson and Vahlne (2009) describing it as a “business network view,” thereby largely overlooking non-business network partners that can reduce the liability of outsidership (Moschieri, Ravasi & Huy, 2023). For example, Carney & colleagues (2016) describe how an Indonesian property group secured access to valuable land in Vietnam by cultivating ties with the Vietnamese military and the local government, who were influential in zoning decisions. Our study advances a new view of cross-category spillover effects where newcomers circumvent business ties to establish linkages with influential political and bureaucratic actors, which we describe as the bypass mechanism:

Proposition 1

Newcomers in a host country use visible social affiliations with high-status alters from distal industry categories in a host country to address their liability of outsidership.

The allusion mechanism: Distal global affiliations

Our results suggest that firms can showcase affiliations to categories without apparent connection to business, including celebrities from the arts and sports. We argue that YTL utilizes a signaling mechanism that generates status through distal cross-category spillovers. This phenomenon was most visible in 2001–2010 when YTL entered several developed countries (e.g., the UK, and Singapore). We call this the allusion mechanism because this behavior provides a ‘reference’ or insinuation that one has a social tie to high-status alters that have little direct relevance to the business setting. However, it still conveys value since the tie can spill over to that business setting.

YTL prominently displayed affiliations to high-status individuals like Prince Harry or Michael Schumacher. Similarly, YTL frequently associates with global celebrity opera singers such as Pavarotti, Carreras, Domingo (UK concert) and Bocelli (Singapore concert). Such associations represent linkages in global status hierarchies that reach beyond local elites in host countries. By signaling these affiliations, YTL draws local elite audiences to YTL-sponsored events, fashioning a "world-class" allusion that reduces perceptions of YTL as a low-status utility-operating newcomer from a developing country. In recent years, YTL affiliated with world society elites and culturally appropriate categories, such as sustainability advocacy, attracting international recognition for global awards (such as the Oslo Business for Peace Award).

Status elevation through allusion refers to efforts to signal social ties with distal categories, such as well-known political and cultural figures (Delmestri & Greenwood, 2016). Much world society scholarship focuses on global policy communities and international organizations (Meyer, 2010). World society also manifests in venues such as the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, which provides space for celebrities, public intellectuals, entrepreneurs, CEOs, and politicians to assemble. Described as global cosmopolitans (Delmestri, 2014), these actors project an identity alluding to a global business culture while displaying cultural sensitivity and the capacity to act across multicultural settings. Hence, exclusive clubs such as WEF function as brokers that realize value from disconnected actors (Kilduff & Brass, 2010), providing a ready-made signaling platform for aspirant status climbers.

Promoting linkages to "top" level global high status alters with global visibility provides an indirect approach to status signaling as these actors have no direct link to the host country. Scholars have noted that celebrities generate large-scale public attention and elicit positive emotive responses in audiences (Driessens, 2013; Rindova, Pollock, & Hayward, 2006) – a form of capital that can be monetized and "transacted" by liaising with others who seek greater visibility and status. This strategy is not without risks, as appropriating celebrity capital could lead to negative judgments of being a parvenu or an opportunistic social climber (see: Veblen, 1899). Associating with famous people whose main quality is “being known” may lead to what Connelly and colleagues call “poor signal fit” (2011). Nevertheless, the allusion signaling mechanism may be valuable in a context where the newcomer is entirely unknown and lacks the time and experience to build up host-country insidership in a conventional manner. In the context of our case study, we suggest the allusion signaling mechanism is deployed when YTL enters developed markets such as UK or Singapore for the first time. In such a situation, domestic audiences may disparage Malaysian firms due to their liability of origin (Kolk & Curran, 2017), which requires novel tactics to raise the firm’s status or reputation. With the ephemeral nature of many social affiliations, the cost of such circuitous distal signaling may be low. At the same time, visibility is high, thus making it an attractive trade-off in signal cost/effectiveness (Bergh et al., 2014). Our proposition describing the allusion mechanism suggests:

Proposition 2

Emerging multinationals in a host country use visible social affiliations with high-status alters with global visibility from distal industry categories to address their liability of outsidership.

The aspiration mechanism: Proximal global affiliations

We also identify a transnational sphere of high-status alters from similar or adjacent industries whose visibility goes beyond individual markets. Our findings suggest that this type of business affiliation hailing from other countries than host countries increases over time as YTL internationalizes (Table 2). We argue that outsiders may advertise their ties to such individuals as a signaling mechanism to elevate their status among local business elites. Associations with internationally known business executives can attract “celebrity capital,” a form of social capital convertible into economic or political capital (Driessens, 2013). YTL chose to display affiliations with iconic global category “kings” (Ozcan, Gurses, & Möhlmann, 2020), often business celebrities with whom target audiences were familiar, thereby reaching beyond the host country's local status hierarchies.

Strategy scholars document status spillovers when an individual’s status elevation affects others in a category (Jensen & Kim, 2015) or when commoners experience positive spillover effects from high-status category "kings" (Ozcan et al., 2020). However, researchers have not associated such spillovers with status signaling in international business. An early example of seeking to benefit from status spillovers through aligning with proximal category kings is the visualization of YTL’s partnership with Siemens, a technology expert in power and utilities, where YTL sought international recognition.

Status hierarchies, especially those that outsiders find difficult to penetrate, can also be accessed by status-seeking in adjacent business categories. As Ozcan and colleagues (2020) observed, as an "also ran" in a category, it is difficult to distinguish oneself from the so-called category kings; the latter may avoid associations with low-status newcomers. We suggest associating with category kings in adjacent categories (e.g., international bankers) may face less resistance and produce favorable social evaluations with positive spillover effects. In our study, we see Francis Yeoh depicted with global financial leaders (e.g., UBS) or celebrity executives in related industries (e.g., Sundar Pichai). Yeoh is grouped among several influential global CEOs in another picture, denoting the broad global scope of YTL’s business networks. The advertisement of ties with global financiers conferred status advantages on YTL, surpassing local status hierarchies. Similarly, the global CEO panels subtly visualized the intended positioning of YTL in the status hierarchy of global business elites. Indeed, prominent global figures, such as CEOs of multinational banks, are willing to be associated with lower-status actors from emerging markets to gesture their commitment to typical world society values, such as inclusion and diversity. Accordingly, we reason that lacking strong business ties in a host market is less of a liability if a "superior" fabric of global business embeddedness can be visualized and whose recognition can be borrowed to project high-status accumulation.

YTL accumulated a portfolio of ostentatious properties that project visual cues of YTL's aspired status, such as the Mûse Hotel Deluxe in St. Tropez, France. The hotel is associated with CEOs of luxury brand firms. The luxury settings and partners discreetly signal YTL’s sophistication while symbolically placing it in the upper reaches of a business hierarchy (Delmestri & Greenwood, 2016). Luxury industry affiliations play a specific status-building role because luxury brands and venues are markers of high status (Han, Nunes, & Drèze, 2010; Sharkey, 2014). Such associations provide a material and aesthetic quality to the intended high-status positioning through visual cues. Aesthetic signals also attain legitimacy, especially when a dominant model for framing the subject's legitimacy is not yet established or when legitimacy is in question (Christiansen, 2018; Jones et al., 2017).

Thus, rather than building proximal business ties in a host country, we observe that a company may skip this potentially problematic step by aiming for proximal structural embeddedness at a higher level while seeking visual endorsements from a global network of relevant business ties and providing a performative luxury setting to enhance signal strength. This aligns with Li and Fleury’s (2020) observation that the liability of outsidership is less about the foreign country posing barriers than building global business network positions.

We observe that the annual reports tend to display more proximal global affiliations over time. We interpret this as the visualization of aspirational inclusion in the upper reaches of world society, where actors seek to reproduce rationalized corporate organizational models. In world society terminology, the ultimate objective is to align with individuals and organizations seen as “empowered purposive actors, embodied in celebrations of vision, innovation, and entrepreneurship” (Bromley & Meyer, 2021: 1). Thus, we propose an aspirational mechanism where:

Proposition 3

Ascending multinationals use visible social affiliations with high-status alters with global recognition from proximal industry categories to address their liability of outsidership in a new host country.

Figure 2 summarizes the three mechanisms that complement the extant theory on the liability of outsidership, which has previously stressed the importance of penetrating business networks in host countries. We expand this focus beyond host country and industry-specific status hierarchies. Our findings enrich IB literature beyond its present realist treatment of status affiliations as instrumental in achieving better firm performance. We adopt a sociological perspective to complement existing IB theory with a phenomenological stance, which calls for the depiction of “world society insidership” as an outcome. Our three status signaling mechanisms represent the shifting status markers towards the desired world society insidership (P2 and P3). We suggest actors achieve insidership through an indirect, circuitous approach to affiliation-based status signaling. Table 3 illustrates this with a selection of relevant photo captions from our database, while Table 4 provides several sample photos.

Table 4 Selected visuals and captions from source materials
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Findings in context

Next, we consider the conditions where organizations are most likely to employ the mechanisms depicted in our study. We suggest that two salient features of our case study context matter: emerging-market origin and family business ownership. Emerging-market multinationals usually occupy secondary positions in key business networks because they have less experience and organizational capability to span multiple geographies. Consequently, their home-country origins can be a source of stigma (Kolk & Curran, 2017). We found some of YTL’s foreign investments were not well received. For instance, its takeover of Wessex Water prompted allegations of bribery. These allegations were tried in court, where the former chairman of Wessex Water was exonerated. Local hostility also manifested in media profiles, with one describing Francis Yeoh as a “po-faced zealot” (The Daily Telegraph, August 17, 2003). Low-status signalers might be incentivized to project deceptive signals that exaggerate underlying quality (Connelly et al., 2011). Consistent with this idea, partners in developed countries may be highly skeptical of emerging-market multinationals. Accordingly, emerging-market firms may find barriers to host-country insidership. We argue that the benefits of crossing social category boundaries by applying the mechanisms of bypassing, allusion, and aspirational signaling through global celebrity affiliations to signal higher status may outweigh the risks. Our temporal bracketing approach suggests that the bypass strategy was particularly prevalent in the early internationalization stage. In contrast, the allusion strategy was especially salient in the second phase of the company’s internationalization trajectory, in which it entered several more developed markets than Malaysia. We argue that the last phase of internationalization saw more global business ties depicted, which we suggest is consistent with a developing country player achieving world society insidership, epitomized by the notion of “Davos Man” (Bromley & Meyer, 2021:9).

Our second feature relates to family ownership. IB scholars suggest family firms may have specific advantages but often lack the network capabilities that enable their international expansion (Arregle et al., 2021; Eddleston, Sarathy, & Banalieva, 2018), which generates greater liabilities of outsidership. Despite these limitations, family firms may also possess characteristics that facilitate the structural network embeddedness that underpins the status signaling found in this study. Some scholars suggested that family businesses can recombine family-specific advantages, such as social capital and reputation, with firm-specific advantages when investing abroad (Kano, Ciravegna, & Rattalino, 2021). Our case, YTL, had accumulated domestic social capital and status but not in host countries. We found that Francis Yeoh could leverage his social skills and domestic reputation to send signals to audiences in host markets.

When family owners, especially those in eponymous firms, identify with their family business, the urge to improve their reputation is stronger (Deephouse & Jaskiewicz, 2013). Thus, Chung and colleagues (2021) suggest that elevating a family’s status identity to secure prominence in a social hierarchy is more important than economic gains. Indeed, family firm owners feature prominently among the global elites in world society, including in arenas such as the WEF. The general public often perceives an identity overlap between a family business and a business owner (Zellweger et al., 2013). We suggest that personal-corporate identity overlaps can also make status signaling more persuasive in the eyes of audiences. Compared with professional CEOs, family owners’ discretion gives greater scope to penetrate overseas business networks. This could be particularly true for cultures that covet personal relationships, such as the Malaysian family of Chinese descent featured in our case study. The lengthy tenures of owner CEOs also ensure the persistence of accumulated status. Indeed, next-generation family members may inherit high-status affiliations by accompanying their senior family members in high-profile meetings, as we saw in the YTL photographs. We believe that family firms, especially those that have already accumulated status in a domestic setting, may be well positioned to activate the benefits of high-status social affiliations through signaling.

Many of YTL’s ties with high-status alters appear fleeting, which is inconsistent with research finding that family firms prefer intensive collaboration in close networks (Cesinger, Hughes, Mensching, Bouncken, Fredrich, & Kraus, 2016). While status signaling based on ephemeral ties could be inferior to strong relational embeddedness, we suggest it may work in a context where audiences cannot assess signal veracity (Connelly et al., 2011). Once established in a host country, quality signals will permeate local business networks, facilitating subsequent social tie formation with minimal resources. Moreover, simply signaling status without real relational embeddedness may limit dependence on and obligations to others, avoiding the high maintenance costs of strong ties. Thus, it is unclear whether the status signaling mechanisms found in this study (such as showcasing high-status celebrity affiliations in annual reports) are more or less cost-effective than other tactics to alleviate the liability of outsidership.

Limitations and recommendations for further research

As with all research design choices, our study has several limitations. We focused on communication strategies employed by the status signal-sender (YTL) and signals displayed in a single channel, but our design does not assess how and which audiences received and processed YTL’s signals. Thus, while we can observe mechanisms to signal status, we cannot evaluate their effectiveness. Equally, we do not evaluate the costs of different status signaling mechanisms. While many of the projected affiliations we analyzed appear to be relatively low-cost strategies to project insidership to audiences, building signaling infrastructure by investing in conspicuous luxury venues may, on the other hand, result in overspending on status signals (Mause, 2009). We agree with Connelly and colleagues (2011, p. 45) that signaling cost–benefit trade-offs require further investigation. We suggest that other research designs might be better suited to gauge the “return on investment” of status signaling mechanisms, for instance, by measuring media exposure as a carrier of judgment (Deephouse, 2000; Rindova et al., 2006). However, Francis Yeoh’s frequent invitations to address forums such as Forbes Global CEO and WEF, lavishly depicted in the annual reports, indicate YTL’s insidership in world society. Indeed, social interactions and receiving an entree into such international fora is an outcome of status signaling as much as an opportunity to project status to audiences. We suggest that status accumulation and signaling can mutually reinforce activities that co-evolve over time. This is because social status is a firm-specific but generic asset that firms may deploy to achieve multiple objectives, including burnishing a family leader’s socio-emotional wealth, the display of which can lead to further status accumulation.

To further explore the extent to which YTL achieved its projected status, we conducted a media analysis of YTL in the UK market following Deephouse’s (2000) suggested method. We found that the YTLs media favorability score dropped during the new entry period but increased after that. However, whether this is due to the signaling strategy or other signals (for instance about quality indicators becoming available to audiences) is difficult to determine with a single case study. Bergh and colleagues (2014) suggest that most signaling theory articles published in management journals lack a clear link between signaling strategies and outcomes. Still, we agree with these authors that investigating the whole spectrum, including signal confirmation merits further research.

Status judgments can vary over time, an element we have not explicitly addressed in this study. Moreover, our design focuses on observed associations, thereby veiling the possible disassociation with prior individuals or lower status categories over time, an important aspect of status elevation (Delmestri & Greenwood, 2016). We have some indications that particular affiliations diminish while other types grow. In the case of YTL, it may have wanted to disassociate from several individuals (e.g., accumulating criticism of Mugabe’s leadership). Still, the limited observations make it difficult to make conclusive claims about the process of disassociation with lower-status individuals and categories.

Single case studies cannot generate generalizable findings to the larger population. Instead, the strength of this approach lies in theoretical advances – often answering “how” and “why” questions – based on grounded insights that pay attention to the specific context. Using this design, we speculate but cannot unequivocally say that family firms from emerging markets are more likely to use the observed status signaling mechanisms. We do not engage in a systematic comparison based on ownership or geographic origin. We hope our study encourages further qualitative studies exploring the richness of non-verbal signals in different contexts. Equally, we also suggest that quantitative work could further test the applicability of our proposed mechanisms to broader populations of firms.

Conclusion

Embeddedness in business networks (i.e., insidership) provides advantages to newcomers in host countries as unknown outsiders may be automatically accorded low status. Drawing from status signaling theory, we explore alternative mechanisms to reduce the disadvantages of outsidership through the display of affiliations with high-status alters. We utilize a novel visual qualitative research approach that analyzes annual report photographs depicting the firm’s leaders with high-status alters, which suggests an expanded view of status affiliations. Where the IB literature emphasizes the importance of embeddedness in business networks, we found additional status signaling mechanisms beyond firm affiliation with high-status business actors in host countries. Our study enriches IB theory with a peripheral view of status signaling that extends to host-country elites that are distal from the focal firm’s industry and those elites situated in world society (but not the host country), either from proximal business categories or distal categories such as entertainment celebrities or royalty. Our proposed status signaling mechanisms (bypass, allusion, aspiration) open up a promising new research direction on tactics to address liabilities of outsidership. Due to their greater internationalization constraints and leader–business identity overlaps, we argue that these mechanisms may be especially salient for family-owned emerging-market multinationals.