Managing Culture and Interspace in Cross-border Investments
Building a Global Company
Routledge Studies in International Business and the World Economy Series

This book focuses on the dialectics between spatio-organisational gaps and local contexts that characterise cross-border investments. "Interspatial" investments ? be it mergers & acquisitions (M&A) or greenfield investments ? are usually characterised by what is referred to as "otherness", i.e. organisational and cultural distances of the firms involved in relation to their regional contexts.

At the same time, economic, political and socio-cultural linkages are decisive for attracting cross-border investments to regions and for providing firms with conditions supportive of their market success. As a consequence of being locked into complex structures of proximities, cross-border investments are situated in contested terrain. This terrain triggers learning processes in both regional actors and investors, which can result in the convergence of mindsets and organisational issues.

This book is unique in that it combines interspace (defined as the distance between the new owner and the cross-border venture), place (the target region), interpretation (perception and understanding of the investment by the actors involved) and context (institutions, actor networks and interaction), thus offering better understanding of recent processes of globalisation. Crossing disciplinary boundaries by integrating economic geography and management studies, the volume adopts an innovative and spatially informed perspective on foreign direct investments (FDI).

This perspective will be of great value to scholars, students and practitioners. The volume is inventive in its approach in that it offers fresh readings from interdisciplinary theoretical approaches and combines these with valuable empirical insights from developed as well as Emerging Economies.

1. Introduction: Managing Culture and Interspace in Cross-border

Investments: Building a Global Company

Martina Fuchs, Sebastian Henn, Martin Franz and Ram Mudambi

2. Othering FDI in the Media: How Chinese Investors Are Constructed as

Deviating Others in German Dailies

Sophie Golinski and Sebastian Henn

3. Behind the Scenes: Managers’ Interpretation of Foreign Takeovers by

Investors of Emerging Economies

Martina Fuchs and Martin Schalljo

4. Industrial Relations and FDI from China and India in Germany

Martin Franz, Kai Bollhorn and Reinhard Röhrig

5. Cultural Frictions in Post-merger Integration Processes: A View on ‘Face’

When Dealing with Asian Counterparts

Muriel Durand

6. Multiple Organisational Identities after M&As

Luca Giustiniano and Luigi De Bernardis

7. Becoming a National Champion, Yet Remaining a Global Player: The

Acquisition of Volvo Car by Zhejiang Geely

Claes G. Alvstam and Inge Ivarsson

8. Asymmetric Effects of Cultural Distance: A Comparison of German and

Austrian Inbound and Outbound Cross-border Transactions and the Diverging Effect of

Integration of Wholly Owned Target Firms

Lucas Huter, Mai Anh Dao, Daniel Degischer, Florian Bauer, Yvonne Stockhammer and Manuel Erlacher

9. Brownfield Investments in the German Automotive Parts Industry: Private Equity as a Door Opener

Christoph Scheuplein

10. Reactions to China’s Cross-border Investment and International Investment Law

Karl P. S. Sauvant and Michael D. Nolan

11. Chinese Outward FDI in Germany and the U.S.: An Assessment of National and Sub-national Location Strategies

Susan M. Walcott and Ingo Liefner

12. The Perception of Local Institutional Quality by Multinationals in a Transition Economy Context: Empirical Evidence from Three Regions in Ukraine

Daria Zvirgzde, Daniel Schiller and Javier Revilla Diez

13. Realities of Responsible Business: Structural and Institutional Conditions in MNE-Local Government Bargaining

Päivi Oinas and Erja Kettunen

14. Between Embeddedness and Otherness: Internationalisation of Grocery Retailers in Emerging Markets

Lech Suwala and Elmar Kulke

15. Making Sense of Local Customer Relationships in Cross-border Acquisitions

Christina Öberg

16. Evolving Forms of Collaborative Finance in Corporate Networks: Insights from the Automotive Industry in Germany and Brazil

Christian Baumeister and Hans-Martin Zademach

17. Synopsis: Building a ‘Global’ Company: Challenges of Interspace and Regional Embeddedness

Martina Fuchs, Sebastian Henn, Martin Franz and Ram Mudambi

• Martin Franz holds the chair of Human Geography at the Institute of Geography at the University Osnabrück.
• Martina Fuchs holds the chair of Economic and Social Geography at the Faculty of Management, Economics and Social Sciences at Cologne University.
• Sebastian Henn holds the chair of Economic Geography at the Institute of Geography at Friedrich Schiller University Jena.
• Ram Mudambi is Professor and Perelman Senior Research Fellow in Strategic Management at the Fox School of Business and Management at Temple University.