Yes / EMNEs from Africa are missing in global places and spaces, and Africapitalism is also
meagrely represented within the capillaries of international investments, relative to the
opportunities offered by globalisation and Africa’s rich natural resource endowment. Using the
Penrosian MNE growth theory, we investigate how African firms' managerial competence and
entrepreneurial behaviours can be enhanced by engaging foreign executive directors during pre,
early and post-internationalisation. We conduct our analysis by using data from 157 companies
domiciled in 17 African countries. Our results show that whilst access to liquidity, foreign
managerial know-how, and experience are key drivers of early foreign listing of African
EMNEs, these factors have less effect on corporate outcomes during the 3rd and 5th year without
the moderating effect of foreign executive directors. We contribute to the international business and international entrepreneurship literature by showing that African EMNEs can succeed in
global spaces if they leverage the expertise of foreign executive directors as they bring idiosyncratic industry and market knowledge during early internationalisation. EMNEs
intending to internationalise must use a polycentric governing board structure to reflect the intended destination country. Our results imply that early listing on the international stock markets is among the key strategies latecomers use to enter a global game they are just learning
to play.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:BRADFORD/oai:bradscholars.brad.ac.uk:10454/19313 |
| Date | 11 January 2023 |
| Creators | Adams, Kweku, Attah-Boakye, R., Yu, H., Chu, Irene, Ishaque, M. |
| Source Sets | Bradford Scholars |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Article, Published version |
| Rights | © 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)., CC-BY |
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