东道国文化特质与跨国并购失败风险——基于中国企业海外并购样本的实证研究

《外国经济与管理》 2021年43卷第1期 页码：58 - 72  online：2021年1月9日

东道国文化特质与跨国并购失败风险——基于中国企业海外并购样本的实证研究

Cultural Characteristics of Host Countries and Risk of Failure in Cross-border M&A: An Empirical Study Based on the Overseas M&A of Chinese Enterprises

作者（中）：左志刚1 *, 杨帆2

作者（英）：Zuo Zhigang1 *, Yang Fan2

作者单位：1.广东外语外贸大学 会计学院，广东 广州 510006 2.容诚会计师事务所 深圳分所，广东 深圳 518000

摘要：本文从跨国并购企业外来者劣势的两种来源入手，分析了东道国文化特质影响跨国并购风险的机理，基于中国1997—2017年2722宗海外并购样本的实证检验表明东道国文化宽容度、信任度与并购失败风险负相关；在法治水平较高的国家，文化宽容度、信任度对并购风险的影响力下降，体现为正式与非正式制度作用的替代性；进一步的检验还发现东道国文化特质对并购后业绩也存在类似影响。文章突破了国际商务领域基于“文化距离”概念研究文化影响的范式，回归到文化本身特质的研究，并使用了代表性更强的文化特征度量方法，深化了外来者劣势导致跨国并购风险的机理研究，在实践中也为中国企业海外并购风险防范提供了文化视角的参考。

关键词：跨国并购; 失败风险; 宽容文化; 信任文化

Summary: This paper is to identify the role and mechanism of host-countries’ culture in determining the risk of cross-border merge and acquisition（CM&A）. With the increasingly complex international environment, CM&A is not only affected by economic risks, but also facing non-economic challenges. Thus, insight into the cultural characteristics of host-countries and their economic impacts is of great significance for improving the decision-making of cross-border investment.The questions discussed in this paper are what cultural characteristics affect the completion of CM&A deals and what is the underpinning mechanism. These questions are hot issues in the field of cross-cultural finance research. From the angle of the origin of Liability of Foreignness（LOF）to cross-border acquirers, and based on the institutional theory and the social capital theory, this paper analyzes how the cultural characteristics of host-countries influence acquirers’ “legitimacy” disadvantage and information disadvantage. Empirically, this paper uses a dataset of 2722 Chinese CM&A samples from 1997 to 2017 and a logistic regression model to test the hypothesis.The results show that the level of cultural tolerance and trust in host-countries are negatively correlated with the risk of CM&A failure. In addition, a moderating test of the rule of law in host-countries finds that when the rule of law in host-countries is at a higher level, the tolerance and trust have less impact on CM&A risk, suggesting a substitute relation between formal and informal institutions. Further testing also finds that the cultural characteristics of host-countries have a similar impact on the post-performance of CM&A.We conclude that tolerance and trust are two cultural vectors directly related to CM&A risk. Tolerance culture impacts on the “legitimacy” disadvantage of acquirers, and then forms the risk of whether the M&A activity can be recognized locally; trust culture impacts on the information disadvantage of acquirers, thus forming the risk in decision-making and contract execution. In the environment of a higher level of the rule of law, the influence of culture as an informal system on CM&A risk decreases.This paper contributes to the literature by overcoming the limitation of the popular “cultural distance” paradigm in IB studies, shedding light on the impact of cultural characteristics, and revealing that the two cultural vectors are significantly related to CM&A risk. These findings deepen our understanding about the mechanism of LOF on CM&A risk, and also provide practical implication for better CM&A decision.

Key words: cross-border M&A; risk of failure; tolerance culture; trust culture

DOI：10.16538/j.cnki.fem.20201111.202

收稿日期：2020-5-16

基金项目：广东软科学项目（2019B101001018）；广东社科基金项目（GD19CYJ05）

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