Host country’s non-economic factors, local managers, and foreign affiliate performance

Purpose - This paper examines the effects of host country’s non-economic factors on foreign affiliate’s financial and operational performance. Design/Methodology - Using Korean-owned foreign affiliate-level data, we employ various measures that represent host country’s non-economic factors and examine their effects on foreign affiliate’s performance. We further investigate the effects of local top managers and local middle managers on the impact of country’s non-economic factors on foreign affiliate’s performance. Findings - We find that local top managers are effective in increasing foreign affiliate’s financial performance by dealing with institutional and cultural factors, particularly in high-income countries, while local middle managers are effective in increasing affiliate’s operational performance by responding to the changes in doing business factors, particularly in low-income countries. Originality/value - Considering that most of previous FDI studies focus on examining host country’s economic factors on firm’s FDI decision, our findings suggest that country’s non-economic factors are strongly associated with actual business performance of foreign affiliates.