عوامل بین المللی سازی: شواهد از صنعت فن آوری پیشرفته تایوان

This paper employs the logit model to explore the relationship between internationalization and its determinants. Using a sample set gathered from 114 high technology firms of Taiwan, which are mostly engaged in original equipment manufacturing, empirical tests of the hypotheses find support that corporate governance, patent counts, and education level of managers had a positive effect on internationalization. Surprisingly, R&D intensity, one of the innovation capitals, had a negative effect on internationalization.

Barriers to international trade are increasing and corporations are fighting competitively at home and abroad. The impact of multinational corporations (MNCs) on the growth of the world economy has made them an issue of significant interest. Thus, multinational operation has been an important research issue. In 1970s, a large amount of literature was developed to offer explanation of the measurements of the degree of internationalization and the reasons why a firm would choose to become multinational [1]. A major consensus arising from the internationalization paradigm was that the motivation of the multinational, the international market entry alternatives, and the firm's behavioral dimension were increasingly becoming critical for competitive advantage in the 1980s [2]. More recently, an emerging empirical literature has been aimed at testing whether multinationality adds to firm value [3]. Numerous studies [4], [5] and [6] posited a positive relationship between internationalization and performance. Conversely, Click and Harrison [7] reported a negative relationship between internationalization and performance using U.S. firms during 1978 to 1980. Other scholars (e.g., [8] and [9]) have obtained findings same as those of Click and Harrison [7]. The number of studies has helped us increase our understanding on this topic [10]; however, the issue of the determinants of internationalization has been ignored. This study claims that there is a significant need for additional research on this issue. In the academic landscape, the exploration of the determinants of internationalization in high technology industry has been one of the integral issues because of the complexity of influencing factors on technological industry. As a practical matter, scholars [11] have argued that the future trend (e.g., internationalization) of Taiwan high technology is one of the important topics in world economy because the internationalization of high technology industry changes the speed of social development in the global environment.

The study has contributed to the analysis of the internationalization of high technology firms, a field where more empirical research is needed. By analyzing a number of corporate governance, innovation capital, and human capital factors, the elements that best characterize the internationalization of firms have been pointed out based on the logistic regression model. In this study, we investigate the incidence of internationalization of high technology firm using a dataset covering a maximum of 114 firms in all the Taiwan high technology industries in 2005. Controlling for the variables of firm size and leverage which affected the results of internationalization we develop alternative theories of the determinants of internationalization focusing in particular upon the input of R&D intensity and patent counts as proxies for innovation activity, education level of managers as a proxy of human capital and the independent directors as a proxy of corporate governance. Our evidence indicates that the effect of innovation capital and corporate governance on internationalization is positive except for R&D intensity. The following conclusions can be drawn with respect to our findings. First, we find support for the view that the propensity to acquire multinational business knowledge is driven by higher education level of managers; this facilitates the high technology firm to involvement in internationalization. Second, we find evidence that the R&D intensity has a strongly negative impact on internationalization. The role of OEM high technology firms and their focus on achieving internal growth strategy are major reasons for this finding. Third, our result is in favor of the managerial objective theory that independent directors on their board of directors can enhance corporate governance and play an effective supervisor mechanism to restrain managers' opportunism while high technology firms extend their business to the international market. Finally, we also find that more patent counts held by the high technology firm can motivate the firm to internationalization. Firms with valuable and rare resources have a source of sustainable competitive advantage facing vigorous multinational competition. Future research on the internationalization needs to expand the sample to include different types of firms and to consider other factors relevant to explain the internationalization operation. The negative effect seen by R&D intensity and internationalization provides an interesting avenue for further research. Also of interest for future research is to replicate the reported findings with other high-tech firms, which are located in China, European, or United States that require them to internationalize.