30 سال سرمایه گذاری مستقیم خارجی در چین: بررسی ادبیات میان رشته ای

The purpose of this paper is to examine how scholarly research on foreign direct investment (FDI) to the People's Republic of China has evolved and been shaped using bibliometrics analysis of 422 journal articles published in 151 journals between 1979 and 2008 on that topic. The literature is dominated by the fields of Economics, followed by Business and Management, Planning and Development and International Relations, which together account for 95% of all publications. Ten percent of the most productive journals are responsible for 40% of all publications and 63% of all citations received. By means of citation mapping, four main research streams have been identified: (1) the motives and determinants of FDI to China; (2) ‘inside’ the multinational enterprise (MNE); (3) the impact of MNE activities; and (4) policy implications for the host country. Emerging research streams have been identified as the effects of inward FDI on (i) corporate social responsibility attitudes of domestic and foreign firms, (ii) environmental and climate issues, (iii) the institutional and societal transformation of China, and (iv) the emergence of Chinese MNEs and its impact on the operations of foreign MNEs in China.

Since the economic reform and opening of the People's Republic of China were initiated in 1979, foreign direct investment (FDI) to China has increased dramatically. While the stock of inward FDI stood at US$ 1bn by 1980, it was valued at US$ 327bn stock and FDI flows were US$ 83bn at the end of 2007 (UNCTAD, 2009a and UNCTAD, 2009b) – a compound annual growth rate of 23.6%. Not surprisingly therefore academic interest on this phenomenon has increased as well (see Fig. 1; UNCTAD, 2009b and Web of Science, 2008). One interpretation of the increase in FDI and interest is that China provides a unique business environment, not only due to its size and domestic market growth, but because it has slowly transformed and integrated its once plan-driven and autarkic economy into the global economy (Lardy, 1994, Naughton, 1995, OECD, 2002 and Peng, 2003). It is therefore an interesting academic environment to test existing management and international business theories and to gain new empirical insights into the determinants and consequences of inward FDI in China. A strength of international business research is to leverage insights from different fields of research and applying them to the multinational enterprise (MNE) and FDI (Buckley and Chapman, 1996, Buckley and Lessard, 2005 and Shenkar, 2004). With this paper we want to attempt an interdisciplinary historiographic bibliometric citation analysis on the research of inward FDI to China. Since all research can be cyclical (Daniels, 1991), one needs to take an occasional “step back” in order to reflect and examine how scholarly research has evolved, which fields have been investigated, and assess where future fields of research may lie. Hence, we address three research questions. At core of our research is the question of (1) what are the core research streams that have evolved around the phenomenon of FDI to China? Adjacent to this, we also seek to answer (2) which journals are the most productive and influential in this research field? And (3) which articles and authors have contributed the most to the progress of the field? We answer these questions by employing an interdisciplinary historiographic bibliometric citation analysis to reveal patterns in the analyses of research about FDI to China (Garfield, 1963, Small, 1974 and Moed et al., 1985) and relate our findings to the four main streams of research in international business as identified by Dunning and Lundan (2008a). These are: (1) the motives and determinants of FDI; (2) ‘inside’ the multinational enterprise (MNE); (3) the impact of MNE activities; and (4) policy implications for the host country. In doing so, we expand on work by Peng, Lu, Shenkar, and Wang (2001), Li and Tsui (2002) and Quer, Claver, and Rienda (2007) by analysing a very large sample of literature on FDI to China in an objectified manner and in close relationship to the foundations of international business research, rather than management studies. Further, we outline research patterns and gaps and identify key journals, articles and authors in that field. This paper provides an important contribution for scholars interested in FDI to China as it outlines, structures, and identifies in an objectified manner the key journals, articles and authors in that field. It also provides an overview of the research history and attempts to synthesis and identifies research streams and research gaps. The remainder of this paper is structured as follows. The next section provides the background and rational for using bibliometric citation analysis in reviewing extant literature. The third section introduces the methodology applied in this research. In Section 4 we present and discuss our findings and Section 5 concludes this paper.

This paper provides an important contribution as it identifies and structures the research field of FDI to China into four research areas that are closely related to common themes in international business, namely (1) the motives and determinants of FDI; (2) inside the multinationals; (3) the impact of MNE activities; and (4) policy implications for the host country. This is achieved by an interdisciplinary historiographic bibliometrical analysis of 422 academic articles published by 625 authors in 151 journals. Building on our findings, we propose emerging research areas around the issues of FDI and environmental issues; FDI and corporate social responsibility; FDI and social impacts; FDI and institutional transformation in China; and FDI and the growth of Chinese MNEs. Our research findings as well as the limitations to our approach point to opportunities for future research. While our dataset is comprehensive, is it not exhaustive. Future research may assess the possible relationship and cross-fertilisation between FDI to China and academic articles about that topic to identify the connectivity and influence potential of the academic ‘ivory tower’ on real life business issues. Another avenue is to attempt to extend the number of journals and articles to include books and book chapters as well as non-English publications and provide an even more holistic picture. We did not exclude self-citations in our analysis. While this is common practice, future research may exclude self-citation to have a better assessment of the importance of an article. Finally, despite its high degree of objectivity, bibliometric citation analysis contains a critical portion of subjectivity (Van Raan, 2003). In particular, we selected the search terms and the time period. Also we used the a specific bibliometric software HistCite™ to analyze and visualize the direct citation linkages between articles, a thorough content analysis was required to identify the various research streams and the currently underdeveloped areas as well as the merging research. Finally, interesting avenue of research is to compare extant research on FDI to China with research on FDI to other countries. Identifying communalities in the antecedents can help to determine the extent to which context-specific studies encapsulate themselves from mainstream research. Current research is too often focusing on one country only and hereby may oversee important insights from and differences to other countries. In consequence, theorising as well as informing policy-makers and companies may be undermined.4 Regarding the typical outlet for FDI to China research, our results show that 10% of the 151 journals are responsible for 40% of all publications and 63% of all local citation received. This is an interesting observation that indicates that there are a small number of journals of perceived high quality that is informing other scholars. Moreover, they come from different disciplines such as Economics, International Business and Planning and Development among others. In fact, only a small number of journals are classified as international business publications, such as International Business Review (IBR), Journal of International Business Studies (JIBS), Journal of World Business (JWB), and Management International Review (MIR). The other highly ranked journals which published about this topic are from economics and planning and development such as China Economic Review, Journal of Comparative Economics, Journal of International Economics, Regional Studies, Urban Studies World Development, and World Economy. This has important implications for academics who conduct research on that topic that they have to search for articles outside their discipline and for academics who would like and need (e.g. tenure track) to get their articles published in highly visible and ‘acceptable’ outlets. Moreover, the identification of these journals as publishing the kernel research on FDI to China research is a helpful orientation for anybody conducting research on this topic. It highlights the diversity and interdisciplinary of research on the topic from which international business research could benefit if it were able to increase its interaction and cross-fertilization with other disciplines. Likewise, it points to new potential outlets for our research.