Learning from inbound foreign acquisitions for outbound expansion by emerging market MNEs

Although cross-border acquisitions (CBAs) are prevalent, many such acquisitions fail to complete. This challenge is even more profound for emerging market MNEs (EMNEs). Drawing upon the vicarious learning theory, we argue that EMNEs can learn from inbound foreign acquirers through the latter’s demonstration, professional services firms, and employees. This learning mechanism enables EMNEs to better deal with the complexity and uncertainty in various stages of acquiring foreign firms, thus increasing the completion rate of their outbound CBAs. We also suggest that the effectiveness of vicarious learning is further enhanced by the relatedness between inbound and outbound CBAs. Our analysis of 3599 outbound CBAs from 27 emerging economies during 2000–2018 shows that prior inbound CBAs completed in an emerging economy have a positive effect on the completion likelihood of outbound CBAs conducted by EMNEs from this economy. This positive effect becomes even stronger when the percentage of (1) inbound CBAs served by the EMNE’s financial advisors, (2) inbound foreign acquirers that are in the same industry as the EMNE, and (3) inbound foreign acquirers that are from the same country as a focal outbound CBA’s target country, is larger. These findings offer new insights into the inbound–outbound acquisition links and the internationalization process of EMNEs. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1057/s41267-022-00583-x.