Board Interlock Tenure and Firm Internationalization

ABSTRACT To overcome liabilities of foreignness and outsidership during internationalization, board interlock is an effective conduit of foreign knowledge inflows and organizational learning that firms require. We focus on the time dimension of such influence and hypothesize that the tenure of board interlocks with firms with experience in outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) in a country promotes the OFDI decision of the focal firm to that particular country. However, such an effect diminishes as the tenure of interlock ties increases. Moreover, as an alternative knowledge source, OFDI knowledge from the focal firm's neighboring region may weaken the baseline effect. Based on longitudinal data of listed firms in China, our empirical results support the hypotheses. This study enriches the literature on social network learning by identifying its temporal nature and the substitution between different knowledge sources. It also demonstrates the importance of rotating a firm's board members, so that knowledge acquisition and learning remain fresh.