• Korea Trade Review
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• v.46 no.2
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• pp.177-191
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• 2021

Based on the existing OFDI (outward foreign direct investment) literature, this study endeavored to verify how the corruption of host countries affects the partner strategy of EMNEs (emerging multinational enterprises) when EMNEs enter global markets through joint ventures. Following the existing literature, this study classified corruption and partner strategies into two categories, respectively. First, the corruption of host country was divided into grand corruption and petty corruption. Second, EMNEs' joint venture partner strategy was divided into home country partner joint venture and host country (i.e., local) partner joint venture. Our hypothesis suggested that the greater the host country's grand corruption, the more EMNEs would choose the host country partner, while the strong petty corruption leads to the preference of home country partner in host country. The hypotheses were verified with a sample of 890 foreign direct investment cases of Chinese multinational companies from 2005 to 2015. As a result of the study, regardless of the degree of corruption, it was found that they prefer joint ventures with home country partners when EMNEs enter the global market through joint ventures.