Experience in Publishing inTop-Tier Journals: Inward Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) and TechnologicalInnovation of Local Firms

Publishing in top-tier journals is a lengthy process. By sharing the experience of publishing the paper in the Journal of International Business Studies, this lecture will review the entire journey of the paper from conception to publication, sharing relevant insights for discussion. In this paper, we answer: Does inward foreign direct investment (FDI) promote or inhibit technological innovation of local firms? Prior research has generated mixed views and findings on this important question. To address this puzzle, we propose that FDI spillover and crowding-out effects may apply to different phases of innovation (i.e., idea generation and R&D implementation) respectively, which then leads to differential impacts of FDI on incremental and radical innovation. The results from a panel dataset of Chinese listed firms show that industry-level FDI is positively related to incremental innovation but has an inverted U-shaped impact on radical innovation. Furthermore, we find that technology gap reinforces the positive impact of FDI on incremental innovation while making its inverted U-shaped impact on radical innovation more pronounced, and when FDI local market focus is higher, the inverted U-shaped relationship between FDI and radical innovation is steeper. These findings reconcile the inconsistency regarding how FDI may affect local innovation and provide a novel analysis framework for the FDI literature. 董美彤现为中国科学技术大学科技商学院特任副教授，博士毕业于香港大学经管学院，本科硕士毕业于山东大学管理学院。研究兴趣主要集中在新兴市场企业的创新和跨国战略，尤其关注制度与企业战略的互动。曾在《Journal of International Business Studies》《Journal of World Business》《Global Strategy Journal》《International Business Review》《中国软科学》等期刊发表论文，并担任多个期刊匿名审稿人，获2024年International Business Review最佳审稿人。