Returnee managers, a scarce human resource for emerging market multinational enterprises in the past, are
becoming increasingly abundant, and their value is at risk of diminishing. The analysis of Chinese cross-border
acquisitions (2008–2017) reveals that only returnee managers from the same country in which an acquisition is
targeted facilitate the acquisition, whereas the others fail to make a difference. The impacts are stronger when
the acquiring company has less international experience and when the target country has a weak institutional
environment. Thus, returnee managers as an asset should be deployed where they are most needed and least
substitutable.
By
Zaiyang Xie, Liang Wang