Internationalization of the State-Owned Enterprises: Evidence from Russia

Abstract

State-owned enterprises are considered an important phenomenon in the contemporary international business research which has a particular focus on the internationalization of such companies. The most prominent examples of globalizing state companies are the enterprises from emerging markets, whose economies are traditionally shaped a lot by the state influence and where historical legacy still influences the development of economy. This study examines the relationship of the state ownership and internationalization which is still far from being clear, since research on this topic produced controversial results. The controversy may be grounded in the different contexts where state companies operate. We study the Russian state companies, that are the least studied among the emerging market countries, and promise to reveal the insights on the internationalization strategies of SOEs. We examine the association of the state ownership degree and the internationalization level on the sample of state- and private-owned enterprises that are the 250 largest Russian exporters for the 4 years from 2013 to 2016. The results indicate that state ownership degree is negatively associated with the internationalization intensity, but only in case of the indirect state ownership, which we explain with the argumentation of the public agenda that companies pursue indirectly. Russian state companies are considered to have both commercial and strategic goals, and the latter may be connected to the geopolitical aspirations of the government. Firms with indirect state affiliation are used by the government as a leverage to reach non-market goals. Thus, the state pursues strategic (as opposed to commercial) agenda indirectly.