Registration at founding and firm performance: Generalization and extension replication from global data

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Adbi, Arzi; Shukla, Devanshee
• 署名单位: National University of Singapore; INSEAD Business School
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS STUDIES
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0047-2506
• DOI: 10.1057/s41267-022-00532-8
• 发表日期: 2023
• 页码: 365-384
• 关键词: registration; informal entrepreneurship; emerging economies; INSTITUTIONAL THEORY; firm performance

摘要

The decision to not register an enterprise at its founding is pervasive globally, even though research has shown that nonregistration at founding may adversely influence the performance of legally registered businesses (hereinafter called firms). In this generalization and extension study, we extend the literature on the registration-performance relationship by (a) documenting the heterogeneity across countries in the effect of registration at founding on firm performance of legally registered businesses and (b) examining potential reasons driving this heterogeneity. Building upon the legitimacy-based view, we replicate the work of Assenova and Sorenson (Organ Sci 28(5):804-818, 2017), who analyzed enterprise-level data on 12,146 firms across 18 countries in sub-Saharan Africa. To test for generalizability, we analyze enterprise-level data on 134,198 firms across 143 countries. Our analyses reveal that the positive effect of registration at founding on firm performance successfully replicates in sub-Saharan Africa. However, there is remarkable heterogeneity across countries globally. We find that the country's regulatory burden and market openness moderate the effect of registration at founding. Lower regulatory burden and greater openness of the country's markets substantially strengthen the positive effect of the decision to register at founding on firm performance.