The lecture is entitled "The Impact of Culture on Foreign Direct Investment Decisions".
One key aspect that influences operations of multinational enterprises (MNEs) abroad is culture - especially the national culture of the host country. During the last 50 years foreign direct investment (FDI) has come to play a significant role in the foreign operations of many MNEs and also increasingly in the operations of small and medium-sized companies. The goal of the lecture is to give an overview, on the one hand, of the relationships between culture, especially characteristics such as cultural distance and the key strategic FDI decisions - location, ownership mode, and establishment mode - as well as, on the other hand, of the relationship between culture and the performance of FDI. The presentation summarizes certain results of earlier studies and presents recent evidence of the relationships observed in FDIs of Finnish firms and those from other Nordic countries based on a data bank developed and updated by Professor Larimo since early 1990s.
Professor Jorma Larimo received his Ph.D. degree at the University of Vaasa in 1993 and was appointed Associate Professor of International Business Operations in May 1997 and Professor of International Marketing in June 2001. He has served as Deputy Head (1997 2003) and Head (2004 2009) of the Department of Marketing. In 2010 he was elected Vice Dean of the Faculty of Business Studies at the University of Vaasa. Professor Larimo has considerable experience in research and international collaboration in the fields of exports and foreign direct investment strategies and performance. He has supervised nine successfully defended PhD theses (plus a further three close to completion) at the University of Vaasa. He is the author or co-author of more than 80 original research manuscripts presented at key conferences of such international academic organizations as the Academy of International Business, the European International Business Academy (EIBA) and the Academy of Management. His research has been published in leading journals of international business studies such as the Journal of International Business Studies (JIBS), the Journal of International Marketing, the International Business Review (IBR), the Management International Review (MIR) and the Journal of Business Research. He has held the position of the Director of the Graduate School FIGSIB (Finnish Graduate School in International Business) since 1999 and served as the representative of Finland in the Board of EIBA during 2000 2010. For a number of years he was member of the editorial board of the IBR, MIR, the Journal of Euromarketing and the Journal of East-West Business. Since 1994 he has also been the principal organizer of the Vaasa IB Conference and FIGSIB international doctoral tutorials. Professor Larimo has on several occasions served as a track chair in annual conferences organized by the EIBA.
Professor Larimo's research interests include exports and internationalisation of small and medium-sized companies, foreign direct investment, international joint ventures and foreign acquisition strategies and performance, divestment strategies, as well as strategies for entry to and marketing in Central and Eastern Europe.
Jorma Larimo's professorship at the University of Tartu is supported by the European Social Fund through Action 2 of the DoRa Programme. The aim of Action 2 of the doctoral studies and internationalisation programme DoRa 2 is to improve the quality of higher education by recruiting academic staff from abroad.