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| Research on Institutional Gap, Aspiration Gap, and Overseas Compliance Risks of Chinese Multinational Enterprises
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| Liu Huiqian Zheng Yali Cai Wanlin Liu Yiqun |
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Abstract Against the backdrop of the increasingly stringent global regulatory system, Chinese multinational enterprises (MNEs) face frequent overseas compliance risks, which has become a core constraint on their high-quality international development. Overseas compliance risks are characterized by a dual nature that combines the proactiveness of behavioral decision-making with the passiveness of responding to regulatory constraints, and its formation is the result of the interactions between internal and external factors. However, existing studies have mostly focused on issues within a single compliance domain, emphasizing the analysis of the causes of compliance risks from a single dimension or within a single context, without forming a systematic analytical framework that integrates internal and external factors. In particular, existing research has overlooked the directionality and interactive effects of the institutional gap and aspiration gap, thus making it difficult to clarify the differentiated formation mechanisms through which overseas compliance risks have arisen across different cross-border contexts.
From a dual perspective of integrating institutional theory and aspiration theory, this study took Chinese MNEs listed on the Shanghai and Shenzhen A-share markets that experienced overseas compliance risks from 2009 to 2023 as the sample, and conducted empirical tests using paired samples through propensity score matching. The results revealed that in the context of negative institutional gap, negative aspiration gap had a linear positive correlation with overseas compliance risks, and positive aspiration gap had a linear positive correlation with overseas compliance risks; in the context of positive institutional gap, there was an inverted U-shaped relationship between negative aspiration gap and overseas compliance risks, and there was a U-shaped relationship between positive aspiration gap and overseas compliance risks. Mechanism tests revealed that in the context of negative institutional gap, negative aspiration gap increased overseas compliance risks by intensifying managerial myopia, whereas positive aspiration gap increased overseas compliance risks by intensifying managerial overconfidence. In the context of positive institutional gap, problem search intensity mediated the inverted U-shaped relationship between negative aspiration gap and overseas compliance risks, while host country’s media attention played a mediating role in the U-shaped relationship between positive aspiration gap and overseas compliance risks. Further analysis showed that compliance management mitigated overseas compliance risks under the “negative institutional gap-positive aspiration gap” and “positive institutional gap-negative aspiration gap” contexts, whereas organizational stigma exacerbated overseas compliance risks under the contexts of “positive institutional gap–negative aspiration gap” and “positive institutional gap–positive aspiration gap”.
The theoretical contributions of this study are mainly reflected in two aspects. First, this study breaks through the limitations of previous fragmented studies and constructs an interactive analytical framework of “institution-aspiration”, which provides an integrated theoretical explanation for understanding the formation mechanism of enterprises’ overseas compliance risk, and offers empirical evidence based on the practices of Chinese MNEs, enriching the theoretical research on overseas compliance risk of emerging-market multinational enterprises. Second, this study systematically examined the differentiated patterns of enterprises’ overseas compliance risks across various combinations of negative and positive “institutional-aspiration” gaps, and revealed the mediating roles of managerial myopia, managerial overconfidence, problem search intensity, and host country’s media attention. This helps to bridge the internal divides between institutional paradox and aspiration paradox, and clarifies the contextual dependencies in the formation process of overseas compliance risks. The conclusions of this study provide a theoretical basis for Chinese MNEs to formulate context-specific compliance management strategies, and offer insights for enhancing their overseas compliance capabilities and achieving high-quality international development.
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Published: 02 June 2026
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