Goriola Olusina Daniel

Local Embeddedness and Firm Performance in Emerging Markets: Evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa

Goriola Olusina Daniel

Gori trained as a Business Economist and spent 14 years in industry before embarking on a Doctoral Research programme in International Business & Strategy. His research explores the comparative performance of Multinationals and domestic firms in emerging markets; and the role of institutions in regulating and facilitating enterprise development.

Gori trained as a Business Economist and obtained a BSc in Business Economics from Brunel University, where he spent his placement year leading Brunel's student union and its £3million commercial operations, having been elected as President of the Union of Brunel Students.
 
In 2001, he secured an IBM scholarship to study the e-business stream of the MSc Management Science & Operational Research at Warwick Business School, which included practical experience gained from short term assignments with IBM and a 3-month research consultancy with a national third sector organisation.

PhD research description

Gori's research explores the comparative performance of Multinationals and domestic firms in emerging markets; and the role of institutions in regulating and facilitating enterprise development.
 
Foreign Firms are under-performing in emerging markets (Goerzen et al, 2013; Qian, Li & Rugman, 2013), particularly outside urban concentrations. To out-compete their local competitors, foreign firms need to be able to exploit their firm-specific advantages (Halaszovich & Lundan, 2016).
 
IB researchers have theorised that MNEs doing business abroad face costs (Hymer, 1976; Kindleberge, 1969) arising from the unfamiliarity of the environment, cultural, political and economic differences, and from the need for coordination across geographic distance amongst other factors. This LOF has been the fundamental assumption driving the theories of MNE (Buckley & Casson, 1976; Caves, 1982; Dunning, 1977; Hennart, 1982).
 
This is well researched with evidence from China and India, but there is a need to broaden the research agenda to include developments from other regions, particularly in Africa and the Middle East, which has received little research attention (Hoskinsson et al., 2000).
 
Drawing on empirical evidence from sub-Saharan Africa, Gori's research programme is structured around 3 research papers that build on insights from a review of previous studies and extant literature, empirical evidence combining the World Bank Enterprise Survey of 127,316 firms in 151 countries and the Worldwide Governance Indicators. These reports aggregate individual indicators for over 200 countries and territories for six dimensions of governance with observations from key informant interviews and focus groups.

PhD supervisors

Gori's PhD is supervised by Professor Wilfred Dolfsma and Dr Kun Fu

Papers, publications and articles

(2017): On de-risking Infrastructure PPP projects in Africa. LinkedIn Post
(2017): Ownership and firm performance in emerging markets: The moderating role of local embeddedness & institutional effectiveness. 44th AIB-UKI Doctoral Symposium, University of Reading, 6-8 April 2017.
(2013): The Convergence of Social and Business Value – A new paradigm for innovation and business development in Africa. 14th BEN Africa Conference, Lagos
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