Board’s human capital resource and internationalization of emerging market firms: Toward an integrated agency–resource dependence perspective

Abstract To improve our understanding of the strategic role of the board in emerging market firms (EMFs), we investigate the role of the board’s human capital resource in a firm’s internationalization. Integrating the monitoring role (to reduce agency costs) and the resource provisioning role (to augment strategic resource base) of the board, we propose that the board’s aggregate education and professional experience influence the degree of international expansion of EMFs. Further, the board’s knowledge heterogeneity and skill heterogeneity play a contingent role from a resource orchestration perspective. Based on a dataset of 906 firm-years drawn from 201 Indian firms (2008–2012), we find support for the proposed hypotheses that the board’s aggregate education and professional experience have a U-shaped effect on international expansion, and that this relationship flips to an inverted U-shaped relationship at higher levels of knowledge and skill heterogeneity, respectively, within the board.