Hawn (2013)

Hawn, Olga.  “Strategic Role of Corporate Social Responsibility in International Expansion of Emerging Market Multinationals.”  Working paper (Boston University/Duke University), 2013.

From the author's abstract:  "[Emerging market multinationals] face challenges in cross-border M&As partly due to suspicions about their origin; we argue that they can overcome them by generating social legitimacy with critical actors in host countries from CSR activities in their home countries. The study uses a large-scale quantitative analysis of almost 5,000 cross-border M&A deals from 1990 to 2011, where the acquirers come from Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. The results show that positive CSR helps overcome home country disadvantages, leading to greater likelihood of and faster deal completion (and vice versa for negative CSR)."

Link (working paper):  https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2380632

Link (Harvard Business Review article):  https://hbr.org/2012/11/why-chinese-firms-cross-border-deals-fall-apart