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The Economic Boundaries of Affiliated-group Firms According to The Credit Rating Agencies’ Perspective
Simone Ambroselli
Pages - 71 - 91     |    Revised - 31-05-2023     |    Published - 30-06-2023
Volume - 14   Issue - 2    |    Publication Date - June 2023  Table of Contents
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KEYWORDS
Business Group, Firm Boundaries, Case Study Research, CRAs.
ABSTRACT
Different management literature streams concerning Multinational Corporations (MNCs) have widely recognized the concept of foreign subsidiary autonomy as a focal point of research, while very few contributions have investigated the economic boundaries of affiliated-group entities in evaluating their level of autonomy especially from a practical point of view. This research investigates the behaviours of Credit Rating Agencies (CRAs) experts who face daily analysis of companies and business groups answering the following research question: How do CRAs’ experts determine the economic boundaries of the legal entities belonging to a business group? An exploratory multiple case study has been conducted on the basis of multiple data sources, literature findings, two rounds of semi-structured interviews, and publicly available documents. Findings suggest that the business group dimension plays a crucial role in defining the economic boundaries of the legal entities and as an intermediate area of research emerges between the legal entity dimension and the group itself. Furthermore, substantive aspects prevail over the formal ones and multi-business operativity, role of the subsidiaries and group governance result as the main drivers in defining these boundaries.
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Dr. Simone Ambroselli
Istat Italian National Institute of Statistics Rome, 00184 - Italy
simamb74@gmail.com


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