Abstract:

Purpose – We ask why Chinese firms sharing the same home and host country end up with markedly different ESG governance postures once they land in Kazakhstan. Because the home–host dyad is held constant across all four firms, country-level institutional distance cannot be what explains the difference; the argument is that what varies, and what shapes governance, is the institutional pressure each operation faces—pressure refracted through its industry, its mode of entry and its time in the market.

Design/methodology/approach – Rather than a single-industry or single-firm design, we draw on a maximum-variation comparison of four Chinese enterprises across cosmetics, oil and gas, mining, and renewable energy, spanning both equity and non-equity modes of market presence. Evidence comes from corporate ESG and CSR disclosures, Kazakhstani media and regulatory records, direct observation of e-commerce marketplace listings, and—for the focal consumer case—a content analysis of 50 buyer reviews. Both authors coded all cases independently (Cohen’s κ = 0.88).