Examining Liability of Foreignness Through Autocratic Sole Stakeholders’ Quiet Devaluation Actions

Changing geopolitics sheds light on the importance to develop better understanding on the liability of foreignness through the rise of authoritarian states and the decline of democratic states and liberalism that hollow out democratic institutions and norms within and between countries because autocratic sole stakeholders devalue foreign firms over domestic firms. Previous research on liability of foreignness has underemphasized the importance of a foreign firm's dependence on social evaluation dynamics operating within interconnected autocratic and democratic markets. Building on understandings from the liability of foreignness literature, the article extends the literature through examination of foreign firms’ dependence on social evaluations from an autocratic sole stakeholder and interconnected autocratic and democratic markets through multilevel theorizing and analysis within Boltanski and Thévenot’s Orders of Worth framework and Coleman’s boat. The purpose of the article is to help foreign firms to better manage liability of foreignness under unfair competition whereby autocratic sole stakeholders safeguard domestic stability while simultaneously appear to cooperate globally with foreign firms. Overall, the article examines how a firm’s foreign status is managed from an autocratic sole stakeholder rather than from multiple groups and consumer’ threats in democratic countries