There is consensus among researchers that the internationalization of emerging economy multinational enterprises (EMNEs) is motivated by their intention to acquire strategic assets such as innovative technologies, broaden their expertise, and enhance their skills. Yet the amount of research on the outcomes of EMNE internationalization and the role of strategic leaders in capturing the advantages of internationalization is scarce. To address this gap, we study the relationship between EMNE internationalization and innovation performance and the impact of two types of board-level diversity on this relationship. We test these relationships on a 21-year panel of 244 firms from the Indian biopharmaceutical industry. We find that EMNE internationalization has an inverted U-shaped relationship with innovation performance and this relationship is contingent on board functional and gender diversity. Our study contributes to the EMNE internationalization and upper echelons literatures.
