In an increasingly interconnected world, enterprises must face complex international environments to achieve competitive advantages. The institutional challenges encountered by multinational enterprises in their international operations have garnered much attention. Central to this endeavour is the adoption of proactive political strategies, which involve enterprises actively engaging with political institutions to shape favourable conditions for their operations. In order to reach a better understanding what influence
internationalisation performance from the institutional perspective, this thesis explores the interplay between proactive political strategies and institutional distance, and their subsequent impact on internationalisation performance. Through a survey of 114
multinational enterprises in China, we found that formal institutional distance positively affects proactive political strategies, but informal institutional distance negatively affects proactive political strategies. Proactive political strategies positively affect international performance. In addition, we also analysis of the moderating role of knowledge search and management digitalisation. Knowledge search and management digitalisation positively moderates the relationship between informal institutional distance and proactive political strategies. This thesis enriches the research on the international performance of multinational enterprises from the institutional perspective, and provided theoretical and practical guidance for the operation and management of multinational enterprises.