Abstract:     Firms are, in reality, often complex decision-making systems with multiple goals, while existing theoretical discussions mostly focus on their responses to a single goal. This paper took corporate venture capital (CVC) as a research context to examine how corporate investors′ negative attainment discrepancies on both financial and innovation goals jointly affect the geographic distance of CVC investments. Using A-share listed firms that have made CVC investments from 2008 to 2018 as a sample, this paper made an empirical study and the results showed that firms′ unrealized financial goals drive distant CVC investments, while unrealized innovation goals inhibit distant investments. When there are negative attainment discrepancies on both goals, the impact on CVC investments′ geographic distance depends on firms′ organizational slack and the industry growth potential (environmental munificence). For firms with more organizational slack or higher environmental munificence, unrealized financial goals will intensify the negative relationship between negative attainment discrepancies on the innovation goals and CVC investments′ geographic distance. On the contrary, when firms have less organizational slack or operate in less munificent industries, unrealized financial goals will weaken the negative relationship between negative attainment discrepancies on innovation goals and geographic distance. This paper theoretically expanded firms′ decision-making under dual goals and will provide new insights into the geographical strategy of CVC investments in different performance feedback conditions.

Key words:  financial goal, innovation goal, negative attainment discrepancy, corporate venture capital (CVC) investment, geographic distance