The post-establishment void: why institutional coordination fails investors after entry — qualitative evidence from Tangier–Tétouan–Al Hoceima, Morocco

Abstract

Purpose — Emerging-economy regions invest heavily in attracting foreign direct investment (FDI), yet a substantial share of announced projects never materialises into lasting establishment. Focusing on Morocco’s leading FDI region, Tangier–Tétouan–Al Hoceima (TTA), where roughly 58 per cent of declared projects reach realisation, this study asks where, along the investor’s institutional journey, regional coordination breaks down.

Design/methodology/approach — An interpretive, abductive single-case design combines three qualitative sources: a documentary corpus of 47 institutional texts covering Morocco’s post-2015 investment reforms; a two-round exploratory Delphi with ten senior experts of the regional investment ecosystem; and fifteen semi-structured interviews with institutional actors, thematically coded in NVivo (63-node codebook) and triangulated across sources.

Findings — Coordination is intense and improving up to the approval of investment dossiers, then falls away sharply. This post-establishment void — an unanticipated, transversally emergent finding — takes three forms: declining institutional attention after validation, fragmentation of aftercare across uncoordinated administrations, and structural under-allocation of resources to the post-entry phase. Two further findings qualify it: coordination rests on person-dependent relationships that make it effective yet fragile, and formally instituted coordination bodies coexist with uneven substantive collaboration, a mild form of decoupling. Land scarcity and skills shortages emerge as the binding contextual constraints.

Research limitations/implications — Findings reflect the perceptions of supply-side institutional actors in a single region at a specific reform juncture; investors were not interviewed. Analytical, not statistical, generalisation is claimed.

Practical implications — The results argue for assigning an explicit institutional owner of aftercare, early-warning tools for operating investors, institutional mediation mechanisms, dedicated post-entry resources, and the routinisation of person-dependent relational capital.

Originality/value — The study documents a specific, under-theorised failure mode of regional investment governance — the discontinuity of coordination precisely where retention and embedding are decided — in an African emerging-economy setting rarely examined through the lens of inter-agency dynamics.

Keywords: FDI aftercare; investment promotion agencies; regional governance; Morocco; investor retention; qualitative case study.

Received Date: April 21, 2026

Accepted Date: May 12, 2026

Published Date: June 01, 2026

Available Online at: https://www.ijsrisjournal.com/index.php/ojsfiles/article/view/789