New Wine in Old Bottles? The Role of Emerging Markets Multinationals in advancing IB Theory and Research

In many respects, multinationals are a defining invention of Western economies. But like much else, they are no longer the preserve of the West. The emerging economies are producing business giants of their own at a staggering rate. While these businesses share the scale and ambition of their developed-world counterparts, their processes and patterns of growth are often dissimilar to those of their competitors in the developed world. They are success stories that are changing the narrative rules as they go along.

As emerging market countries gain in stature, their companies are taking center stage. Emerging market companies accounted for over 40 percent of world exports and around a quarter of outward foreign direct investment investments flows (UNCTAD, 2012; Contractor, 2013). These emerging market companies will continue to be critical competitors in their home markets while increasingly making outbound investments into other emerging and developed economies. Working to serve customers of limited means, the emerging market leaders often produce innovative designs that reduce manufacturing costs and sometimes disrupt entire industries.

The state of the literature is divided in between those who claim that emerging market multinationals are similar to their Western counterparts and those who claim that these multinationals are a new phenomenon requiring new theories and frameworks. Arguments in support of new theoretical models in which EMNEs can contribute to IB theory can be divided into two streams. Ramamurti (2009), on the one side of the argument stresses the role of country of origin and other contextual factors in shaping emerging market multinationals internationalization strategies. In this respect, there is a need for empirically grounded research to discover ownership-specific advantages of emerging market multinationals, which either help or hinder internationalization process (Ramamurti, 2012). On the other side of the debate, others, like Dunning, Kim, and Park (2008) and Williamson and Zeng (2009), give reasons to believe that emerging market multinationals do not behave differently because of their origin, but because of fundamental changes in the world economy. As a consequence, emerging market multinationals would act similar to young multinationals from developed countries. In between these opposing views, Cuervo-Cazurra (2012) argues that the behavior of emerging market multinationals can be explained by extending and modifying the existing models rather than building new ones.

Consequently, we are soliciting empirical and theoretical work addressing these complex relationships between various forms of contextual heterogeneities and emerging market multinationals. This special issue provides an opportunity to bring together the research of scholars from a diverse range of disciplinary traditions such as economics, sociology and political science. As such, the following list of potential research questions is merely illustrative of the broad range of studies that could fit in the special issue:

• Are emerging market multinationals different from similar-aged developing market multinationals?
• Does the change in global economic conditions call for a radical change in the behavior of multinationals?
• What opportunities do fine sliced global value chains open for entry and upgrading of emerging market multinationals in the global economy?
• Can emerging market multinationals help broaden the concept of ownership advantages beyond the traditional definition including technology and brand value?
• Does availability of finance and existence of internal capital markets shape the response of emerging market multinationals to the financial crisis?
• Do emerging market multinationals use CRS and sustainability initiatives as sources competitive advantage?
• Are there contextual elements that make emerging market multinationals truly unique?
• How does corporate governance affect internationalization strategies of emerging market multinationals?
• What are the dynamics of the interrelationship between institutional change and corporate strategy?
• Do emerging market multinationals possess institutional capabilities that can be transferred across borders?

Deadlines, Submission Guidelines and Co-Editor Information
Submissions to the Special Issue must be submitted through the IJoEM website. The deadline for submissions is October 1, 2015. For general submission guidelines, see http://www.emeraldinsight.com/journal/ijoem. No late submissions will be accepted. We have a marked preference for submissions which debate with, extend, and/or refute the indicative literature cited below. Please indicate that your submission is to be reviewed for the Special Issue on Emerging Economy Multinationals. For questions about the special issue, please contact Bersant Hobdari, Guest Editor, at bh.int@cbs.dk.

Indicative Contemporary Literature

Buckley, P. J. 2014. “Forty years of internationalisation theory and the multinational enterprise.” Multinational Business Review 22 (3): 227-245.

Contractor, F. J. 2013. “Punching above their weight.” International Journal of Emerging Market 8(4): 304-328.

Ramamurti, R. 2012. “What is really different about emerging market multinationals?” Global Strategy Journal 2: 41-47.

Ramamurti, R. 2009. “What have we learned about emerging-market MNEs?” In Emerging Multinationals in Emerging Markets, Ramamurti R, Singh JV (eds). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, U.K.: 399–426.

UNCTAD. 2012. World Investment Report 2012: Towards a New Generation of Investment Policies. United Nations Conference on Trade and Development; Geneva, Switzerland.

Cuervo-Cazurra A. and Genc M. 2008. “Transforming disadvantages into advantages: developing country MNEs in the least developed countries.” Journal of International Business Studies 39: 957–979.

Aharoni, Y. 2014. "To understand EMNEs a dynamic IB contingency theory is called for." International Journal of Emerging Markets 9(3): 377 – 385.

Cuervo-Cazurra A. 2012. “Extending theory by analyzing developing country multinational companies: Solving the Goldilocks debate.” Global Strategy Journal 2: 153-147.

Cuervo-Cazurra A. and Ramamurti, R. (eds). 2014. Understanding multinaitonals from emerging markets. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, U.K.

Dunning J. H., Kim C., and Park D. 2008 , “Old wine in new bottles: a comparison of emerging-market TNCs today and developed-country TNCs thirty years ago”, in The Rise of Transnational Corporations from Emerging Markets: Threat or Opportunity?, Sauvant K. (ed), Edward Elgar: Northampton, MA.

Williamson P and Zeng M. 2009, “Chinese multinationals: emerging through new global gateways”, in Emerging Multinationals in Emerging Markets, Ramamurti R. and Singh J. (eds), Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, U.K.