Emerging Multinationals in Emerging Markets

Description

Why have so many firms in emerging economies internationalized quite aggressively in the last decade? What competitive advantages do these firms enjoy and what are the origins of those advantages? Through what strategies have they built their global presence? How is their internationalization affecting Western rivals? And, finally, what does all this mean for mainstream international business theory? In Emerging Multinationals in Emerging Markets, a distinguished group of international business scholars tackle these questions based on a shared research design. The heart of the book contains detailed studies of emerging-market multinationals (EMNEs) from the BRIC economies, plus Israel, Mexico, South Africa, and Thailand. The studies show that EMNEs come in many shapes and sizes, depending on the home-country context. Furthermore, EMNEs leverage distinctive competitive advantages and pursue distinctive internationalization paths. This timely analysis of EMNEs promises to enrich mainstream models of how firms internationalize in today's global economy.

Ravi Ramamurti is CBA Distinguished Professor of International Business at Northeastern University, Boston. Jitendra V. Singh is Saul P. Steinberg Professor of Management at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. From 2007 to 2009, he was Dean, Shaw Foundation Chair, and Professor of Strategy, Management, and Organization at the Nanyang Business School, Singapore.

'This volume is an excellent contribution to the literature on emerging multinationals. But what I particularly liked about this particular group of essays was that, following four carefully written and analytical robust chapters on the origin and determinants of the foreign activities of emerging MNEs, there followed eight quite distinctive and original case studies of those new forms of investment by particular home countries. Inter alia these revealed that each emerging country has its own particular reasons and agenda for investing outside its national boundaries. Altogether, I found this a first rate and eminently readable group of essays. The volume deserves the widest attention of government, the business community, and academic scholars alike.' John H. Dunning, Rutgers University and Reading University 'Ramamurti and Singh have masterfully engineered a productive confrontation between extant theorizing in international business and the empirical phenomenon of newer multinationals from emerging markets. All scholarship is enriched as a result.' Tarun Khanna, Harvard Business School and author of Billions of Entrepreneurs: How China and India Are Reshaping Their Future and Yours 'Just as every person discovers his own path in life, so too with companies and countries. This is a fascinating book with comments on the multiple pathways adopted by emerging countries in their quest for globalization. An exhilarating read, a wondrous experience.' R. Gopalakrishnan, TATA Sons Ltd 'Multinational enterprises from emerging markets are in the process of transforming the world FDI market. This book goes a long way in analyzing the main players in this process and the forces driving it, and does so in a very illuminating way.' Karl Sauvant, Vale Columbia Center on Sustainable International Investment 'Ramamurti and Singh make an outstanding contribution to understanding the new configuration of world markets and its new competitive structure. As the different country studies show, multinationals from emerging economies share a number of common structural features, as well as the imprinting of specific local experiences. For managers and business practitioners, the book offers valuable tips on how to shape the new international order.' Henrique Rzezinski, Chairman, Brazil-US Business Council 'Emerging Multinationals in Emerging Markets is a fascinating and timely volume that will be of great value not only to students of international business theory but also to practitioners heading emerging world multinationals and those in the developed world competing with them. As a long time executive of an EMNE, and now heading an association of CEOs of EMNEs, I found the case studies in Part 2 to be particularly interesting.' Michael Spicer, CEO, Business Leadership South Africa '... provides a starting point for future research, theoretically and empirically, on a number of important issues, among which are how EM MNEs successfully enter into the desired markets and compete against powerful counterparts from developed countries and what unique strategies and practices they adopt to leverage their strengths, mitigate their weaknesses, and foster their evolution in the increasingly integrated yet significantly differentiated world.' Administrative Science Quarterly