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The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of institutional entrepreneurship in opportunity formation and opportunity exploitation in developing emerging strategic new industries.

The paper reviews the focal literature focussing on institutional entrepreneurs’ role in opportunity formation with special attention to opportunities for institutional entrepreneurs in emerging economy. A multi-method approach consisting of historical case studies and event sequencing is applied to track the historical development of the solar energy industry in two case contexts and to investigate the role of institutional entrepreneurs in this process.

Investigation of two cases illustrates that different types of institutional entrepreneur, as represented by individual entrepreneurs and local government, in the context of massive institutional change – such as the Grand Western Development Program and the Thousand Talents Program in China – have varied effects on triggering and inducing institutional change and innovation to explore and exploit opportunities in emerging new industries.

The significance of local context for the nature and scope of institutional entrepreneurship in emerging economy is worthy of further research. The top-down process of institutional innovation dominated by local government might cause myopic outcome and distortion of market opportunities. Indigenous individual entrepreneurs with well-accumulated political capital and strong perceived responsibility could be the main actors to introduce incremental institutional change by combining bottom-up and top-down processes and promoting sustained new industry development through creating and seizing institutional opportunities and market opportunities.

This paper illustrates the close relationship between institutional environment and opportunity formation in emerging economies, contributes to the understanding of contextualizing institutional entrepreneurs in different regional contexts and discloses the problems involved in local government acting as an institutional entrepreneur.

This paper argues that international business (IB) theory needs to adapt to the changes that have occurred in the global economy when the world was divided into rich market economies, communist countries and poor economies. Changes in ideologies and technologies has opened up opportunities for emerging market multinational enterprises and the paper offers guidelines for a dynamic IB contingency theory to acknowledge these changes and learning.

This is a conceptual paper which is designed to offer an alternative contingency perspective on IB theory.

IB scholars should recognize the influence of several contingent variables such as the institutional environment, political systems, government-business-NGO relations, social norms-ethical behavior, country size and industry. The structural characteristics of an industry, their importance to the country and the regulatory regime are major variables in understanding how and whether firms can become emerging multinational enterprises (EMNEs). The paper finds that emerging market government and enterprises have strategies for building knowledge intensive industries through mergers and acquisitions and exploit these on a global scale.

IB scholars should recognize that multinational enterprises learn and they adapt to the global environment. Scholars should develop strategies or a way of thinking which is different to the status quo to take advantage of the new and changing circumstances where the rules of the game are different to those in the researcher's home country.

The removal of trade barriers and government restrictions on trade and technological developments means that EMNEs and governments should not rely on protection and subsidies but should compete on being unique and adopt differentiated strategies in niche but global marketplaces.

The purpose of this paper is to expand knowledge about how middle class consumers in Sub-Saharan African markets behave, focusing on the potential role of social networks and the subsequent interactions that take place between these consumers and firms.

A qualitative research method approach comprising personal interviews and observations targeted at consumers and business executives was used covering all four countries.

Key findings include identification of middle of the pyramid (MOP) social networks, their impact on consumer behaviour and nature of consumer and firm interactions that take place as a result of the impact of social networks.

The sample size was restricted to 80 consumers in each of the four countries. This might limit generalisability.

The study provides managers with insights on the potential role of social networks on marketing to the MOP in Africa.

The study provides managers with insights on the potential opportunities for corporate social responsibility solutions at the MOP.

Research into the middle class in markets other than western advanced economies is a relatively new area of study. The majority of studies on the middle class have focused on North America and Europe ignoring the merging middle class in Africa. Hence, this research expands knowledge by providing basis for exploring new insights on the emerging marketing opportunity within the middle class in Africa.

The purpose of this paper is to assess strategy development processes in organizations operating in the Central and Eastern European region, and compare them with those headquartered in Western Europe.

Strategy development processes are measured using a multidimensional scale, incorporating elements of the following six dimensions: command, planning, incremental, political, cultural, and enforced choice. The study includes 366 participants from 52 organizations, with close to 40 percent headquartered in CEE countries.

While responses of western top management were consistent with previous findings, differences prevailed in comparison to the current sample reports of CEE top management. For example, managers in CEE organizations tended to place more emphasis on the top executive, while internal politics were significantly more pronounced in western firms.

Additional variables potentially influencing strategy development processes could be explored, using a more targeted sample.

The results suggest that despite surface level appearances, the overall management trends and business dealings characterizing CEE societies are still not identical to those in the west, highlighting the importance for top management teams to consider local approaches and practices when entering novel markets.

This study addresses a gap in the available literature by concerning strategy development processes through multiple dimensions, and in organizations operating in the relatively under-represented region of CEE countries.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the scope of sourcing research in Sub-Sahara African (SSA) from scholarly journals published from 1980 to 2013 on sourcing-related issues. The study identifies what is known about sourcing from this region and the implications for managers and researchers in supply chain management.

Totally, 40 scholarly journals (supply chain journals and other journals publishing on diverse business topics) were found relevant and reviewed. Content (all field) search using the names of each SSA countries (e.g. Nigeria, South Africa, Ghana, etc.) was carried out in the supply chain journals to filter out articles discussing sourcing-related topics. For other business journals, keyword search was performed (procurement, sourcing, purchasing, outsourcing, supplier relations, supplier selection, supplier development, supply management, offshore, supply chain and logistics).

The literature review suggests that studies discussing sourcing issues in SSA have focussed mainly on challenges of sourcing from SSA, and they provide some insights on implementation of supply chain tools such as total quality management, negotiating and selecting suppliers from SSA, and just-in time purchasing. However, the authors found that there is an under-representation of this region in supply chain management literature. More so, the articles discussing sourcing issues in Africa are limited in scope empirically and theoretically in comparison with the large amount of contributions in other emerging economies of Asia and developed economies.

The limited amount of publications and contributions does not allow us to provide an integrated framework for sourcing from SSA.

There is a need for future research to explore how the SSA context could enhance theorizing in supply chains. Also, there is need for researchers to extend the sourcing debate from the over emphasis on technology sourcing, knowledge intensive service outsourcing and component sourcing to other lower value-added products such as agricultural products and other raw materials sourced in SSA.

This paper is one of the first to explore the scope of sourcing in Africa. As the findings suggest, there have been limited amount of papers published about this region. The review provides a perspective for researchers to explore this region and to aid theory development in supply chains. It also provided implications on how to support research publication focussing on this region and how to inform managerial perceptions on sourcing from SSA.