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A few decades ago, most research works on internationalisation were aligned to studies in developed economies. In recent times, business entrepreneurs in developing and emerging economies have shown their potential to permeate international markets. The current capability of business entrepreneurs in developing and emerging economies, which drives their ability to overcome the numerous barriers to internationalisation, particularly within clusters, requires a critical examination. As a result, the study situates the discussion on internationalisation within the theory of agglomeration in developing and emerging economies and argues that the gains enjoyed by business entrepreneurs from operating in close proximity in clusters are critical for overcoming the barriers of internationalisation. This research adopts a systematic review of secondary data to tease out the unique attributes of clusters in developing and emerging economies, which supports the internationalisation drive. The findings show that most emerging economy clusters are engaged in exports but there is minimal work on international entrepreneurs operating within clusters. The unique features that drive exporting clusters are the presence of multinational companies, public agencies and collaborative relationships. These unique features have the capacity to minimise the constraints to internationalisation and determine the export performance of businesses in the cluster.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how a clustered foreign firm’s network ties of social capital and government relationship may affect its institutional legitimacy and performance for clustered firms in emerging economies. To accomplish this task, the authors identify network ties (e.g. bridging ties and strong ties) and show, for each, the direct effects on institutional legitimacy and organizational performance. The findings show that bridging ties, strong ties, and government relationship directly and significantly impact organizational performance.

This study used the two-step approach suggested by Anderson and Gerbing (1988). The first step uses confirmatory factor analysis to validate the psychometric properties of the measurement scales. The second step then uses structural equation modeling to examine the proposed hypotheses. The statistical software LISREL 8.80 was used for the data analysis.

This paper finds that industrial clusters serve an important legitimizing function for clustered firms. The corporate ties (both bridging and strong ties), institutional legitimacy, and governmental relationships all play a positive role in organizational performance in emerging economies. The government relationships are also found to have a positive effect on institutional legitimacy. The institutional legitimacy can develop from industrial clustering. The foreign enterprises within a cluster should pay attention to their vertical and horizontal relationships.

First, the questionnaires cannot be verified if these instructions were followed in each instance (because the responses were simply returned by mail). Second, this study grouped all foreign firms into one cluster. Other foreign firms may find that culture has different effects on their organizational performances in emerging economies. Third, the relationships and impacts of various factors were not investigated within the theoretical framework proposed in this study. Fourth, the study did not address the heterogeneity of domestic and foreign firms. Fifth, the study only focusses on the textile industry.

The institutional legitimacy can develop from industrial clustering. In order to make a good impression on the local government, clustered firms should adhere to government policy, hire more local workers and buy local raw materials. The foreign enterprises in emerging economies should recognize that, being inside of an industrial cluster, it is important to have strong ties with other cluster members and to interact frequently and honestly with the relevant government agencies and organizations. To enrich resource-utilizing and reduce their liability of foreignness, foreign firms within clusters should seek to increase their firms’ network ties and establish good relationships with local governments to obtain competitive advantage.

This study aims at filling that gap by using the concepts of strong ties, bridging ties of social capital, institutional legitimacy, and government relationship to understand how clustered firms influence institutionalization through corporate strategies. The analysis not only helps extend the literature on network ties configuration, but also expands the literature on institutionalization. The study explores how clustered firms actively built up their own advantageous positions and then combine these with their original passive interests to favorably enhance their competitiveness in rapidly changing and institutionally unstable emerging economies.

First, connects existing theories to provide an integrated theoretical framework for understanding the roles of social capital and institutional legitimacy. Second, provides evidence to the literature by examining how network ties and government relationship may jointly influence the performance for clustered foreign firms in emerging economies, an area largely ignored in prior research. Third, provides one theoretical lens through which different outcomes of social capital and institutional issues can be analyzed. Fourth, the authors put forward a relationship capability and an institutional capability model to study how firms can avoid risk and obtain benefits by clustering in emerging economies.

International Journal of Emerging Markets (IJoEM) is a leading journal that publishes high-quality research focused on emerging markets. In 2020, IJoEM celebrated its fifteenth anniversary, and the objective of this paper is to conduct a retrospective analysis to commensurate IJoEM's milestone.

Data used in this study were extracted using the Scopus database. Bibliometric analysis, using several indicators, is adopted to reveal the major trends and themes of a journal. Mapping of bibliographic data is carried using VOSviewer.

Study findings indicate that IJoEM has been growing for publications and citations since its inception. Four significant research directions emerged, i.e. consumer behaviour, financial markets, financial institutions and corporate governance and strategic dimensions based on cluster analysis of IJoEM's publications. The identified future research directions are focused on emergent investments opportunities, trends in behavioural finance, emerging role technology-financial companies, changing trends in corporate governance and the rising importance of strategic management in emerging markets.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first study to conduct a comprehensive bibliometric analysis of IJoEM. The study presents the key themes and trends emerging from a leading journal considered a high-quality research journal for research on emerging markets by academicians, scholars and practitioners.

Understanding diversity amongst potential beneficiaries of land redistribution is of critical importance for both design and planning of successful land reform interventions. This study seeks to add to the existing literature on farming types, with specific emphasis on understanding diversity within a sub-group of commercially oriented or emerging smallholders.

Using a multivariate statistical analysis – principal component and cluster analyses applied to a sample of 442 commercially-oriented smallholders – five distinct clusters of emerging farmers are identified, using variables related to farmers' characteristics, income and expenditure and farm production indicators and willingness to participate in land redistribution. The five clusters are discussed in light of a predefined selection criteria that is based on the current policies and scholarly thinking.

The results suggest that there are distinct differences in farming types, and each identified cluster of farmers requires tailored support for the effective implementation of land reform. The identified homogenous sub-groups of smallholders, allows us to understand which farmers could be a better target for a successful land redistribution policy.

Most of the existing typology studies in South Africa tend to focus on general smallholders and in the Eastern Cape province; this study extends the literature by focussing on specific prime beneficiaries of land reform in three provinces. This study uses a more detailed dataset than the Statistics general and agricultural household surveys.

In the context of Saudi Arabia, this chapter investigates how clustering promotes knowledge sharing and transfer in an emerging, government-directed industry cluster. It is determined that lateral actors play a key facilitating role, and formal and informal mechanisms and interpersonal links among actors support that cluster knowledge exchange. Limited social capital strength and depth and a lack of trust that prevents knowledge sharing are partially explained by the cluster's limited vertical and horizontal actors.

This paper aims to explore the relationship between clustering and hotel competitiveness in emerging economy destinations by analyzing potential mediation of the management innovations implemented.

This empirical study is based on hotel-level information from a survey including 131 hotels in 2014. Colombia was chosen as a representative of Colombia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Egypt, Turkey and South Africa (CIVETS) emerging destinations. The relationships were analyzed by structural modeling and partial least squares.

Clustering has a positive direct impact on hotel competitiveness and innovation, and there is a positive effect of innovation on competitiveness. Therefore, the link between clustering and competitiveness is partially mediated through implementation of management innovations.

Hotels should actively participate in agglomerated destinations and build relationships with established firms by clustering. Interaction with related firms and implementation of management innovations will lead to increased levels of economic competitiveness. Public policymakers should foster collaborative strategic networking in the hospitality industry of emerging economy destinations.

This paper focused on separating the direct and indirect effects of clustering on hotel competitiveness. Implementation of management innovations was considered as an outcome derived from clustering in emerging tourist destinations, using the example of Colombia. Clustering stimulates and eases management innovations within the location, and that combination reinforces the role that cooperating while competing plays in hotel competitiveness for destinations with lagging innovation.

The paper aims to investigate the role of specialization and agglomeration forces on industry performance in an emerging market, namely, Thailand. In particular, the impact of clusters and the influence of complexity will be tackled.

The methodology used is based on the work of Delgado et al. (2014). Industries and clusters are assigned to a certain category according to their respective level of specialization and complexity. Performance measures are then computed for each category.

It was found that the agglomeration of similar industries and co-located and related industries increase the performance of firms in terms of gross output per employee and remuneration per employee. Moreover, the increase of performance induced by the complexity level of an industry was closely related to the level of specialization.

Building on a cluster mapping, this study brings new insight on the effect of specialization and agglomeration on performance in emerging markets. In fact, the paper show how performance can be enhanced in less sophisticated and developed economies.

The purpose of this article is to show the importance of joint actions and institutions for collaboration (IFCs) in the development and performance of information technology (IT) business clusters in the context of Mexico.

A review of the literature suggests the types of linkages that the clusters must develop to be successful in the context of emerging countries. Two IT clusters in the region of Puebla and Jalisco are compared to highlight the factors that differentiate successful and less successful clusters in this type of environment.

The presence of an IFC, such as the Jalisco Institute of Information Technology in Jalisco, is a determinant factor of the performance of the IT cluster there, contrary to Puebla. A model of dynamic interactions in clusters is proposed as a result of the analysis of the two cases.

Our analysis included clusters from IT industry in Mexico. It needs to be extended to more clusters, more industries and other emerging countries settings for the sake of comparison and generalization.

In the context of the relative scarcity of formal institutions in emerging country settings, the purposive collaboration of both private and public sectors in IFCs is necessary to ensure a long-standing development and performance of business clusters.

In this article, we show the specific role of institutional arrangements in cluster development and performance in emerging countries, which has seldom been investigated both theoretically and empirically.

This paper addresses the geographical dimension of cross-border knowledge integration, expressed as the co-invention of patent filings and investigates the siting of patenting activities by major US corporations in China. Most importantly, the study looks into the patterns of international co-invention or the links of these locations to headquarters and other company subsidiaries.

The study explores the cases of six US multinationals that file international patent applications in China. The applications were analyzed based on the composition of invention teams and the locations of inventors.

The co-invented patent filings by US multinational enterprises (MNEs) in China demonstrate a high degree of US–Chinese subsidiary collaboration. Links with other subsidiaries are marginal, and at the same time, high levels of sole patenting by inventors in China point to competence-creating research and development (R&D) activities taking place.

The lack of subsidiary-subsidiary collaboration, especially subsidiaries in other emerging markets, indicates a less diversified strategy of leveraging internal networks of knowledge. This also implies that Chinese subsidiaries still lack attractiveness as partners in subsidiary-subsidiary co-invention. Only two companies in our sample, Procter & Gamble and Intel, demonstrate a highly diversified, integrated and transnational pattern of innovation management.

The paper contributes to the contextual understanding of the rich landscape of R&D activities of major US MNEs in China. By exploring these cases, the paper identifies a number of trends. First, the R&D activities in this sample are highly concentrated in technological clusters located in Beijing and Shanghai. Technological clustering is an important advantage of the innovation landscape in emerging markets. Second, the paper underscores the importance of differentiating between different types of co-invention. The patent applications in this sample tend to unite inventors mostly from the US and China, and so multi-country applications involving subsidiaries in other countries are rare. Thus, the level of integration outside the center-host bandwidth is low. However, Chinese subsidiaries demonstrate high levels of autonomy by filing single-country applications, which implies that they are building their own research identity.

The purpose of this paper is to identify and profile clusters of retailers operating in emerging markets, in terms of positioning strategies of their own brands (based on the example of the Polish market).

The study is based on a random sample of 143 medium and large retailers operating in Poland. The data were collected using a CATI method at the end of 2014 and then analyzed with the use of hierarchical and non-hierarchical methods.

With the use of cluster analysis, six clusters of retailers were identified. Members of each cluster refer to different predominant factors when positioning their own brands. Members of each cluster do not differ significantly in terms of descriptive variables (exogenous to the cluster analysis) being used for profiling clusters.

In this study, only retailers operating in Poland were surveyed. This study does not refer to the targeting strategies, which may be analyzed jointly with the positioning strategies of retailers’ brands.

The paper has implications in understanding the approaches to the retailer brand positioning representing by the identified clusters of retailers that might be a basis for the creation of the retailers’ competitive advantages.

The main contribution of this research lies in the clustering approach to segmenting retailers in terms of their own brands’ positioning strategies and identifying clusters of retailers in the Polish market due to the retailer brands’ positioning.