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This study reviews the literature on institutional theory in international business and examines the institutional factors behind the success or failure of multinational corporations (MNCs) in emerging markets.

This systematic literature review analysed 116 peer-reviewed articles published in leading journals between 2005 and 2022. The R package Bibliometrix and VOSviewer visualization software were used for analysis. A hybrid methodology combining bibliometric and content analyses was utilized to obtain a descriptive evaluation of the publication impact along with a keyword co-occurrence map, context-specific institutional effects and subsidiary strategies.

The Journal of International Business Studies, along with influential authors such as Mike W. Peng, Klaus Meyer, and Mehmet Demirbag, have taken the lead in advancing institutional theories for MNC internationalization in emerging markets. The clusters from the co-word analysis revealed dominant MNC entry modes, institutional distances and MNC localization strategies. The content analysis highlights how the institutional environment is operationalized across the macro-, micro- and meso-institutional contexts and how the MNC subsidiary responds in emerging markets. Meso-level interactions emphasize the relational aspects of business strategies in emerging markets.

Contextualizing subsidiary strategies and institutional forms can help managers align their strategic responses to the dynamic relationship between subsidiaries and the institutional environment. The review findings will enable policymakers to simplify regulatory policies and encourage MNC subsidiary networks with local stakeholders in emerging markets.

Legitimacy strategies such as corporate community involvement in emerging markets are crucial for enhancing societal support and removing stakeholders' scepticism for MNC business operations in emerging markets. Moral legitimacy should be implemented by managers, such as lending support to disaster management efforts and humanitarian crises, as they expand to new business environments of emerging markets.

This study is the first to explore institutional diversity and subsidiary strategic responses in a three-layered institutional context. The findings highlight the relevance of contextualizing institutional perspectives for international business scholars and practitioners as they help build context-specific theoretical frameworks and business strategies. Future research recommendations are suggested in the macro-, micro- and meso-institutional contexts.

This study aims to analyse how multinational corporations (MNCs) organise value chain activities to penetrate new market segments. It contributes by expanding traditional decisions regarding the vertical fine-slicing of value chain activities (whether performed internally or externally) and the consideration of resource-sharing decisions (integration or separation) for each value chain function.

The authors draw on primary data collected from two case study firms operating in the large emerging Chinese market: Volvo Construction Equipment AB and Epiroc AB. In-depth cases illustrate how foreign MNCs expand into new market segments and simultaneously target both the lower-priced mid-market and the premium segments in the Chinese mining and construction industry.

The results reveal that product diversification creates challenges for managers who must oversee new (vertical) value chains, often simultaneously. Beyond geography and modes of governance, managers must decide whether to integrate or separate value chain activities for the new product lines. The study identifies four main strategic choices for firms to address this complexity, focusing on the decision to internalise or externalise (i.e. within or across organisational boundaries) and integrate or separate value chain activities between different product lines.

This study builds upon the internalisation theory and recent international business contributions that focus on value chain configurations to explain MNCs’ product diversification as a growth strategy in a host emerging market. It also sheds light on the choice of conducting new activities in-house or externally and elucidates firms’ managerial decisions to operationally integrate or separate individual value chain activities. The study provides insights into the drivers explaining managerial decisions to configure value chain activities across product lines and contributes to the growing body of literature on MNC activities in emerging economies by highlighting that product diversification impacts entry mode diversity and resource sharing across units.

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.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the process of integrating sustainability into the corporate strategy of an emerging market multinational enterprises (EMNE) to achieve and maintain corporate legitimacy over time. The research explores how deploying a corporate sustainability strategy enhances the company’s long-term competitive relevance by creating and maintaining corporate legitimacy and transferring practices based on sustainable development goals within the organization.

The study adopts a qualitative single-case design, focusing on a corporate energy services company (Interconexión Eléctrica S.A.) operating in volatile, uncertain and turbulent environments.

The findings indicate that integrating sustainability into the corporate strategy enables subsidiaries to effectively meet global requirements, considering internal and external pressures. This integration also fosters the development of unique capabilities and the internalization of standards, addressing liabilities in foreign markets, thus providing a competitive advantage and safeguarding corporate legitimacy among stakeholders.

This research contributes to the international business literature by providing insights into strategy development and implementation in EMNEs. Specifically, it demonstrates how a Latin American emerging multinational enterprise (multilatina) adopts new sustainability strategies to enhance its business competitiveness. The study also offers guidance for emerging market companies on developing sustainability strategies and transferring them to subsidiaries operating in complex institutional environments. Furthermore, the research provides a rationale for governments and civil society organizations on why firms are committed to sustainability, highlighting its positive impact on firm’s competitiveness and survival in international markets.

This paper aims to investigate how emerging market multinational enterprises (EMNEs) are integrating and expanding into other emerging market host countries, focusing on Chinese mining companies in Peru.

Adopting a qualitative approach, an in-depth analysis of two Chinese state-owned enterprises’ strategies was conducted, building on stakeholder theory and the business ecosystem perspective.

This study reveals a reliance on high-level political lobbying rather than localized engagement strategies. However, findings point to increasing grassroots resistance among local stakeholders, undermining EMNEs’ bargaining power.

This paper argues for a paradigm shift toward inclusive, cooperative “translocal governance” approaches as empowered communities gain voice. Key contributions include advancing theoretical understanding of changing stakeholder relationships and power configurations in emerging countries, underscoring the rising significance of microlevel sociocultural embeddedness for MNE success and highlighting practical imperatives for EMNEs to embark on rapid localization strategies in Latin America. By elucidating multilayered integration realities in Peru, this interdisciplinary study yields contextualized insights and enriches perspective on the conditions and pathways for EMNEs to build sustainability in Global South emerging market environments.

This study aims to explore the role of international ambidexterity (IA) in improving the innovation capability of emerging market multinationals. In particular, the main purpose of this research is to study the relationship amongst digitalisation, IA and innovation performance (IP) amongst multinational enterprises in China’s healthcare industry.

The data for this investigation were collected from 134 listed companies in China’s healthcare industry during the study period. This study tested the hypotheses by constructing a two-way fixed-effects model.

The results show that both the balance dimension and the combined dimension of IA have significant positive effects on IP. Digitalisation not only has a direct positive effect on IP but also positively moderates the positive correlation between IA and IP.

Previous studies have not captured the relationship between ambidexterity, digitalisation and IP, and this study helps to fill in the gap and examine these associations in China’s healthcare industry. The results of this study provide valuable insights for healthcare industry managers to understand the role of ambidexterity and digitalisation in innovation in the context of internationalisation.

Chinese firms are winning market share from foreign multinational enterprises in domestic markets. The international business literature suggests that this is happening because these firms are developing non-traditional firm-specific advantages (FSAs). Strategic factor market (SFM) theory provides a good basis for explaining how this is happening. However, it is underdeveloped in terms of analysing unique resources and unique access to those resources by Chinese firms in their domestic markets. This paper aims to develop a framework to understand how Chinese firms have developed non-traditional FSAs.

The case study method is adopted to explore how Chinese firms develop non-traditional FSAs. Specifically, the authors compare paired case studies of a Chinese firm and a foreign multinational in each of two industries.

The authors find that Chinese firms have developed non-traditional FSAs because of more relevant experience, better adapted strategies and privileged relationships. This has enabled Chinese firms to develop non-traditional FSAs.

The authors propose a framework that conceptualises non-traditional FSA development in Chinese firms as a product of superior access to unique and valuable resources in their domestic SFMs.

Cultural distance can be a challenge for internationalization. However, in some instances, it is possible that different cultures could represent a benefit for multinational enterprises (MNEs) from emerging contexts. Drawing on the knowledge-based view (KBV), the authors propose that greater cultural distances lead to benefits for multinationals seeking to absorb new knowledge overseas.

The authors performed ordinary least squares regressions with moderation tests over a database containing 101 cross-border acquisitions to test the study’s hypotheses. The acquisitions were performed by Brazilian firms between 1995 and 2015, targeting 24 host countries.

The study’s results indicate that cultural distance positively affects the firm's post-acquisition performance and that absorptive capacity moderates these results, improving the positive effect. The study suggests that cultural diversity is an asset for the multinationals in question.

When deciding to invest in a foreign country, managers should consider this cultural diversity as one more value creation driver, especially if the firm has well-developed innovation capabilities.

The study’s findings contribute to the international business literature providing further evidence that emerging markets multinationals can create value in acquisitions through the firm's abilities to exploit cultural asymmetries. Thus, the authors also emphasize that absorptive capacity plays a strategic role in multinational's international strategies.

We wanted to find out how infant multinationals originating from Poland enact opportunities in Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries.

We conducted a comparative case study of four Polish firms operating in SSA.

We found that when entering SSA, studied firms employed effectual decision-making logic. Thus, their internationalization was means-driven, serendipitous, partnership-oriented, based on the “affordable loss” principle and focused on shaping opportunities in SSA, rather than predicting, analyzing and planning any firm-specific assets or capabilities.

We illuminated the nature of the means employed in effectual internationalization and the role of partners (“effectual stakeholders”) in this process. Thus, we contribute to a deeper understanding of how infant multinationals navigate extreme uncertainty in the emerging SSA markets.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of international expansion of emerging markets multinationals (EMNEs) on the home country nonmarket political strategy and why some EMNEs intensify this political tie more than others.

We test our theoretical framework using longitudinal data, with 16 years of observations, in Multilatinas and state loans from Brazil, one of the main outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) players in the world and the OFDI leader in Latin America.

Theoretically grounded on the institution-based view of strategy, it can be postulated that international expansion is a driver of home country nonmarket political strategy. It can also be hypothesized that political tie intensity is affected by the capacity of EMNEs to deal with international expansion issues without having to depend on relationship with homes country nonmarket political actors. The results provide support for the hypotheses presented.

This paper contributes to the EMNE internationalization literature by extending the understanding of the underlying motivations and forces shaping the home country nonmarket political strategy of multinationals from emerging markets and, thus, helping understand why some EMNEs tend to be more politically active than others. Likewise, the study contributes to advancing understanding regarding the home country strategic responses adopted by Multilatinas and the forces behind the nonmarket political strategies they employ in their international expansions, especially during turbulent times.