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International business as a field values perspectives from various contexts, but scholars from emerging markets face a number of often-unseen challenges preventing them from fully contributing to the field. This study aims to explain those challenges and what the author has done to manage them.

This is a Reflexive piece in which the author makes sense of her own experience as a scholar not only of but also in an emerging market, as well as the experiences at her school in seeking to develop a high-quality doctoral program.

When leading scholars interact, whether in writing or in person, they tend to be in academically and otherwise well-resourced locations. This is true even for the leading international business scholars of emerging markets, and it imposes time and financial costs on scholars located in emerging markets wanting to participate in such conversations. Having experienced such challenges, the author worked with colleagues to design a doctoral program that could nurture rich scholarly conversations at the school. However, there remains a clear and pervasive tension between the inclusive aspirations of the field and the tendency for cutting-edge academic conversations to be concentrated in the developed world.

The experiences of emerging market scholars remain underrepresented in the field. By drawing on her own experience, both as a scholar and the head of the doctoral program at her school, the author provides suggestions for how to think about and develop a more inclusive scholarly conversation.

First developed in the 1980s, one of the most essential ideas in international business research has the been the concept of emerging markets. Since the start of the twenty-first century, empirical research has shown that there is no clear correlation between long-term real growth in gross domestic product and real equity returns in firms active in emerging markets. The purpose of this paper is to develop an explanation for both the pervasiveness and endurance of the emerging market discourse despite empirical evidence that substantially questions its very robustness.

The author offers a “weak form” critique of the emerging market discourse that identifies weaknesses and gaps in the emerging market concept and offers suggestions on how to modify it without fundamentally rejecting its conceptual and ideological core. This paper also offers a “strong form” critique of emerging markets as a discourse arguing that the discourse itself is actually propagated to maintain and reinforce global economic inequality and should, therefore, be fundamentally transformed.

Based on the strong form critique of emerging markets discourse, this paper shows how a three-phase process allows emerging market discourse to engender strategic and public policy practice. Scholars and educators play a pivotal role through their writing and discursive interactions with students and executives in their classroom. The centrality of scholars and educators is supported by the broader media ecosystem as well as being reinforced by interactions between executives and policymakers.

This paper makes the case that international business scholars and educators should play a leading role in fundamentally transforming the emerging market discourse and to launch a renewed critical, inter-subjective discussion of dependency and global inequality through three mechanisms: peer-review research; course syllabi and programs; and public intellectualism.

Through critical discourse analysis, this paper addresses for the first time how emerging markets as a concept has prospered in academic and managerial circles despite credible empirical evidence of its lack of robustness.

Leveraging signalling theory and institutional environment theory, this study aims to examine how the entrepreneurial orientation of emerging market firms impacts initial public offering (IPO) performance.

The authors conduct regression analysis based on archival data from 312 firms’ IPOs in India.

The results in the Indian context suggest it differs from IPO performance in developed markets. In an emerging market context, the findings suggest that only competitive aggressiveness is valued by investors in IPOs. The findings further show that proactiveness and autonomy negatively influence IPO underpricing.

The research propositions imply that, owing to institutional voids in emerging markets, investors’ risk propensity and, hence, rewarding a firm’s entrepreneurial orientation differ from those in developed markets.

Extant literature has given limited attention to the dynamics of entrepreneurial orientation and the effect of each dimension of entrepreneurial orientation on IPO performance in emerging markets.

The purpose of this paper is twofold: to publish scholarly works that extend knowledge on the drivers, consequences and boundary conditions of international marketing strategies employed by emerging market firms of all sizes and types; and to advance a narrative for future research on emerging market firms’ international marketing activities.

To achieve this agenda, the authors invited scholars to submit quality manuscripts to the special issue. Manuscripts that addressed the special issue theme from varied theoretical perspectives and methodological approaches were invited.

Out of 70 manuscripts reviewed, 7 are eventually accepted for inclusion in this special issue. The papers touched on interesting research topics bothering on international marketing practices of emerging market firms using blend of interesting theoretical perspectives and variety of methods. Key theoretical perspectives used include resource-based theory, internationalization theory, institutional theory and corporate visual identity theory. The authors employed unique sets of methods including literature review, surveys, panel data, and process-based qualitative and case-study enquiries. The authors used some of the most advanced analytical techniques to analyze their data.

This introduction to the special issue provides a review of the extant literature on the international marketing strategy of emerging market firms, focusing on summarizing key empirical contributions on the topic over the last three decades. Subsequently, the authors discuss how each paper included in this special issue helps advance the agenda to develop scholarly knowledge on emerging market firms’ international marketing strategy.

The authors aim to examine the potential opportunities and challenges multinationals operating in Africa are likely to encounter when they seek to pioneer disruptive innovations at the base of the pyramid (BoP) in African emerging markets.

Drawing on the extant literature on the BoP, disruptive innovation and the African business context, the authors explore the pioneering of disruptive innovations in the African socio-economic context.

This study develops various hypotheses to extend our understanding of disruptive innovations at the BoP. The authors also delineate potential managerial and institutional challenges multinational corporations (MNCs) are likely to encounter in their efforts to pioneering disruptive innovations for BoP customers in African emerging markets.

The authors develop some recommendations for MNCs on how to create and capture value from disruptive innovations in African emerging markets

The authors delineate African context-specific managerial and institutional challenges that MNCs might encounter when seeking to develop disruptive innovation at the BoP.

This chapter explores the emergence, growth, and current status of the sociology of sport in Canada. Such an endeavour includes acknowledging the work and efforts of Canadian scholars – whether Canadian by birth or naturalization or just as a result of their geographic location – who have contributed to the vibrant and robust academic discipline that is the sociology of sport in Canadian institutions coast-to-coast, and who have advanced the socio-cultural study of sport globally in substantial ways. This chapter does not provide an exhaustive description and analysis of the past and present states of the sociology of sport in Canada; in fact, it is important to note that an in-depth, critical and comprehensive analysis of our field in Canada is sorely lacking. Rather, this chapter aims to highlight the major historical drivers (both in terms of people and trends) of the field in Canada; provide a snapshot of the sociology of sport in Canada currently; and put forth some ideas as to future opportunities and challenges for the field in Canada.

This chapter complements the one that appeared as “History of the AIB Fellows: 1975–2008” in Volume 14 of this series (International Business Scholarship: AIB Fellows on the First 50 Years and Beyond, Jean J. Boddewyn, Editor). It traces what happened under the deanship of Alan Rugman (2011–2014) who took many initiatives reported here while his death in July 2014 generated trenchant, funny, and loving comments from more than half of the AIB Fellows. The lives and contributions of many other major international business scholars who passed away from 2008 to 2014 are also evoked here: Endel Kolde, Lee Nehrt, Howard Perlmutter, Stefan Robock, John Ryans, Vern Terpstra, and Daniel Van Den Bulcke.

This study aims to investigate the effectiveness of causation decision-making and effectual decision-making logic in challenging economic situations within agricultural small and medium-sized enterprises in Ghana.

The authors collect and derive composite variables from effectuation, causation, financial capital availability (FCA) and crisis performance data through a randomized system based on literature precedents. This study analyzes the data using descriptive analysis, confirmatory factor analysis and ordinary least squared regression through STATA 15.

The authors find that effectual managers are indeed better off during crisis conditions. Also, there is a significant moderation relationship between the effectuation, FCA and crisis performance.

From strategic management and entrepreneurial process standpoint, the effectuation theory thrives within uncertain business environments. This notwithstanding, literature has often focused on hypothetical, uncertain business environments. The authors present plausible evidence of effectual business behavior from a real crisis, from small agriculture firms’ perspectives and an emerging economy context.

The purpose of this paper is to describe culturally responsive methodology as a way to develop researchers. The aims is to illuminate the dimensions of culturally responsive methodology such as cultural and epistemological pluralism, deconstruction of Western colonial traditions of research, and primacy of relationships within culturally responsive dialogic encounters. An overarching question is: “How can we maintain the original integrity of both participants and researchers and their respective cultures and co-construct at the same time something new?”.

Five case study narratives are described in order for readers to understand the range and types of studies that have been undertaken within a culturally responsive framework. The contributors represent emerging as well as veteran researchers, Indigenous as well as non-Indigenous cultures, practitioners (i.e. teachers in the school systems) as well as teacher educators (i.e. that is teachers within colleges and universities).

The major issues raised in this paper (knowing one's self and being willing to develop new methodologies) can help to inform those who aspire to research “with” rather than “on” Others.

This paper offers an ontology that is not framed from western traditions. Using reflexivity, criticality, and other epistemological links, the authors show methodological negotiators who invent, craft, personalize, and navigate their methodology and methods specific to the context and participants with whom they are working. They challenge unexamined assumptions in research methods. It is hoped that this paper can contribute a more respectful and humble way of working with all peoples.

In this chapter, the authors provide a historical overview of the development of comparative and international education in North America from 1920s to the beginning of the twenty-first century. The authors document the significant role some of the most influential leaders played to help lay the foundation for comparative education societies in Canada, Cuba, Haiti, Mexico, and the United States. Using historical comparative research technique, the authors examine the many interconnections of current and past leaders. The authors conclude with recommendations on how knowing the history can help strengthen comparative and international education development well into the future.