Springing from where? How emerging market firms become multinational enterprises

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to show that existing theories, principally Dunning’s OLI model, Mathews LLL model and Rugman’s version of internalization theory are unable to explain the rise of emerging market multinationals (EMNEs). The reason is that they over-emphasize the strategic importance of intangibles and ignore that of complementary local assets. Taking complementary local assets into account makes it possible to understand why EMNEs are able to finance their intangible-buying sprees and, often with the help of their governments, to swap market access for technology. Design/methodology/approach This is a conceptual paper based on the bundling model (JIBS 2009) and backed by the case histories of four EMNEs. Findings The author shows that EMNEs have much better prospects vis-à-vis established MNEs than generally thought in Western Europe and the USA and that they will become serious competitors. Originality/value This is, as far as the author knows, the first explanation of why EMNEs have the bargaining power and the resources necessary to swap or buy technology from established MNEs.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 24 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.