Internationalization strategies of emerging country multinationals (EMNCs) - the case of multilatinas

Abstract

"The transformation of emerging country multinational companies (hereafter EMNCs) into global players in various industries around the world has awakened growing interest among scholars of international business. As well as some anecdotal evidence and case studies, analysts today are engaged in a lively debate on whether existing theories of business internationalization can be used to explain the emergence and growth of these new players, or whether new models are needed to fully explain their strategies. While some authors suggest that we need new theories because the existing explanations of internationalization were created for different contexts - to explain the behavior of developed country multinationals (hereafter DCMNEs) (e.g. Mathews, 2006) - others argue that the behavior of EMNCs can be explained with the existing theoretical paradigms in spite of the differences between EMNCs and the much-studied DCMNEs (Dunning, Kim & Park, 2008). The middle ground in these debatesis taken by a new stream of international business research in wich authors suggest that EMNCs provide a rich subject for analysis and that their study can help extend the existing theories and models for internationalization (e.g. Ramamurti, 2012; Cuervo-Cazurra, 2011a). This dissertation subscribes to that argument and, by considering the distinctive characteristics of EMNCs in terms of their resources and the environments they originate from, it contributes to extending the existing theories of internationalization..."