Multinational enterprises from emerging economies: what theories suggest, what evidence shows. A literature review

Abstract

The phenomenon of Emerging Economy Multinational Enterprises (EMNEs) and their internationalization process have sparked the debate over the appropriateness of International Business theories to study EMNEs’ internationalization processes. The literature has extensively investigated what distinguishes EMNEs from Advanced Country Multinational Enterprises (AMNEs). This review summarizes and discusses some of the issues that have mostly attracted scholarly debate in this research area. We discuss the specificities of EMNEs: how they differ from AMNEs with respect to three very important and well studied topics: first, country-specific and firm-specific advantages; second, motivations for investing abroad; and third, different modes of entry into foreign markets. We conclude that EMNEs do differ from AMNEs, although these differences may be contingent and transitory.