Emerging economies are increasingly dominating the research agendas of leading management journals, according to a new research study co-authored by CEIBS Professor of Strategy and International Business Klaus E. Meyer and Associate Professor Dean Xu.

For their study, the researchers constructed a database of articles on emerging economy strategies that were published in eight high impact management journals during the last decade (2001-2010). Their results show that between 2006 and 2010 there was a 63 percent increase overall in the number of emerging economy-related papers published, compared to the period between 2001 to 2005, with almost half (122 out of 260) of the papers published in the later period focussed on China. Among their other findings:
- Other Asian economies outside China were the subject of 68 studies, followed by Central and Eastern Europe with 37 studies, Latin America with 13 and the Middle East and Africa with only three studies.
- In terms of trends over time, the co-authors note a rising diversity of host contexts, with the biggest percentage increases occurring for the Latin America region (450 percent) and India (160 percent).
- Two new perspectives on economics theories are emerging: Spillover and Real Options. 
The focal issue of strategy researchers on the spillover effects of foreign direct investment (FDI) is on how domestic companies in emerging economies benefit from the presence of multinationals in terms of productivity and sales growth. Real Options Theory posits that decision makers take into account the option value of projects based on different possible outcomes with different probabilities. A typical research question in this literature is how environmental uncertainty impacts the value of multinationals operating in emerging economies.

- Two new perspectives on strategy and organization theories are emerging: Relational and Learning. 
Relational perspectives focus on the inner workings of networks and social relations in societies, and their implications for strategy. Learning perspectives include capabilities, knowledge and learning, and the central research questions concern the transfer of knowledge between units of a multinational and the learning processes within business units.

The researchers also share their forecasts for future areas of research focus for emerging economy studies: How will local and foreign-invested firms enter ‘bottom of the pyramid’ markets in China, India and Brazil? What accounts for the longevity of Chinese SOEs, which continue to dominate many aspects of the economy in China? How will multinationals from emerging economies integrate new assets they have acquired abroad with their low-cost production at home? Will the market share-oriented competition mode of Asia emerging economies disrupt the profit-oriented corporate objectives of Western firms?

The results of the study co-authored by Prof. Meyer and Dean Xu, who is now with University of Melbourne, appear in the paper “Linking Theory and Context: ‘Strategy Research in Emerging Economies’ after Wright et al(2005)” which was published by the Journal of Management Studies in November 2013.

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