Emerging economies are low-income, rapid-growth countries using economic liberalization as their primary engine of growth. They fall into two groups: developing countries in Asia, Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East and transition economies in the former Soviet Union and China. Private and public enterprises have had to develop unique strategies to cope with the broad scope and rapidity of economic and political change in emerging economies. This Special Research Forum on Emerging Economies examines strategy formulation and implementation by private and public enterprises in several different regional settings and from three primary theoretical perspectives: institutional theory, transaction cost economics, and the resource-based view of the firm. In this introduction, we show how different theoretical perspectives can provide useful insights into enterprise strategies in emerging economies. We discuss the special methodological as well as empirical challenges associated with doing research in emer...

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Strategy in Emerging Economies

Ownership and firm innovation in a transition economy: evidence from China

We review and integrate a wide range of literature that has examined the strategies by which organizations navigate institutionally diverse settings and capture rents outside of the marketplace. We synthesize this body of research under the umbrella term institutional strategies, which we define as the comprehensive set of plans and actions directed at leveraging and shaping socio-political and cultural institutions to obtain or retain competitive advantage. Our review of institutional strategies is focused on emerging market contexts, settings that are characterized by weak capital market and regulatory infrastructures and fast-paced turbulent change. Under such challenging conditions, strategies aimed at shaping the institutional environment may be especially critical to an organization's performance and long-term survival. Our review reveals that organizations engage in three specific and identifiable sets of institutional strategies, which we term relational, infrastructure-building, and socio...

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Institutional Strategies in Emerging Markets

This article contributes to the literature on network strategies and institutional transitions in emerging economies in Asia by identifying a realistic, intermediate phase between the early and late phases of institutional transitions suggested by Peng (2003). Focusing on the intermediate phase, we advance two arguments based on network strength and network content. First, in terms of network strength, we leverage earlier insights that networks can be classified as strong ties and weak ties. Consequently, we suggest that as institutional transitions unfold, strong-tie-based networks, instead of being phased out, are being transformed into weak-ties-based networks. Second, from a network content standpoint, we argue that the various scale and scope of institutional transitions shape the content of different networks which focus on business-to-government (B2G) ties and business-to-business (B2B) relationships. Our propositions delineate how different transitions of political and legal institutions affect the evolution of B2G and B2B networks. Overall, we suggest that networks not only differ in strength but also in content, and that their evolution is driven by the impact of different dimensions of institutional transitions governing B2G and B2B relationships.

How Network Strategies and Institutional Transitions Evolve in Asia

This research was set in the People’s Republic of China. As former socialist China moves from central planning toward a more market-driven economy, improved knowledge about the new environment and firm decisions within such an environment has significant implications. For organizational researchers, such a transition represents a genuine shift of paradigm, and thus offers a unique opportunity to test existing organizational theories and develop new ones. For multinational businesses seeking business opportunities, they have to compete or cooperate with these Chinese firms, whether state-owned or privately owned. Motivated by a deep curiosity in, using the language of Williamson (1996), “What is going on there” behind the “bamboo curtain,” and underpinned by a strong conviction that organizational researchers have much to gain as well as to offer by focusing on transitional economies, I undertook this study to examine characteristics of a regulatory environment and the impact on innovation and risk-taking among Chinese managers and entrepreneurs. I collected original primary data that represents managers from large state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and entrepreneurs from small privately-owned enterprises (POEs) through personal interviews and a survey. Significant differences were found between managers and entrepreneurs in their reported environmental characteristics, strategic orientations, size, and firm performance, indicating that managers are not as innovative and are less willing to make risky decisions than entrepreneurs. Being smaller and faster than SOEs, entrepreneurial firms have adopted some strategies that distinguish them from their larger and more established competitors. Speed, stealth, and sound execution allow entrepreneurs to harvest first-mover advantages and thus increase their chances for survival in a turbulent environment.

Innovation and Risk-Taking in a Transitional Economy: A Comparative Study of Chinese Managers and Entrepreneurs

The paper examines the process of investment decision making in six Chinese state enterprises during the economic reform which combined moves towards a market system with a continuing role for the state in industrial governance. This placed investment at the boundary between bureaucratic control and market forces, the theory being that enterprise managers would advance investment proposals in response to the market while government authorities retained the right of final approval in the light of broader-based priorities.

This mixed “market socialism” model has been treated with considerable scepticism by the so-called “reform economists” in Eastern Europe who doubt that enterprises can pursue policies which are rational in terms of market forces so long as they remain subject to significant administrative influence. Resource dependence and institutional perspectives, in drawing attention to higher administrative agencies as providers respectively of critical resources and of legitimacy for the state enterprises under their purview, also predict that institutional constraints will continue to operate on enterprise decision making. North's discussion of informal institutional arrangements and incremental change gives rise to similar expectations.

Detailed examination of the investment decision process at the three major stages of initiation, design and detailing, and final authorization does in fact indicate that it remains heavily dependent upon higher authorities. The reasons for this continuing dependence are discussed and comparisons are drawn with the investment decision process in western countries.

Lu Yuan

Papers

Institutional Constraints on Economic Reform: The Case of Investment Decisions in China