Guest Editors' Introduction: People Management and Emerging Market Multinationals

Abstract

There is a very extensive body of literature on how multinationals manage their people in different national contexts. However, the bulk of this literature focuses on the case of multinationals from the advanced industrial economies, and to a considerable extent, the United States. Very much less has been written on multinationals with their country of origin being an emerging market, and what little there is has focused on a very limited number of preferred cases. The growing importance of emerging economies has led to an upsurge of strategy research on the topic (Wright, Filatotchev, Hoskisson, & Peng, 2005); however, research on human resource management has not paid enough attention to emerging market multinational enterprises (EMNEs). Many EMNEs tend to be smaller in size with considerably fewer resources and less international experience than their counterparts from developed markets, limiting their ability to transfer management practice across their subsidiaries (Thite, Wilkinson, & Shah, 2012), although there are important exceptions to this rule. This introductory article seeks to contribute to the emerging body of literature in this area, through seeking to encourage fresh insights, particularly on the varieties of people management encountered in different national contexts.