Emerging Market Multinationals

While prior research mainly concentrated on Emerging Market Multinationals (EMNEs’) motives to enter developed markets and on their entry mode choices, EMNEs’ challenges in the context of International Human Resource Management are still scarcely researched. This is surprising, since EMNEs highly depend on attracting and retaining a qualified workforce to overcome their latecomer status and their lack of developed market capabilities. Consequently, prospective applicants as well as experienced employees constitute strategic resources of utmost relevance in developed markets, as they carry valuable knowledge for EMNEs in order to compete with well-established foreign Developed Market Multinational Enterprises (DMNEs). At the same time, however, EMNEs are challenged by their domestic heritage and face the risk of being stereotyped and discriminated against by host country nationals. In fact, literature often schemes that EMNEs suffer from a liability of emergingness, describing that they face higher challenges than foreign DMNEs simply because they are from emerging markets. Hence, our research focuses on the following main topics:

Discrimination against EMNEs in developed markes

While literature agrees that EMNEs suffer from additional disadvantages due to their institutional domestic heritage, research fails to identify those factors which may lead to a higher discrimination against EMNEs than against foreign DMNEs. Our research provides insights into the crucial differences between host country nationals’ perception of EMNEs and foreign DMNEs and the resulting challenges for EMNEs in the developed world. By analyzing various forms of direct and indirect discrimination, we address the importance of institutional environments in explaining differences in host country nationals’ discrimination against foreign Multinational Enterprises (MNEs).

Organizational attractiveness of EMNEs in the eyes of prospective applicants

To successfully compete in the global war for talent, EMNEs need to attract future talents worldwide and have to be regarded as attractive organizations. Regarding host country nationals’ potential prejudices, EMNEs’ organizational attractiveness may crucially depend on applicants’ country and corporate character images.

Our research aims to empirically investigate the existence of the liability of emergingness by comparing applicants’ attraction towards EMNEs and foreign DMNEs in developed markets. Employing data from German applicants, findings show that applicants prefer US over Chinese and Russian companies as future employers, empirically confirming the existence of the liability of emergingness. However, the gap between the organizational attractiveness of EMNEs and DMNEs diminishes, indicating a crucial shift in the war for talent.

Organizational commitment in EMNEs – an investigation of employees working in EMNEs’ subsidiaries

Besides attracting future talent, EMNEs also have to retain their employees in their subsidiaries in developed markets. Although, having highly committed employees is a crucial issue for every MNE regardless of its domestic heritage, a highly committed workforce is especially relevant for EMNEs in developed markets. EMNEs usually follow a springboard approach to reach their knowledge-seeking motives and to escape their institutional voids at home. Due to these unique characteristics, we expect differences in the management of employees in their foreign subsidiaries and consequently in the commitment of these employees. In particular, we investigate the influence of organizational antecedents on organizational commitment and identify differences between the organizational commitment of employees in EMNE-owned and DMNE-owned subsidiaries.