Discussion: View Thread

Please post to the IMD-L  - thanks.

Global Strategy and Emerging Markets Conference

May 17-18, 2018

University of Miami Business School

Storer Auditorium - 1306 Stanford Drive, Coral Gables, Florida, 33134

Call for Abstracts/Proposals (March 12 Deadline)

The University of Miami CIBER (Center for International Business Education and Research), the Center for Emerging Markets (CEM) at Northeastern University, the Center for Global Business (CGB) at the University of Texas at Dallas and Cornell University are pleased to announce the third annual Global Strategy and Emerging Markets (GSEM) Conference. Previous annual conferences have been held in Miami (2016) and Boston (2017). This conference provides a platform to bring together senior and junior scholars, doctoral students, and practitioners in the fields of international business, strategic management, cross-cultural management, technology strategy, and global entrepreneurship from around the world. This platform aims not only to foster discussion of frontier issues associated with emerging market-related global strategies and management, but also to create co-learning opportunities between scholars from the US and from emerging economies.

This year's conference theme is Capability Building and Catchup of EMNEs (emerging market multinationals). Building a portfolio of capabilities that are proprietary, deployable, transferable, and appropriable for geographically dispersed yet operationally connected investments remains a central issue to all MNEs. In contrast to advanced country MNEs that go global by capitalizing on existing critical capabilities, EMNEs often undertake international expansion in searching for and acquiring strategic assets owned by advanced country MNEs, intending to compensate for their competitive weaknesses and subsequently catch up in global competition. As they transfer these capabilities to home, augment existing capability and resource portfolios, and bolster home-centered capability reservoir, they retake off as more capable global competitors.

An ultimate goal of EMNEs is to bolster their global competitiveness, being more internationally competent (enhanced capabilities) and win global competition. To do so, they use fortified home base and augmented capabilities to retake off, catapulting globally with stronger capabilities, experience, and knowledge needed for global competition. This dynamic catchup process raises many questions to be scrutinized. For instance, how do EMNEs orchestrate new capabilities they acquired overseas with existing home-based capabilities given their limited experience in global organizing? Capability catchup encompasses numerous internal processes such as benchmarking, imitation, composition, and innovation as well as plentiful collaborations with external partners from home and abroad. What does it take for EMNEs to accomplish the mission of catchup? What are some key mid-range processes and mechanisms through which to fulfill catchup? Under what conditions, internal or external, capability building and catchup becomes more viable, seamless and fruitful? How should parent firms treat differently their foreign subsidiaries that play disparate roles in global capability catch? What does it require to constitute effective policies, practices, and structures within the firm (parent and subsidiaries) that enable and foster the catchup development? Do EMNEs have some unique skillset to catch up in today's global reality comparing with traditional MNEs? Or, why do EMNEs vary among themselves in catchup success?

Capability catchup in global competition has never been an easy task for most EMNEs. It requires effective global planning, which is often weak for EMNEs. It mandates the cross-border integration of resources, knowledge, and capabilities. Acquisition integration is particularly a big challenge for them. Global orchestration is vital but difficult. This necessitates international experience, cross-border monitoring, coordinating, and overhauling, cross-functional process integration, cultural intelligence, and many more. More inquiries are necessary to reveal paths, practices, and solutions that help EMNEs circumvent and overcome these challenges.

In this conference, we look for novel studies (abstracts or proposals) that are at the early stage of development but have good potential in addressing some key aspects or issues pertaining to EMNEs' capability building and catch up. We particularly encourage submissions that deal with processes, conditions, and consequences of catchup by using or introducing theoretical views that suit specific contexts and characteristics of EMNEs. We also invite comparative studies of MNEs from different emerging economies or between EMNEs and advanced country MNEs. We welcome abstracts or proposals using various qualitative or quantitative methodologies. We are also open to studies that address EMNEs' capability building and catch up from cultural, behavioral, entrepreneurial, institutional, and social perspectives. We welcome submissions that investigate the said issues at multiple levels, such as country, industry, business group, organization, team or individual levels.

Keynote Speakers:  

Lourdes S. Casanova

Director, Emerging Markets Institute

Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management, Cornell University

Mike Peng

Jindal Chair of Global Strategy

Executive Director, Center for Global Business

Jindal School of Management, University of Texas at Dallas

We invite you to submit abstracts/proposals (5 single-spaced pages), especially from junior scholars/doctoral students.

To submit the proposal please visit: GSEM2018-CallForPapers/Abstracts

THERE IS NO CONFERENCE REGISTRATION FEE (Participants are responsible for their own travel including hotel)

To register please visit: GSEM2018-Registration

Niccole Pertierra Iglesias | Assistant Director

Center for International Business Education & Research

University of Miami Business School

5250 University Drive, Jenkins Building 417N | Coral Gables, FL 33146

P: 305-284-4729 | niglesias@bus.miami.edu | www.UMCIBER.com