Call for papers: Emerging Economy Multinationals, Innovation and Knowledge Flows

A special issue of International Journal of Technology Management

Multinational companies from emerging economies (EMNCs) are becoming major players in the globalised world economy and wield growing influence on economic dynamics in developed, emerging and developing countries alike. The foreign presence and operations of EMNCs are becoming increasingly intertwined with innovation and knowledge generation processes both at home and abroad.

While the extant literature tends to build on the assumption that firms internationalise on the basis of innovations carried out at home, EMNCs often engage in international activities with the intent to access technologies they lack or to acquire resources enabling them to strengthen their innovative capabilities.

There are a range of challenges associated with such activities. Identifying, assessing, accessing and absorbing technology and knowledge from abroad is rife with challenges. Compounding these challenges, EMNCs are often engaging asymmetrically with foreign partners much stronger than themselves in a particular technological domain. Vice-versa, relinquishing technology to EMNCs may pose dilemmas to incumbents as well as nations.

At a more aggregate level, innovation-related outward foreign direct investment is contingent upon and in turn influences the broader institutional innovation system in which the investing firm is embedded. For example, competitive dynamics at home may drive firms to seek technology abroad; successful absorption of foreign technology may require an enabling knowledge infrastructure at home; and technologies acquired abroad may in turn spill over into the wider domestic innovation system.

In host economies, innovation-related investments by EMNCs may bring about synergies and infuse local firms with required capital and market access, while at the same time intensifying competition in technological domains. Where high-tech clusters in developed economies are concerned, the nature and impact of EMNC presence remains insufficiently analysed.

This special issue solicits papers related to the broad theme of the relationship between emerging economy multinationals and innovation and knowledge flows, whether perceived at micro, meso or macro level. Conceptual, representative and case-based papers alike are welcomed.

Topics include but are not limited to:

• Which roles of outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) are coming to play in the innovation processes of EMNCs, at both strategic and operational levels?
• Why, how and with which outcomes are EMNCs engaging in innovation-related OFDI?
• What are the implications for incumbent MNCs in developed countries, e.g. in terms of competitive and collaborative dynamics?
• How do host governments respond to technology-seeking investments by EMNCs? To which extent do they promote them, and what may be appropriate facilitating frameworks?
• What are the macroeconomic and institutional contingencies and implications for home economies of innovation-related investments?
• What are the opportunities and threats for host economies of these investments?

Important Date
Submission of manuscripts: 1 February, 2013