Call for papers: "Management and Internationalisation of Latin America´s Firms"

For a special issue of the International Journal of Business and Emerging Markets.

Latin America (LA) grows faster, attracts more foreign domestic investment (FDI) and is more populous than the European Union and North America. Though its stock of inward FDI matches that of China, top management journals have given little attention to the region, while conferences, journals and specialists on China abound. Even when scholars have examined LA, they have focused more on addressing disciplinary issues than on providing insight about the region’s specific issues.

 

The purpose of this special issue is therefore to promote research that focuses on the economic, cultural, geographical and/or social conditions specific to LA. We seek papers that test the validity of results obtained in other contexts or that develop or empirically verify new concepts and hypotheses concerning conditions particular to LA.

 

Suitable topics include but are not limited to:

• What challenges and opportunities do the relatively low levels of economic and institutional development, as well as high dependence on commodity exports, that predominate in the region confront or offer to companies operating in it?
• What managerial and leadership styles are compatible with the scarcity of resources that tend to be significantly greater in LA than in most economically advanced regions? What are characteristics of these styles, and how can they be developed and/or promoted?
• What managerial and leadership styles are compatible with features such as orality, informality and flexibility that research indicates characterise LA's cultural cluster? Does speaking about a Latin American way of management make sense? Or is it reasonable to expect one to develop?
• Why are negative phenomena such as corruption and the low level of innovation so common, and what measures and experiences have been successful in confronting and mitigating these phenomena?
• In what ways and to what extent are the characteristics of the internationalisation of LA firms similar or different to those of other regions? How and why is entrepreneurial orientation related to these characteristics?
• Do social, economic and environmental sustainability assume different significance in the context of the region? If so, in what ways should firms seeking to be sustainable act differently in LA than in other locations?
• Why have some firms in LA been successful amid international competition despite the adverse circumstances they must negotiate? How do these firms circumvent the liability of origin? Is their performance linked to comparative advantages? What lessons can be learned from their experiences?

 

Important Dates

Submission of manuscripts: 31 October, 2015

Comments to authors: 31 January, 2016

Revised papers submission: April 30, 2016

 

Papers submitted earlier than the submission date will be put through the review process on a rolling basis, and their authors may expect to hear back sooner.