People management and emerging market multinationals

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 there has focuses on a very limited number of preferred cases. The growing importance of emerging economies has lead to an upsurge of strategy research on the topic (Wright, Filatotchev, Hoskisson and Peng, 2005); however, research on HRM has not paid enough attention to Emerging Market Multinational Enterprises (EMNEs). Many EMNEs tend to be smaller in size with considerably lesser resources and 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.