Strategic Capabilities of Emerging Market Firms

Strategic capabilities assist emerging market firms at the corporate level in developing and managing capabilities in the processes to better use resources and sustain competitive advantages. The umbrella of strategic capabilities includes ordinary capabilities and dynamic capabilities. Dynamic capabilities focus on change internally and externally (e.g., existing resource base, external environment). The dissertation is composed of three essays. The first essay, titled “Dynamic Capabilities of Emerging Market Firms: A Multi-disciplinary Literature Review,” provides a critical summary of changing views of dynamic capabilities processes in recent decades. The review aims to identify possible avenues for future research in emerging markets. The second essay, titled “Emerging Market Firms’ Dynamic Capabilities: Case Studies of Traditional Industries in China,” analyzes the dynamic capabilities processes (sensing, seizing, and reconfiguring) of emerging market firms. This essay is based on multiple cases in Chinese manufacturing industries. Study findings suggest that firms not only sense, seize and reconfigure opportunities and challenges, but also gain the capability of anticipation before the change occurs, which helps them stand out in competitive industries. The third essay is titled “Drivers of Export Intensity by Emerging Economy Firms: City Government Efficiency and Its Moderators,” and concerns how emerging market firms are able to seize opportunities in export markets. This essay, a quantitative study, indicates that city government efficiency has a positive relationship with export intensity. Compared with non-state-ownership, state-ownership negatively impacts internationalization. Additionally, firm age negatively moderates the relationship between city government efficiency and internationalization