Emerging market MNEs and social responsibility: An institutional pressure perspective

Emerging market multinational enterprises (EMNEs) represent a rising share in global outward foreign direct investment (FDI), growing from only 10 per cent in 2000 to 40 per cent in 2013 (UNCTAD, 2014). Like their developed market counterparts, these EMNEs can have important and potentially transformative impacts on their home and host countries, raising crucial questions regarding the appropriate law and policy frameworks that should govern their activities. To answer these questions, however, requires deeper and more comprehensive understanding of these new actors and their implications. To date, little is known about the impacts EMNEs have on issues related to sustainable development at home and abroad (Gugler and Shi, 2009), and the factors that are shaping those impacts. While there is a growing body of literature focusing on EMNEs (for reviews, see Gammeltoft, Barnard, and Madhok, 2010; Luo and Tung, 2007; Ramamurti, 2012), many issues about these firms’ development effects remain underexplored. It is for this reason that we organized this special issue. The three articles that are part of this collection highlight the most salient and pressing issues regarding EMNEs: In what sectors and locations are EMNEs investing, and what impacts might these investments have on sustainable development? Are EMNEs dedicating efforts to corporate social responsibility (CSR) and if so, through what types of activities? What is driving the firms’ engagement with CSR? And how can and should institutions in home countries, host countries, and on the international plane shape corporate conduct and development outcomes?