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Paper info: Calling the shots – the influence of foreign business on the institutional setting of opening markets

Title


Calling the shots – the influence of foreign business on the institutional setting of opening markets

Authors


Jan Hermes and Irene Lehto

Place of Publication


The paper was published at the 32nd IMP-conference in Poznan, Poland in 2016.

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Abstract


This study is about the socio-cognitive dynamics in opening markets’ internationalization. Through interpreting the internationalization of a market as change of its institutional setting we aim to understand meanings of foreign business actors’ roles, their actions and influences, in an ongoing institutional change process from the perspective of community-embedded governmental and non-governmental, i.e. political, actors. Drawing on a set of conversations with political actors from Myanmar/Burma we identify temporally distinct perceived social and economic influences of foreign business entrants as they both adapt to and impose institutional change. We find particularly conflicting normative pressures relating to expectations of adaptation of conflict-sensitive network-based strategies and imposing of CSR and market-based competition standards. Normative and cognitive pressures drive foreign businesses in the shaping of the competitive landscape and the development of a socially and environmentally sustainable market environment. Our study contributes to international business research, in particular market internationalization, through providing communitybased, socio-cognitive understanding of internationalization processes of markets and foreign businesses’ impact on the change of the competitive and institutional environment in its host country market from the perspective of political actors.