Market shaping MNCs in emerging markets - stakeholder engagement and the role of embeddedness

• This study delves into the phenomenon of collective market shaping in the context of multinational corporations (MNCs) in emerging markets. The study examines the firm's engagement activities and the importance of embeddedness in market shaping undeveloped in the literature. Theoretically this study builds on the literature on collective market shaping, stakeholder engagement and stakeholder embeddedness. Based on a secondary data analysis of two in-depth case studies of MNCs in Brazil, India, and China, we have identified four roles of stakeholders reflecting their engagement and embeddedness: missionaries, catalysts, diffusers, and grassroot movers. Our findings show a recursive process involving stakeholders' structural embeddedness, relational embeddedness and their roles in market shaping. By impacting these dynamics via engagement activities, the MNC can deepen the firm's own embeddedness in the local market and facilitate market shaping. We conclude with introducing ‘embedded market shaping’ as a mode of collective market shaping. It describes the gradual embedding of the firm into a local market through a recursive process, which involves stakeholders who are aware of the MNC's market shaping vision and interested in its pursuit, as well as unaware stakeholders who unintentionally support the MNC's vision.

Subject headings

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Ekonomi och näringsliv -- Företagsekonomi (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Economics and Business -- Business Administration (hsv//eng)

Keyword

Embeddedness

Engagement activities

Market shaping

Market shaping roles

Market vision

Secondary qualitative data analysis

Publication and Content Type

art (subject category)

ref (subject category)