The Many Worlds of Emerging Economies: Researcher Frames in International Management Research

How do researchers in the field of international management (IM) view the landscape of emerging economies? We argue that ‘emerging economies’ as a context of IM research lend themselves to a complex interpretive agenda, where variations emerge not only in the explicit theories employed by researchers but also in the implicit frames that shape the researcher’s conceptualization of her research question. In a review of IM research on emerging economies over the period 1994 to 2011, we identify five distinct implicit researcher frames - institutional distance, transactional vulnerability, institutional voids, environmental change, and capability development. We examine the linkages between these background frames and the choices of research questions and theoretical perspectives. In conclusion, we propose two alternate researcher frames - high growth and governance innovation - that can open up new avenues of IM research on emerging economies.