ABSTRACT
This project was prompted by the desire to enquire more deeply into how service-based IMUEs are evolving their approaches to internationalising their operations within developing and growth markets. Having reached/encountered high levels of market penetration/saturation within developed market contexts, how have they expanded their ‘frontiers of operations’ in unfamiliar and challenging environments? In addition, given the problems that have been noted by several commentators relating to the scarcity of ‘local talent’ (ATKearney 2012, CIPD 2012), how have they co-opted and developed ‘host’ country management (most importantly HMULs) to expedite their plans and objectives? The exploration of these questions is important not only to practitioners considering growth market investments but also academics who have – to date – focused more exclusively on understanding, first, path dependencies relating to MNCs rather than IMUEs and, second, the impact and efficacy of expatriates and culturally adept ‘geo-leaders’ rather than HCMs (‘host country managers’).
