Management in Emerging, Developing, and Transition Economies: Context, Mechanisms, and Outcomes

Introduction

Emerging, developing, and transition economies are economic contexts characterized by varying degrees of income growth, structural transformation, and integration into the global economy, in which formal institutions, market supporting infrastructures, and governance arrangements are incomplete, evolving, or unevenly enforced (Khanna & Palepu, 2010). By 2025 emerging, developing, and transition economies accounted for nearly half of global economic output, and over the past decade, approximately 67 percent of global GDP has been generated outside Western economies (World Economics, 2025). These environments have given rise to some of the largest corporations in the world, many of which successfully operate across multiple markets and increasingly challenge Western firms both in their home markets and internationally (Chabowski & Samiee, 2023).

Despite this substantial shift in the global economic centre of gravity, most management and leadership research continues to be developed in, and primarily for, Western contexts (Morris et al., 2023), characterized by relatively robust and predictable institutions and standardized market logics (Marquis and Raynard, 2015). As a consequence, many dominant theories and empirical insights may not fully apply to settings in which institutions, market supporting infrastructures, and governance arrangements are less formal and homogeneous, evolving, or unevenly enforced, and where informal institutions play a central role in structuring business relationships. This gap in the literature is striking given both the economic significance of the emerging, developing, and transition economies and their rich cultural and institutional diversity.

Firms operating in these environments face distinct institutional configurations, heightened uncertainty, and a greater reliance on alternative coordination mechanisms, rendering context a first order determinant of managerial decision making, organizational strategies, and performance outcomes (Marquis & Raynard, 2015). Across emerging, developing and transition economies, particularly in Eastern and Southern Europe, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Africa, firms and public organizations operate amid persistent institutional gaps, informality, and stronger entanglements with culture, state, and local communities (Khanna & Palepu, 2000; Holmes et al., 2013). In such environments, everyday coordination primarily relies on relational contracting, community enforcement, and hybrid organizational forms rather than on bylaws and intermediaries (Ponomareva, 2013; Ponomareva & Umans, 2015). Market participation is intrinsically linked to social legitimacy and politics; management and leadership practices are influenced by communication norms; and learning occurs through improvisation and bricolage rather than through fully codified routines. These conditions profoundly reshape the definition of effective governance and leadership, the development of capabilities, and the dissemination of routines across contexts (Müller & Turner, 2010). Thus, the above-described distinctions are not merely descriptive; instead they challenge widely adopted constructs and jeopardize the external validity of conclusions driven from Western contexts.

By cantering emerging, developing, and transition economies, this Special Issue of the Baltic Management Journal responds to growing calls to treat context not as a control variable but as a central object of theorizing (Aguinis et al., 2020; Stahl et al., 2023). Doing so enables scholars to specify boundary conditions, identify alternative mechanisms that substitute for missing institutions, and explain how management and leadership practices evolve, are translated, adapted, or resisted across heterogeneous institutional settings (Feng et al., 2022; Torp et al., 2025). In this way, research on these contexts not only advances our understanding of the management and leadership practices in the unique contexts of emerging, developing and transition economies, but also knowledge of the Western environments by highlighting the limitations associated with currently dominat “Global North” mindset (Morris et al., 2023). We welcome contributions from different angles, including how management and leadership, governance, entrepreneurship, sustainability, accounting, and finance operate differently when rules, infrastructures, and institutions cannot be taken for granted. We invite quantitative designs such as multi-country surveys, field experiments, and event studies; qualitative approaches including ethnography, process tracing, and multiple-case research; mixed-methods that connect mechanisms with outcomes; and conceptual pieces that refine constructs and propose new contextual logics. Comparative studies that span regions or contrast developing and transition economies with more established institutional settings are especially welcome. Submissions should be explicit about context, transparent about data limitations, and clear on how findings travel beyond the focal setting. Furthermore, we strongly encourage inclusive theory development that explains management practices across different contexts.

Some potential research questions may include:

• How and with what consequences do firms substitute private or community governance for missing or unreliable formal institutions, and which mechanisms make these substitutes durable or fragile?
• Which configurations of resources, networks, and legitimacy enable opportunity discovery and scaling in thin or nascent markets, and how do founders and top managers navigate uncertainty and institutional gaps across growth stages?
• Under resource constraints and uneven enforcement, what capability bundles allow firms to align environmental initiatives with competitive outcomes, and how do local cultural or state priorities shape these trajectories?
• How do reporting, budgeting, and control systems adapt when enforcement is uneven, and what are the implications for investment, innovation, market signals, and stakeholder trust in emerging markets?
• How do contextual communication and power structures condition the effectiveness of leadership, employee voice, engagement, and performance systems in transition settings, and what are the boundary conditions for transferability?
• How do commitments to learning and open innovation translate into performance when institutions are in flux, and which organisational routines, such as bricolage, mediate these effects? • How do political ties, state ownership, or party networks shape strategic decision-making, board dynamics, and accountability in firms and hybrid organisations operating under volatile or contested regulatory regimes?
• How do gender, ethnicity, and other social cleavages intersect with institutional voids to shape leadership careers, informal influence, and patterns of inclusion and exclusion inside organisations?
• In conflict-affected, fragile, or post-disaster settings, which leadership practices and governance arrangements enable organisational resilience, continuity of services, and recovery, and what trade-offs do they imply?
• How do regional, cross-border, or diaspora networks among managers, professionals, and researchers mediate the transfer, translation, and contestation of management ideas and leadership models across institutional contexts?

References:

Aguinis, H., Villamor, I., Lazzarini, S. G., Vassolo, R. S., Amorós, J. E., & Allen, D. G. (2020). Conducting management research in Latin America: why and what’s in it for you? Journal of Management, 46(5), 615–636.

Chabowski, B. R., & Samiee, S. (2023). A bibliometric examination of the literature on emerging market MNEs as the basis for future research. Journal of Business Research, 155, 113263

Feng, T., Zhang, Q., & Liu, S. (2022). Linking perceived institutional force and environmental strategy: The moderating role of institutional incompleteness. Baltic Journal of Management, 17(3), 391–412.

Holmes, R. M., Jr., Miller, T., Hitt, M. A., & Salmador, M. P. (2013). The interrelationships among informal institutions, formal institutions, and inward foreign direct investment. Journal of Management, 39(2), 531–566.

Khanna, T., & Palepu, K. (2000). The future of business groups in emerging markets: Long-run evidence from Chile. Academy of Management Journal, 43(3), 268–285.

Marquis, C., & Raynard, M. (2015). Institutional strategies in emerging markets. Academy of Management Annals, 9(1), 291–335.

McKenzie, B., & Hunter, E. M. (2020). A case study of a non-profit organization in an emerging economy: O Fonds in Latvia. Baltic Journal of Management, 16(1), 155–172.

Morris, S., Aguilera, R. V., Fisher, G., & Thatcher, S. M. (2023). Theorizing from emerging markets: challenges, opportunities, and publishing advice. Academy of Management Review, 48(1), 1-10.

Müller, R., & Turner, R. (2010). Attitudes and leadership competences for project success. Baltic Journal of Management, 5(3), 307–329.

Ponomareva, Y. (2013). Dynamics of managerial discretion in transition economies. Asian Journal of Business Research ISSN, 1178(8933), 8933.

Ponomareva, Y., & Umans, T. (2015). An integrative view on managerial discretion: A study of a Russian firm in transition. Journal for East European Management Studies, 36-67.

Stahl, G. K., Filatotchev, I., Ireland, R. D., & Miska, C. (2023). Five Decades of Research on the Role of Context in Management: From Universalism Toward Contingent, Multilevel and Polycontextual Perspectives. Academy of Management Collections, 2(1), 1–18.

Torp, S., Lien, R., Gil, M., & Ramírez-Solís, E. R. (2025). Strategic renewal influenced by the perception of gender issues and stakeholder pressure: a managerial cognition perspective. Baltic Journal of Management, 20(1), 133-152.

World Economics. 2025. Emerging markets GDP growth data. Retrieved from https://www.worldeconomics.com/Regions/Emerging-Markets/.Google Scholar?

List of topic areas

Governance, hybrid organisations, leadership, high/low-context communication, entrepreneurship, sustainability, accounting, reporting, finance, ownership, inclusion and inequality, resilience, cross-border and diaspora networks, capability building and innovation.

Submissions Information

Submissions are made using ScholarOne Manuscripts. Registration and access are available at: https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/bjom

Author guidelines must be strictly followed. Please see: https://www.emeraldgrouppublishing.com/journal/bjm

Authors should select (from the drop-down menu) the special issue title at the appropriate step in the submission process, i.e. in response to ““Please select the issue you are submitting to”.

Submitted articles must not have been previously published, nor should they be under consideration for publication anywhere else, while under review for this journal.

Key deadlines

Opening date for manuscripts submissions: 01/12/2026 

Closing date for manuscripts submission: 01/04/2027

Email for submissions: [email protected]