An Analysis of the Institutional Development of the SSA Region and Strategic Implications for MNCs

Abstract

Research on emerging markets has proliferated considerably over the past two decades, yet there is no clear consensus in the fields of academia, business practice or public policy of what constitutes an emerging market. While early conceptualizations of emerging markets focus primarily on the level of economic development and the pace of economic growth to distinguish emerging from emerged markets, more recent work has attempted to employ a broader lens when examining these markets. Based on institutional theory, this study attempts to contribute to a more fine-grained analysis of what constitutes an emerging market by analyzing the formal and informal institutional development of countries in the emerging market context of the Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) region and the specific industry context of oil exploring countries in the region. In so doing, this study aims to develop a preliminary framework of institutional clusters based on the formal and informal institutional quality of emerging markets, and discusses the strategic implications for multinational corporations (MNCs).