The Springboarding EMNE: Transformational Leadership and Organizational Resilience

Abstract

We adopt a Positive Organizational Studies (POS) perspective to shed light on how springboarding - emerging economy multinationals (EMNEs) aggressively acquiring strategic assets in advanced economies – is successfully accomplished. We argue that transformational leadership of the top management team (TMT) of the acquiring EMNE fosters the cognitive antecedents of joint resilience with the TMT of the acquired firm, viz. shared tempered efficacy, collective identity and distributed mindfulness. These factors, in turn, help the post-acquisition entity to leverage the upside of distance – chiefly, diversity, which leads to novel opportunities and knowledge – and to mitigate the downside of distance, especially EMNEs’ legitimacy deficits.