Brazilian Multinationals: Competences for Internationalization

by Afonso Fleury , Maria Tereza Leme Fleury

• ISBN13: 9780521519489
• ISBN10: 0521519489
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2011-03-21
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

What contribution can studies of multinationals from emerging countries make to the development of theories in international business? Do they influence the practice of international management? The story of Brazilian multinationals is closely related to the country's industrialization choices. Since the 1950s, subsidiaries of the most prestigious foreign multinationals have played a key role in Brazilian economic development, creating, in the process, a very competitive domestic market. On top of that, government interventions in the last few decades were inconsistent and contradictory, resulting in a series of economic crises. Only the most resilient Brazilian firms were able to survive and prosper in that challenging environment. This book analyzes a variety of leading Brazilian multinationals, looking at both their competences and their competitive strategies in different settings. To do so, an innovative analytical framework based on international business, international operations management and international human resources management is developed and applied both to Brazilian multinationals and to firms from Latin America, India and China. This provides a novel insight into the dynamic movements of firms that engage in international operations and trade, as well as an understanding of the rationales and strategies that lead firms to outperform in the global economy.

Table of Contents

List of figures	p. xii
List of tables	p. xiv
List of boxes	p. xvii
Acknowledgments	p. xix
Introduction	p. 1
Developing the analytical framework and contextualizing the phenomenon	p. 11
Globalization and internationalization: the perspective of emerging countries	p. 13
Those who go to sea prepare on land	p. 13
Globalization: the interconnected world	p. 15
Internationalization: the multinational as an agent of globalization	p. 24
The globalization and internationalization of emerging country enterprises	p. 31
The analytical framework: the multinational as a network of competences	p. 41
Lenses, sieves, and molds in internationalization studies	p. 41
Organizational competences as a strategic resource of firms	p. 42
How local environments influence competence-based competition	p. 53
The analytical framework of the book	p. 60
The first wave: early-movers and the earliest internationalization theories	p. 62
Internationalizing under enticing conditions	p. 62
The earliest multinationals: from the nineteenth century up to the second world war	p. 63
The pioneering theories: economic reasons to internationalize	p. 67
Internationalization as a learning process: the Nordic school	p. 76
Were competences already there?	p. 80
The second wave: Japan and third world countries move abroad	p. 82
New fleets sail into international waters	p. 82
The rise of Japanese multinationals	p. 84
The emergence of Korean multinationals	p. 98
The internationalization attempts of firms from third world countries	p. 103
Lessons learnt from successful internationalization in the 1980s	p. 107
On the threshold of the third wave: productive globalization and new multinationals	p. 109
Pioneering fleets reequip and change route in increasingly contested waters	p. 109
Productive globalization and organizational restructuring	p. 110
New international management models: the multinational as a network of competences	p. 120
Multinationals from emerging countries appear on the horizon	p. 130
Multinationals from Brazil and other emerging countries	p. 135
The environment in which Brazilian firms grew	p. 137
Brazil in the internationalization waves	p. 137
Brazil: from the colonial period to the second world war	p. 137
Hosting the early-movers aiming toward industrial development (1950-70)	p. 146
A poorly exploited opportunity: Brazil during the 1970s-80s world crisis	p. 153
Crisis, failures, and reaction	p. 162
The rise of Brazilian multinationals	p. 164
Brazil adheres to global productive restructuring	p. 164
The transition from a closed to an open economy	p. 165
Establishing the roots of international competitiveness	p. 177
The evolution of Brazilian multinationals	p. 183
Strategies and competences for internationalization: the Brazilian experience	p. 204
Brazilian multinationals as networks of competences	p. 214
Toward a Brazilian model of international management?	p. 220
Cases of outstanding Brazilian multinationals	p. 226
Picking up cases of outstanding performers	p. 226
Petrobras: the state-owned multinational	p. 228
Vale: privatized and competing for global leadership	p. 236
Embraer: innovating in the aircraft industry	p. 243
JBS-Friboi: from butcher's shop to world's largest producer in fifty years	p. 251
The Votorantim Group: a multinational based on natural resources	p. 255
Gerdau: a pioneer and one of the most internationalized Brazilian multinationals	p. 259
Braskem: producing petrochemicals in Latin America	p. 263
AmBev: at the world's largest brewery driver's seat	p. 267
Tigre: an example of regional internationalization	p. 271
WEG: expanding horizontally and moving up the value chain	p. 273
Marcopolo: a local optimizer operating in every emerging country	p. 274
Romi: the only Brazilian capital goods producer remaining	p. 277
Odebrecht Engineering: among the world's top twenty	p. 281
Stefanini: a case of internationalization of a software producer	p. 286
Bematech: a case of internationalization of a hardware producer	p. 289
IBOPE: developing specialized services for the Latin Americans	p. 291
CI&T and Griaule: born globals in creative industries	p. 294
Closing remarks	p. 298
Multilatinas	p. 301
The multinationals from Latin America	p. 301
What Latin America is: diversity nurtured from common roots	p. 302
The economic development of Latin America	p. 303
Productive restructuring and opening up to international markets	p. 306
Multilatinas: patterns and features	p. 309
Sources of international competitiveness: are there common patterns?	p. 317
Argentinean multinationals	p. 318
Chilean multinationals	p. 325
Mexican multinationals	p. 330
Can Latin America compete?	p. 337
Multinationals from Russia, India, China, and South Africa (RICS)	p. 340
The new global players	p. 340
Snapshots of recent economic development in Asia	p. 341
The internationalization of Chinese firms	p. 350
The internationalization of Indian firms	p. 366
The internationalization of Russian firms	p. 381
The internationalization of South African firms	p. 386
Diversity within the BRICS	p. 390
The long journey of emerging country multinationals	p. 394
Our journey in this book	p. 395
The limits of the wave metaphor: dynamic interaction instead of sequential initiatives	p. 398
Incumbents and emerging country multinationals compete in different lanes	p. 399
Emerging country multinationals: integrating different approaches	p. 403
The challenge of the development of international management models	p. 405
Poseidon, the crisis, and the sustainability of internationalization	p. 406
References	p. 410
Index	p. 428
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