AbstractsBusiness Management & Administration

Since Jim O’Neill, the Goldman Sachs economist, coined the acronym of the BRIC countries in 2001 the concept has attracted an infectious logic. The growth of the four BRIC countries, Brazil, Russia, India, and China, is evidenced by their emergence as the most rapidly industrialising countries. These BRIC countries represent a building block for powerful annual events, the first conducted on the sidelines of the United Nations in 2006, then in 2010, and then most recently in New Delhi in March, 2012. In broad terms, Brazil has been considered as the world farm, Russia as an enormous gas station, India as the back office, and China as the factory floor. Collectively, the group represents a quarter of the world’s GDP, almost one half of the gold reserves, nearly 30 per cent of the total land mass, and over 40 per cent of the international population. During the past 10 years their combined growth has been favourably comparable to the world economy including the modern Japan and Germany. Estimates are that by 2050 the combined values of the real, rouble, rupee, and renminbi are expected to eclipse that of today’s richest countries. The heightened importance of China and India are the focus of the investigation reported in this Dissertation. The remarkable economic growth of China and India has drawn a considerable amount of attention. The trajectory of their internationalisation process along with the unique strategic management approaches has effectively facilitated the global economic integration of these two nations. Despite extensive investigations of emerging country multinationals (ECMs) from China and India a lack of attention has been given to the accumulated legacies of managerial mindsets, and cultural priorities, that impact the competitive dynamics of these two nations. As these ECMs hold prominent economic positions in the global arena it is surprising there has not been more rigorous and systematic investigation to establish if specifically Western talent management systems are being incorporated into the traditional nuances of the ECMs. Consequently, this study was undertaken to identify how Chinese and Indian ECMs strategically integrate resources at the international level to attain global business success. The findings of this research have potential to contribute to the generation of theoretical and empirical paradigms that will assist the understanding of the processes of fusion between Western and Eastern theories, and especially the Chinese and Indian contexts. This research employed a mixed method, which incorporated both the quantitative assessment (e.g., questionnaire) and the qualitative technique (e.g., interviews). Several scholars have convincingly argued that culturally related investigations are likely to be enhanced when employing both quantitative and qualitative assessments. Several pilot studies were undertaken with Chinese and Indian respondents in an endeavour to establish the literal meaning of the survey instrument, which was developed by employing the back translation…