Refers to a subset of developing countries such as South Korea, Taiwan, Malaysia, India, Turkey, Thailand, Brazil, Argentina and Mexico, that began the twentieth century in an economically backward state and dramatically raised national income per capita by selectively investing in industry. Late industrializing firms by definition are learners. They do not have proprietary technologies in order to grow by generating radically new products or processes.
Published in Chapter:
Learning and Innovation in Multinational Companies from Emerging Economies: The Case of CEMEX
Arturo Torres Vargas (Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, Mexico) and Javier Jasso Villazul (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico)
Copyright: © 2016
|Pages: 31
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-5225-0135-0.ch018
Abstract
This chapter aims to illustrate the importance that learning trajectories and the building of technological capabilities have had in the internationalization and competitiveness process of the nowadays Multinational Companies from an Emerging Economy (MCEE), based on the case of CEMEX, a Mexican multinational and one of the largest cement companies of the world. The case study shows that the emergence of this company into the global markets is the result of a mix of assets and capabilities (Penrose, 1995; Bell & Pavitt, 1995; Bell, 2007) developed over a period of nearly eight decades, at whose base are productive, technological and organizational capabilities. Findings substantiate that multinationalization through mergers and acquisitions has strengthened the technological capabilities of CEMEX, as a result of the learning and knowledge sharing processes driven by the actual integration of CEMEX with the acquired companies. By establishing learning routines, CEMEX feeds an innovation process within the group.