International business research on “emerging economies”: a critical review and recommendations

Over the past few decades, examinations of emerging economies (EEs) have received increasing attention in international business (IB) research. This article takes a critical stance on some of the re-occurring shortcomings of that research.

The authors conducted a critical literature review of 493 articles on EEs that have been published in five top-tier IB academic journals in the period 2010–2020. True to the nature of a critical literature review, the authors judge and question some of the practices that have impeded knowledge accumulation.

The authors found a recurring lack of definitional clarity and contextualization, as well as overgeneralized inferences from findings. The authors provide recommendations on how to address these weaknesses and a checklist to guide future IB research on EEs.

The authors question and problematize what they see as dominant but undesirable practices when conducting EE research. The actionable directions for addressing uncovered issues and checklist to guide future research in this area that the authors offer are rather bold and unambiguous.