Introduction

With the support of the Development Bank of Latin America (CAF), Center for China-Latin America Management Studies, School of Economics and Management, Tsinghua University, together with Emerging Markets Institute, S.C. Johnson Graduate School of Management, Cornell University, have jointly launched a research project, which focuses on “Transnational Companies from Latin America and China, a Comparative Analysis and Lessons we can Draw”.

The research project took 2 years including literature review, data collection and analysis, modeling, corporate and government interviews, writing and publication. The general objective is to get better understanding of the differences, as well as similarities of TNCs from China and Latin America, and the source of those differences and similarities.

After the literature review, Tsinghua team and Cornell team identified the main weakness of previous studies is that the global and the regional context in which TNCs operate had been largely neglected and there was no comparison between the characteristics among the TNCs from different emerging countries. In order to fill the gap, the joint team collected basic OFDI country level and industry level data on Latin-America countries and figured out main players in those industries. Then the team looked into industry level literatures and collect basic information for targeted firms, mainly focusing on during the process of their capability formation, within international, regional and domestic environment affected. For case studies in sample sectors of target countries, the team members took a trip to Mexico, Chile, Brazil and Argentina and conducted several interviews of executives in both firms and governments. Based on previous investigation and research, the team took 6 months to do further discussions and analysis including integration, summarizing, and writing final reports.

During the project, the joint team published one academic paper in International Journal of Emerging Market and provided a complete research report to CAF. What’s more, several policy suggestions provided to both Latin American countries and Chinese government. The knowledge gained by the comparison of Chinese and Latin American TNCs also contributed to International Business (IB) theory.