Multilatinas as Sources of New Research Insights: The Learning and Escape Drivers of International Expansion

Abstract

This study reviews the literature on Multilatinas, Latin American multinationals, and provide suggestions for using these firms as a laboratory for extending existing theories and models of the multinational. Analyses of their behavior tend to discuss their upgrading of capabilities and their patterns of internationalization. An additional opportunity exists to contribute to the literature by analyzing how some of the unique characteristics of Latin American countries affect the internationalization of firms. The review explains how four characteristics of the home countries (political uncertainty, violence, pro-market reforms and reversals, and geographic isolation) can result in the foreign expansion of firms, either because managerial learning of the home country conditions facilitates internationalization (the learning driver), or because the home country conditions induce internationalization to escape those conditions (the escape driver).

Keywords: Escape, internationalization, Latin America, learning, multilatinas, multinational companies

JEL Classification: F23