In “Probing Theoretically into Central and Eastern Europe: Transactions, Resources, and Institutions”, we outlined the contributions of research in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) to theoretical debates in business research. In this retrospective, we reflect upon the evolution of the field over the past decade. With the fading impact of CEE’s distinct shared history, we suggest that CEE best be analyzed as emerging economies, rather than as a distinct geographic entity. Emerging economy business research is converging on common themes and shared theoretical ideas, while identifying critical variations that constrain generalizations among and beyond emerging economies. This research thus highlights the need to develop a better understanding of the boundary conditions of scholarly theories of business knowledge.

Over the past decade, the institution-based view has emerged from distinct intellectual traditions in institutional economics, organizational theory, and the analysis of business-government bargaining. Research in these converging lines of theorizing places contextual variations at the centre of explanations of business phenomena around the world. We suggest that the IBV is evolving toward a paradigm, and offer suggestions on how to advance this research agenda further, in particular by exploring how firms engage with different sets of potentially conflicting institutions at multiple levels and locations.

Mike W. Peng is the Jindal Chair of Global Strategy at the Jindal School of Management, University of Texas at Dallas; a National Science Foundation CAREER Award winner; and a Fellow of the Academy of International Business (AIB). He received his PhD from the University of Washington, Seattle. He is widely regarded as one of the most prolific and most influential scholars in global business strategy—both the United Nations and the World Bank have cited his work. Among his over 150 publications, his textbooks—Global Strategy, Global Business, and GLOBAL—are used in over 30 countries (in Chinese, English, Portuguese, and Spanish). He was Editor-in-Chief of the Asia Pacific Journal of Management, and is currently Consulting Editor at the Journal of World Business. He has consulted for multinationals (such as AstraZeneca and Texas Instruments) and governments (such as the UK Government Office for Science).

In Canada, Professor Peng reviewed for Canada Research Chair and Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. He gave seminars at Ivey, HEC, and Manitoba; and presented papers at conferences in Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver (most recently in August 2015). At SFU, he gave seminars in 2008, 2013, and 2014; delivered a Pacific Forum lecture, co-chaired a research conference, and joined the festivities that inaugurated the Jack Austin Centre as a panelist in a televised discussion in 2009; published research coauthored with Danny Shapiro in 2011; participated in another research conference in 2012; and published a joint case study with Pek Soh in 2015.