Journal of International Management—Revisiting and Advancing the Springboard Theory: EMNEs and the D

Journal of International Management

Revisiting and Advancing the Springboard Theory: EMNEs and the Dynamics of Internationalization in the New Era

Guest editors:

Surender Munjal, Aston University, Birmingham, United Kingdom s.munjal@aston.ac.uk

J T Li, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong, China mnjtli@ust.hk

Sumit Kundu, Florida International University, Miami, FL, United States kundus@fiu.edu

Nan Zhou, Tongji University, Shanghai, China zhounan@tongji.edu.cn

Supervising Editor:

Vikas Kumar, University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia vikas.kumar@sydney.edu.au

Special issue information:

Submission Window: 1 – 31 August 2026

The rise of emerging multinational enterprises (EMNEs) has reshaped the contours of global economy. Originating from institutionally underdeveloped contexts, these firms pursue aggressive international expansion to overcome competitive disadvantages, acquire strategic assets, and achieve rapid global legitimacy. Among the most influential theoretical contributions explaining this phenomenon is the Springboard Perspective (Luo & Tung, 2007), which challenged the dominant, gradualist models of internationalization by proposing that EMNEs “springboard” to leapfrog stages of development. The framework later refined into a general springboard theory (Luo & Tung, 2018), integrating insights from the resource-based view, organizational learning theory, and institutional theory. The theory articulates how EMNEs engage in an upward spiral of capability accumulation and legitimacy building through repeated international ventures, particularly in psychologically and geographically distant advanced markets.

Over the past decade, the theory has evolved to include entrepreneurial agency (Maksimov & Luo, 2021), and compositional (Li, Prashantham, Zhou, & Zhou, 2022), and contextual configurational approaches (Li, Fan, Kumar, & Ananthram, 2024). These developments recognize the heterogeneity of EMNE behaviors, highlighting how firms mix exploration and exploitation strategies and navigate different institutional contexts. Yet key conceptual and empirical questions remain. As firms diversify, digitize, pursue sustainability imperative and navigate an increasingly turbulent geopolitical landscape (Meyer, Li, Brouthers, & Jean, 2023; Buckley, 2020; Luo & Witt, 2022; Nambisan, Zahra, & Luo, 2019;), the assumptions and boundary conditions of the theory require reassessment.

A central gap concerns the long-term outcomes of springboarding. While prior research has established asset-seeking and capability augmentation through CBAs (Buckley, Munjal, Enderwick & Forsans, 2016; Madhok, & Keyhani, 2012; Luo, & Wang, 2012; Aybar & Ficici, 2009), less is known about the long-term sustainability of these strategies. Much of the extant literature focuses on entry motivation, modes of internationalization, and capability acquisition (e.g., Zahra, Petricevic, & Luo, 2022; Munjal, Bhasin, Nandrajog & Kundu, 2022; Kumar, Singh, Purkayastha, Popli, & Gaur, 2020; Luo, Sun, & Wang, 2011), but there is a paucity of research on the extent to which springboarding yields enduring innovation capabilities, responsible business practices, or sustainability/ESG-oriented growth trajectories.

Initial evidence suggests that springboarding may indeed offer access to cutting-edge technologies, new product pipelines, and advanced managerial knowledge (Rabbiosi, Elia, & Bertoni, 2012; Hertenstein & Alon, 2022). However, translating acquired resources into firm-specific advantages often requires absorptive capacity, strategic alignment, and effective integration, where many EMNEs face persistent challenges (Li & Fleury, 2020; Zhou, Xie, & Wang, 2016; Lewis & Bozos, 2019). Without the appropriate organizational architecture or learning orientation, these firms may experience shallow learning, failing to embed or diffuse innovation across their operations (Luo, 2020; Zhou et al., 2016; Renneboog & Vansteenkiste, 2019).

Global decoupling and digitalization further complicate springboarding dynamics. The post-pandemic international business environment is increasingly shaped by geopolitical tensions, economic decoupling, and national security concerns, leading to intensified scrutiny of foreign acquisitions, especially in sensitive sectors such as semiconductors, AI, biotech, and critical infrastructure (Luo, 2024; Fjellström, Bai, Oliveira, & Fang, 2023; Luo & Van Assche, 2023). Heightened investment screening regulations, such as the U.S. CFIUS reforms and the EU FDI Screening Regulation, are not only restricting the ability of firms to acquire strategic assets in advanced economies but are also signaling a broader shift away from liberal globalization toward geoeconomic protectionism.

These changes significantly constrain the traditional asset-seeking logic underpinning springboarding, especially for Chinese and Indian EMNEs operating in North America and Europe. The political stigmatization of Chinese capital, for instance, has led to the blocking or unwinding of multiple high-profile acquisitions, prompting EMNEs to either reorient their acquisition strategies toward less politicized regions or seek alternative forms of capability acquisition (Chan, Shi, & Yi, 2024; Bilgili, Bilgili, Allen, Loncarich, Kedia, & Johnson, 2023; Li, Van Assche, Li, & Qian, 2022).

Concurrently, the rise of digital internationalization is generating new springboarding pathways that are less dependent on physical presence or ownership but still support global learning and capability enhancement. Platform-based firms can now enter foreign markets via ecosystem participation, API integration, and virtual exports, allowing them to accumulate technological, reputational, and relational capital in a non-traditional manner (Autio, Mudambi, & Yoo, 2021; Singh, Munjal, & Kundu, 2023). These firms may "springboard" through participation in global digital networks rather than control over tangible assets, challenging the conventional assumptions of ownership, control, and integration embedded in earlier versions of the theory.

However, the applicability of springboard theory to these digitally mediated internationalization modes remains largely unexamined. Traditional constructs such as “foreign entry,” “post-acquisition integration,” and “strategic asset-seeking” need to be reinterpreted in contexts where the locus of value creation is virtual, distributed, and temporally compressed.

Methodological advancements present new and exciting opportunities to interrogate the complex and evolving dynamics of springboarding. While the literature includes both large-N econometric studies and qualitative case studies (e.g., Kumar et al., 2020; Yakob, Nakamura, & Ström, 2018; Wang, Luo, Lu, Sun, & Maksimov, 2014), most of the empirical work to date has tended to emphasize snapshot-based analyses or simplified models of linear progression. This often limits our understanding of how springboarding unfolds as a dynamic, path-dependent process marked by iteration, feedback, and adaptation (Enderwick and Buckley, 2021), especially in turbulent institutional environments.

Emerging methodologies such as process tracing, set-theoretic methods (e.g., fsQCA), and sequence analysis allow for greater attention to causal complexity, including non-linear pathways, equifinality, and conjunctural causation. These tools are particularly well suited for capturing how EMNEs configure and reconfigure their strategies in response to evolving constraints and opportunities (Fainshmidt, Witt, Aguilera, & Verbeke, 2020).

Likewise, digital trace analytics, machine learning, and natural language processing open up opportunities to explore EMNE behavior in digital and hybrid spaces where internationalization occurs not through physical presence but through platform participation, ecosystem integration, and intangible asset exchanges. These newer data sources and analytical techniques can help researchers observe fine-grained behavioral dynamics, map decision sequences, and identify how EMNEs learn and adapt across time and space.

In sum, while earlier research has laid a strong empirical foundation, today’s methodological toolkit offers expanded opportunities to examine the dynamic, context-sensitive, and heterogeneous nature of springboarding strategies.

Celebrating two decades of springboard theory, this Special Issue seeks to reinvigorate scholarly engagement with its core ideas, catalyzing a new wave of research that is contextually grounded, theoretically pluralistic, and methodologically robust. It offers a timely opportunity to evaluate the theory’s evolution, refine its propositions, and extend its relevance to the digital, geopolitical, and sustainability challenges shaping EMNE internationalization in the 2020s and beyond.

Celebrating two decades of springboard theory, this special issue seeks to reinvigorate scholarly engagement with its core ideas, catalyzing a new wave of research that is contextually grounded, theoretically pluralistic, and methodologically robust. It offers a timely opportunity to reflect on the theory’s evolution, refine its propositions, and extend its relevance in today’s complex global business environment. By doing so, we seek to both honor the legacy of springboard theory and provide a platform for its next phase of theoretical development and empirical application.

Illustrative Research Questions

We invite submissions that engage with, but are not limited to, the following themes:

1. Theoretical Extensions and Boundary Conditions

• Under what conditions does springboarding lead to sustainable, innovation-driven competitive advantage versus failure, retrenchment, or superficial learning?
• How do firm-level characteristics such as ownership structure, digital maturity, organizational culture, and leadership cognition moderate springboarding outcomes?
• In what ways do EMNEs recalibrate their springboarding strategies in response to exogenous shocks including geopolitical tensions, global crises, and changing regulatory environments?
• How can springboard theory better incorporate innovation integration and sustainability imperatives as core outcomes rather than peripheral effects?

2. Compositional and Configurational Perspectives

• How do EMNEs dynamically configure multiple strategic logics, such as exploration, exploitation, and ambidexterity, across their international growth trajectories?
• What compositional pathways do firms follow in different industry and institutional contexts, and how are these shaped by firm history, resource endowments, and network embeddedness?
• How can comparative configurational methods (e.g., fsQCA) enrich our understanding of the diverse and nonlinear springboarding outcomes EMNEs experience?
• How does the digital internationalization context transform or expand traditional compositional pathways?

3. Microfoundations and Entrepreneurial Agency

• How do entrepreneurial intent, leadership cognition, and dynamic capabilities underpin springboarding behavior, particularly in fast-evolving or digital sectors?
• What role does managerial and organizational learning play across successive international ventures and in integrating acquired assets for innovation and sustainability?
• How do EMNEs develop and leverage absorptive capacity to translate cross-border acquisitions into deep innovation and responsible business practices?

4. Springboarding Beyond the Traditional Context

• Can springboard theory effectively explain South–South internationalization, digital-first internationalization, and participation in global digital ecosystems?
• How do state-owned enterprises, born globals, social enterprises, and platform firms deploy springboarding mechanisms uniquely?
• What is the relevance and applicability of springboarding for firms from mid-tier emerging economies such as Southeast Asia, Eastern Europe, and Latin America, which may face distinct institutional and resource constraints?
• How do sustainability and ESG priorities influence springboarding strategies and international expansion decisions?

5. Methodological Innovations

• How can novel methodologies, such as longitudinal process tracing, digital trace data analytics, machine learning, and natural language processing, offer deeper insights into the dynamic, path-dependent, and contextually embedded nature of springboarding?
• In what ways can multi-level, mixed-method, and configurational research designs more effectively capture the complexity, nonlinearity, and feedback loops inherent in EMNE internationalization paths?
• How can quasi-experimental and causal inference techniques improve our understanding of the effects and boundary conditions of springboard strategies?

Manuscript submission information:

Deadlines and submission process

Authors are invited to submit their manuscripts by 31 August 2026 through the Journal of International Management submission system (https://www.editorialmanager.com/intman). To ensure appropriate identification for consideration in this Special Issue, authors should select “VSI: Revisiting and Advancing the Springboard Theory” when choosing the article type. All submissions must conform to the Journal of International Management’s Guide for Authors and will be subject to the journal’s standard double-blind peer review process.

The Guest Editorial Team plans to organize a virtual workshop during May 2026. Guest editors will be available to meet with interested authors and potential contributors during the Academy of International Business (AIB) Conference in Manchester. The workshop will provide an opportunity for scholars to discuss and refine their research ideas in relation to the theme of this Special Issue. Participation in the workshop, however, is not a prerequisite for submission, nor does it imply any commitment regarding the final acceptance of papers.

Enquiries regarding the Special Issue should be directed to the Guest Editors.

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Guest Editors’ Biography

Surender Munjal

Surender Munjal is Professor of International Business at Aston Business School. He is a world-leading expert on cross-border acquisitions, with a particular focus on emerging markets. He has published over fifty peer-reviewed journal articles in top-tier outlets across international business, economics, and management, including JIBS, JPIM, JWB, BJM, and CJE, among others. He is the Founding Secretary and a Fellow the Indian Academy of Management. He has played a vital role in advancing the AIB and AOM communities in the UK and India. Professor Munjal has previously held academic positions at the University of Leeds and the University of Delhi. Before joining Aston, he served as Director of the James E. Lynch India and South Asia Business Centre at University of Leeds for nine years.

Jiatao (JT) Li

Jiatao Li is Chair Professor of Management, Lee Quo Wei Professor of Business, Lee Heng Fellow, and Director of the Center for Business Strategy and Innovation, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. He is a Fellow of the Academy of International Business and an editor of the Journal of International Business Studies. His research interests are in the areas of global strategy, innovation, entrepreneurship, corporate governance, and digital economy. With more than 17,000 Google Scholar citations and over 100 peer-reviewed journal articles, his work has appeared in leading outlets such as, AMJ, AMR, Org Sc, SMJ, and JIBS, among others.

Sumit Kundu

Sumit K. Kundu is a tenured Full Professor and the James K. Batten Eminent Scholar Chair in International Business in the College of Business at Florida International University, Miami, USA. He has published over seventy articles in prestigious international business and management journals, namely, SMJ, JIBS, JMS, GSJ, JWB, BJM, and JBE among others. He is an Associate Editor for JBR and JIM. His research has been widely recognized, with over 10,000 Google Scholar citations. He is a Fellow of the Academy of International Business, a Fellow of the Indian Academy of Management, and a Fellow of the British Academy of Management, Peer Review College. Professor Kundu currently serves as President of the Indian Academy of Management (2024–2026).

Nan Zhou

Nan Zhou is Professor at School of Economics and Management, Tongji University in China. She received a Ph.D. degree from Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, her master degree from National University of Singapore, and her bachelor degree from Tsinghua University. Her research addresses questions that intersect the fields of corporate strategy and international business, focusing primarily on understanding how firm growth is influenced by firm resources and institutional environments in the context of emerging markets. Her publications have appeared in leading journals, such as SMJ, JIBS, JWB, and GSJ, among others.