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The rise of emerging market multinationals (EMNEs) has transformed global business, with many firms expanding internationally to overcome home-country limitations and acquire strategic capabilities. The Springboard Perspective (Luo & Tung, 2007, 2018) explains how EMNEs accelerate their global development by repeatedly engaging in international ventures, particularly in advanced economies, to build capabilities and legitimacy. Over time, the theory has evolved to incorporate entrepreneurial agency and configurational approaches, highlighting the diversity of EMNE pathways.
Despite its influence, important gaps remain, especially concerning the long-term outcomes of springboarding. While CBAs can provide access to advanced technologies and knowledge, sustaining innovation and embedding learning depends on absorptive capacity, strategic alignment, and effective post-entry integration, areas where many EMNEs continue to struggle.
Geopolitical tensions, investment screening, and global decoupling are further constraining traditional asset-seeking acquisitions, especially for Chinese and Indian EMNEs. At the same time, digital internationalization is creating new springboarding routes that do not rely on physical presence or ownership, raising questions about how core theoretical constructs should be reinterpreted in digital, platform-based contexts.
Methodologically, much of the existing literature relies on linear or snapshot analyses, overlooking springboarding as a dynamic, path-dependent process. Newer approaches, such as process tracing, fsQCA, sequence analysis, and digital trace analytics, offer promising tools for studying complexity, non-linearity, and digitally mediated internationalization.
Marking two decades of the Springboard Perspective, this Special Issue calls for renewed theoretical and empirical engagement. It seeks to reassess the theory's assumptions, refine its propositions, and extend its relevance to contemporary challenges involving digitalization, geopolitics, and sustainability.
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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?
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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 "Special Issue Article" 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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