Work on firm-specific advantages developed by emerging market multinationals largely focuses on their ability to copy those created by similar companies from the developed world. The predominance of new institutional economics in this field has limited our understanding of how these firms develop different firm-specific advantages by presuming not only that the institutional context in advanced industrialized countries is the best for creating such advantages, but also that local context does not shape the potential effectiveness of any such advantage. This article argues that comparative institutionalism better enables scholars to understand this phenomena. However, until now this theory has only examined how firm-specific advantages are derived from country-specific advantages. I argue that it needs to be revised so that it can account for how emerging market multinationals develop firm-specific advantages suited to emerging markets by building on their experience in addressing what this author terms location disadvantages. It illustrates this argument by examining how an Argentine Multilatina, IMPSA, was able to outperform its competitors from the developed world and become the leading producer of dams and windmill parks in Latin America by addressing location disadvantages in supplier markets.

新兴市场跨国公司开发的针对公司的优势的工作主要集中在其复制来自发达国家的类似公司创造的优势的能力上。在这一领域，新制度经济学的盛行限制了我们对这些公司如何发展不同的公司特定优势的理解，这不仅是因为假定发达工业化国家的制度环境是创造这种优势的最佳选择，而且还假定本地环境并不能创造这种优势。塑造任何此类优势的潜在效力。本文认为，比较制度主义可以使学者更好地理解这一现象。但是，到目前为止，该理论仅研究了企业特定优势是如何从国家特定优势中衍生出来的。我认为，需要对其进行修订，以便可以利用新兴市场跨国公司在解决作者所称的地区劣势方面的经验，来解释新兴市场跨国公司如何开发适合新兴市场的特定于公司的优势。它通过研究阿根廷的多边运输商IMPSA如何超越发达国家的竞争对手，并通过解决供应商市场中的地理位置劣势，成为拉丁美洲水坝和风车公园的主要生产商，来说明这一论点。