Purpose

First developed in the 1980s, one of the most essential ideas in international business research has the been the concept of emerging markets. Since the start of the twenty-first century, empirical research has shown that there is no clear correlation between long-term real growth in gross domestic product and real equity returns in firms active in emerging markets. The purpose of this paper is to develop an explanation for both the pervasiveness and endurance of the emerging market discourse despite empirical evidence that substantially questions its very robustness.

Design/methodology/approach

The author offers a “weak form” critique of the emerging market discourse that identifies weaknesses and gaps in the emerging market concept and offers suggestions on how to modify it without fundamentally rejecting its conceptual and ideological core. This paper also offers a “strong form” critique of emerging markets as a discourse arguing that the discourse itself is actually propagated to maintain and reinforce global economic inequality and should, therefore, be fundamentally transformed.

Findings

Based on the strong form critique of emerging markets discourse, this paper shows how a three-phase process allows emerging market discourse to engender strategic and public policy practice. Scholars and educators play a pivotal role through their writing and discursive interactions with students and executives in their classroom. The centrality of scholars and educators is supported by the broader media ecosystem as well as being reinforced by interactions between executives and policymakers.

Practical implications

This paper makes the case that international business scholars and educators should play a leading role in fundamentally transforming the emerging market discourse and to launch a renewed critical, inter-subjective discussion of dependency and global inequality through three mechanisms: peer-review research; course syllabi and programs; and public intellectualism.

Originality/value

Through critical discourse analysis, this paper addresses for the first time how emerging markets as a concept has prospered in academic and managerial circles despite credible empirical evidence of its lack of robustness.

中文翻译：

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是时候为新兴市场打电话了：批评和新议程

目的

新兴市场的概念最早出现于 80 年代，是国际商业研究中最重要的思想之一。自二十一世纪初以来，实证研究表明，活跃于新兴市场的公司的国内生产总值长期实际增长与实际股本回报之间没有明显的相关性。本文的目的是对新兴市场话语的普遍性和持久性做出解释，尽管实证证据严重质疑其稳健性。

设计/方法/途径

作者对新兴市场话语提出了一种“弱形式”批评，指出了新兴市场概念中的弱点和差距，并就如何在不从根本上拒绝其概念和意识形态核心的情况下对其进行修改提出了建议。本文还提供了对新兴市场话语的“强形式”批评，认为话语本身实际上是为了维持和加强全球经济不平等而传播的，因此应该从根本上转变。

发现

基于对新兴市场话语的强形式批判，本文展示了一个三阶段过程如何让新兴市场话语产生战略和公共政策实践。学者和教育工作者通过他们在课堂上与学生和高管的写作和话语互动发挥着举足轻重的作用。学者和教育工作者的中心地位得到更广泛的媒体生态系统的支持，并通过高管和政策制定者之间的互动得到加强。

实际影响

本文认为，国际商业学者和教育工作者应该在从根本上改变新兴市场话语方面发挥主导作用，并通过三种机制发起关于依赖和全球不平等的新的批判性、主体间讨论：同行评审研究；课程大纲和程序；和公共知识分子。

原创性/价值

通过批判性话语分析，本文首次阐述了新兴市场作为一个概念如何在学术界和管理界蓬勃发展，尽管有可靠的经验证据表明其缺乏稳健性。