Institutional reforms : a catalyst for liabilities of foreignness in emerging markets

Abstract

This research was motivated by the desire to understand how regulatory reforms affect the task environment in an emerging market. Regulatory reforms in emerging markets have been used amongst others to correct market failures, increase competition or grow economic sectors. However, on occasion unintended consequences arise from these interventions leading to “liabilities of foreignness” for some of the entities operating in the institutional environment. To this end, this study aimed to establish if these effects were prevalent in the South African mining environment by studying two cases of companies operating in the sector, represented by a foreign and a domestic entity.An exploratory qualitative research design was followed since the researcher was unsure whether the phenomena being observed constituted LOFs or not. A literature study was conducted in order to define the construct of liabilities of foreignness and its impact on the task environment. Therefore the objective of the study was to;Establish the effect of institutional reforms in facilitating the development of LOFs in emerging markets.The research did show the regulatory reforms to alter the business environment somewhat, therefore leading to LOFs in the task environment. However, no entities appeared to be benefiting from the current regulatory reforms, as suggested by the literature. This is possibly due to organisational learning or the efficacy of the individual entities in applying coping strategies to mitigate against LOFs in the institutional context.