It’s no exaggeration to say Regents’ Professor S. Tamer Cavusgil and coauthors wrote the book on emerging markets. Since its first publication in 2002, “Doing Business in Emerging Markets” has been the go-to international business textbook for thousands of undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral students, as well as executives helming global firms. A second edition followed in 2012.
S. Tamer Cavusgil
Cavusgil, executive director of the Georgia State University Center for International Business & Education Research (GSU-CIBER) made excellent use of the coronavirus lockdown that began in March 2020 by co-authoring an entirely new edition of the popular publication in record time.
For the third edition, released in 2021, Cavusgil enlisted Professor Leigh Anne Liu, director of the Institute of International Business, and Pervez Ghauri, professor of international business at the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom. Ghauri worked with Cavusgil on the second edition.
“As soon as we realized that we would not return to classrooms and offices, I told Pervez that this may be an opportune time and invited Leigh Anne to join us,” Cavusgil recalled. “We completed the book in five months—sometimes working around the clock!”
“Doing Business in Emerging Markets” is designed for international business students, researchers, practitioners, and more. It’s the leading textbook for undergraduate and graduate courses on Doing Business in Emerging Markets at Georgia State University.
The third edition is an entirely new book that takes a managerial and strategic approach and offers implementable analytical frameworks. It also adds—for the first time—13 original case studies that bring the excitement of emerging markets to life. Further, it reflects how the pandemic created uncertainty as to the future and its implications for emerging markets.
Leigh Anne Liu
“The pandemic’s impact on the world gave us a sense of purpose and urgency to write the book last summer and to analyze both timely and timeless issues,” says Leigh Ann Liu, co-author and professor in the Institute of International Business. “Timely issues include disruption of global supply chain, mobility of people, diversity and inequality in globalization, digital innovation and upskilling. Timeless issues include intercultural dynamics, relationship management, entrepreneurship, sustainability, and innovation.”
Pandemic aside, emerging markets have fundamentally changed with each edition of the book.
When the first edition was published in 2003, Cavusgil says emerging markets had revolutionized the global marketplace with an impressive rise of rapidly industrializing, liberal economies. They became the global economic players starting in the 1980s.
For the second edition published in 2013, Cavusgil says, “We had to tell the remarkable rise of middle-class consumers and households in emerging markets as a result of marketplace reforms, ambitious economic growth, and bold ambitions of emerging markets.”
In the latest edition published this year, a more cautious, selective strategy was recommended for western managers. Cavusgil says, “While many emerging markets are still very attractive, they evolved, built robust indigenous firms and multinationals, and some now have been caught unprepared by the global pandemic.”
Liu adds, “The geopolitical tensions and turbulent trade wars of the last few years, although unsettling, also offers opportunities for us to go beyond the west- or U.S.-dominated ways of thinking and practice to study and learn from perspectives indigenous to emerging markets, where their long historical and philosophical legacies have so much to offer.”
As the world enters a new normal, emerging markets that continue to do well include South Korea, Taiwan, China, and Chile. Those that have gone astray with the onset of oppressive regimes, corruption, etc. include Brazil, Turkey, and Venezuela. Those that have ‘fallen off’ as emerging markets include South Africa, Nigeria, Pakistan and Egypt.
These changes in the new world order are reflected in the image chosen for the cover—a suspension bridge over the Bosporus River in Istanbul. The Yavuz Sultan Selim Bridge was completed around 2018, but the photo was deliberately chosen to show the bridge during construction.
“The message we wish to convey is that the story of emerging markets and the linkage between east and west is always incomplete,” says Cavusgil. “Emerging markets continue to evolve in fundamental ways and their full story has yet to be told.”
Originally written and published by Robinson College of Business Communications, October 1, 2021.