Introduction: Emerging MNCs and socioeconomic dynamics in Asia*

Abstract

© 2021. All Rights Reserved.This special issue is the brainchild of the research project What Roles do Globalizing Actors Play?, which began in 2018 with the research grant from the Global Research Network program of the National Research Foundation of Korea.1 The research project aims to have a better understanding of globalizing actors within or working with multinational companies (MNCs)—individuals and organizations who create, diffuse, interpret and negotiate norms across international operations (Kern et al. 2019). In pursuing this goal, we conducted in-depth case studies of three Korean multinational corporations (MNCs), including more than 100 interviews with senior and middle managers in Korean headquarters and the foreign subsidiaries in China, Vietnam, and the United States. To share our research findings and establish an international network of researchers interested in investigating actors' roles in the MNCs' globalization process embedded and disembedded in formal and informal institutions, we planned a large-scale international academic conference in April 2020. Although the Covid-19 pandemic, unfortunately, forced us to cancel the planned event, the preparation process revealed the researchers with shared topical interest and our common understanding of Asia as a site of MNC operation and the source of emerging MNCs. Consequently, we gathered these researchers for a virtual workshop