Abstract
"My thesis is presented in the form of three research papers (Chapter 3, 4 and 5). The introductory chapter presents a detailed background on the two research streams upon which my research rests i.e. „Strategic Management‟ and „International Business‟. From the strategic management perspective, the first paper explores and identifies key knowledge management processes among international joint venture partners while doing innovation in emerging markets. The research question is: How do knowledge management processes in IJVs enable innovation in emerging markets? Therein I elaborate on the theoretical background of literature in the fields of resource and knowledge based view and international joint ventures. The second and third papers use the lens of international business perspective to identify and explain certain innovation processes that respond to emerging market issues. This leads us to the second research question of: How do organizations innovate and what kind of innovation processes do they develop to respond to typically emerging economy issues? While innovating, these actors help to further develop and build nascent industries in these markets. This brings us to the third and final research question of: how do actors build markets in emerging countries? In this chapter, I further present detailed literature on emerging markets with focus on the bottom of the pyramid (BOP) segment and innovation studies. The anchor themes for all the three papers are: the given context of an emerging market (India), a nascent industry (insurance sector), with similar organizational structure (IJVs) and innovation being the outcome under analysis. The thesis is presented as follows: Chapter - 1 provides the basic foundation of literature review on the two streams of strategic management and international business, further analyzed in detail in the three research papers accordingly. Chapter - 2 presents details on empirical setting, research design, sources of data and case studies. The three papers are then presented in Chapters - 3, 4 and 5 respectively. Finally, Chapter - 6 elucidates on the contributions, limitations, discussing avenues for future research summing up with brief conclusion of my thesis."