Investigating the causal configurations of cost-efficient firms at the bottom of the pyramid

Shubhabrata Basu, Surender Munjal, Ashish Malik and Demetris Vrontis

International Business Review, 2021, vol. 30, issue 5

Abstract: This study highlights how social and commercial enterprises with local and global presence, balance their economic and social goals, to sustainably serve the bottom-of-the-pyramid (BoP) markets, predominantly in emerging economies. Employing the lens of transaction cost economics and configurational theory, we propose that successful venturing into the BoP markets, sensitize firms to create appropriate governance mechanisms for reducing transaction costs, resulting in creation and capture of values. Further, these mechanisms enable those firms to attain cost efficiency and sustainability in the process of fulfilling their social objectives. To that end, we employed the case survey method to analyse 42 cases, from the Harvard Business School repository, on multinational enterprises (MNEs) in emerging economies. Further, we used qualitative comparative analysis to uncover the various causal governance configurations that enabled those firms to sustainably serve the BoP markets.

Keywords: Bottom-of-the-pyramid; Transaction cost; Social and commercial enterprises; Causal configurations; Fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0969593121000172
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:iburev:v:30:y:2021:i:5:s0969593121000172

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/133/bibliographic
http://www.elsevier. ... me/133/bibliographic

DOI: 10.1016/j.ibusrev.2021.101810

Access Statistics for this article

International Business Review is currently edited by P. Ghauri

More articles in International Business Review from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().