This paper provides a dynamic view of the international expansion of emerging multinational companies (EMNCs), by combining the framework of country-specific advantages (CSAs) and firm-specific advantages (FSAs) with an analysis of the value chain disaggregation. We study 417 acquisitions in Western countries, made by EMNCs from Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRICs) between 2000 and 2007. The internationalisation strategies of EMNCs are disentangled by analysing three dimensions: home country characteristics, technology intensity of target and acquirer industries, and industrial relatedness between target and acquirer firms. Results show that horizontal and vertical acquisitions are driven by strong CSAs based on national endowments and aim at upgrading the weak FSAs of EMNCs; conglomerate investments are driven by CSAs that rely on the institutional context of the BRICs, and related investments are used to implement diversification strategies without connections to CSAs. EMNCs have evolved from performing low value added activities to high value added upstream and downstream activities, which facilitate the future empowerment of FSAs
