The global economy is increasingly

The global economy is increasingly interconnected, yet the firms achieving significant growth differ markedly from country to
country. In this paper, we propose a rudimentary framework of comparative strategic management (CSM) and use BRIC countries
to elucidate the major components of this framework, including (1) comparison in institutional, economic, and socio-cultural
environments, (2) comparison in strategic orientation, strategy formulation, and strategy implementation, (3) comparison in
capability possession, deployment, and upgrading, and (4) comparison in strategic alignments and their performance
implications. Future research may reference this framework as a platform to further probe trends, nuances and insights in
comparative environments, comparative capabilities, and comparative strategies across emerging economies. The CSM approach
can advance our understanding of what is common and what is not among different emerging economies concerning numerous
strategic management issues so as to help firms competing in these markets optimize their strategic decisions and bolster their
organizational legitimacy.
Research on CSM, especially in the context of emerging markets, becomes more imperative than ever as firms from these
markets are becoming direct competitors in international markets as well as in their home countries. Globalization makes firms
from different emerging economies much more interactive than before, prompting simultaneous competition and cooperation
among them. Meanwhile, profiting from combined comparative advantages at the national level and competitive advantages at
the company level is well received as the dominant logic underlying global strategies. CSM can serve as a diagnostic template in
which researchers and executives are guided to explore appropriate paths for internationally active firms aiming to
simultaneously leverage comparative and competitive advantages through strategic moves. CSM among BRICs seems particularly
compelling and appealing since the commonality and differences in specific environments, firm capabilities, strategic patterns,
and performance implications among these countries are today a black-box that has to be unpacked. Furthermore, international
management scholars can probe how an MNE combines comparative strengths of nations (e.g., diamond conditions) through a
higher degree of external embeddedness in each local environment and a high degree of integration between geographically
dispersed subsidiaries in different nations. Through knowledge sharing and spillover, distinctive competencies and best practices
excelled by MNE subsidiaries are subsequently absorbed by local companies, thus creating another link that reconfigures the
connection between environment differences and capability differences across nations. This suggests that, aside from comparing
differences in environment–strategy and capability–strategy alignments needed in each nation, research in international
management should diagnose how an MNE leverages its internally differentiated yet globally integrated subsidiary network to
synthesize different factors of Porter's diamond (1990) in different countries and build on its competitive advantages not only
within a host country but across host countries in which its subsidiaries operate. In conclusion, to develop this emergent field
further along, we have a long way to go, requiring more scholarly attention to this critical domain. This article, we hope, is a small
step-stone toward this direction.