Abstract
This chapter discusses how corporate core values enable an emerging market enterprise to enter sophisticated international markets and achieve technology and brand upgrade. The chapter starts with a brief introduction of Huawei. The main body of the chapter first examines the manifestation of its core values, namely “staying customer-centric” and “inspiring dedication”. We then discuss how core values support the strategy implementation of Huawei in terms of local immersion, dynamic location choices, and heavy investment in research and development. By sketching the essential elements of the internationalization strategies of Huawei, the chapter not only extends the academic literature on emerging market multinational enterprises (MNEs) but also enriches the knowledge of managers working in such MNEs.
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Notes
- 1.
Huawei’s official website provides a full list of main milestones in its internationalization process (http://www.huawei.com/en/about-huawei/milestone). Accessed 12 June 2017.
- 2.
We collected information from media reports, books, and public speeches of Zhengfei Ren and his colleagues, Huawei’s annual reports, and Huawei Xinsheng’s online community. Moreover, in April 2017, we visited the headquarters of Huawei in Shenzhen and interviewed three senior managers who had worked as overseas country-level managers in Asia , Europe , and Africa in the past 15 years. We have kept their names anonymous for privacy purposes.
- 3.
“Staying customer-centric and inspiring dedication” has been the most frequently quoted value on the Huawei website and in its annual reports, although a more recent full expression of its core values is “staying customer-centric, inspiring dedication, persevering, and growing by self-reflection” (De Cremer and Tao 2015). This chapter will focus on these two values.
- 4.
One of the authors communicated with David Strehlow during the meeting.
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Deng, Z., Zou, Y., Mao, JY. (2018). Unconventional Internationalization of Huawei: The Role of Core Values. In: Iñiguez de Onzoño, S., Ichijo, K. (eds) Business Despite Borders. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76306-4_13
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