In Chapter 1, I address the continuing demand for a moral foundation for capitalism from the perspective of business leaders, business educators, and policymakers. These parties have been heavily impacted by the neoclassical economic view of capitalism based on narrow self-interest. I begin by discussing the demand for a moral foundation from the perspective of business leaders attempting to return to the stakeholder view of corporate responsibility that existed before the influence of the Chicago School. Next, I discuss the demand from the perspective of business educators attempting to return to the moral foundation provided by the early founders of the university-based business school. Finally, I discuss the demand from the perspective of policymakers attempting to return to an enlightened public policy that meets the broader needs of capitalist society. I conclude by outlining the leading characters and themes contained in this book. The search for a moral foundation for capitalism is not new. It has a long history going back to Adam Smith and the Scottish Enlightenment. The purpose of this book is to tell the story of this search through the lives and writings of its leading characters.

In this chapter, we integrated data obtained from the interviews conducted with business leaders from seventy-two companies across twelve emerging markets in five continents to better understand which capabilities leaders of emerging market multinationals identify as being strategic. In doing so, we examined which capabilities appear to be commonly assessed as being strategic across our study contexts, and which ones varied by industry, company multinationality, and country of origin. In particular, we examined emerging market companies headquartered in Eastern Europe (Russia and Poland), Asia (China, India, and Kazakhstan), Latin America (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru) and Africa (South Africa). Looking across the various capabilities identified by the senior managers in our study, our results suggest that the strategic capabilities needed by emerging market firms to be successful outside their home markets occur at multiple levels, including management level, firm level, industry level, and national level. These capabilities influence both a firm’s ability to internationalize and its ability to be successful, abilities that often have reinforcing influences on each other.