Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Business Research journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jbusres Managing institutional voids: A configurational approach to understanding high performance antecedents ☆ Esteban R. Brenes a, ⁎ ,1 , Luciano Ciravegna b,1 , Caleb A. Pichardo a,1 a INCAE Business School, Costa Rica b King's College, University of London, United Kingdom and INCAE Business School, Costa Rica ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Qualitative comparative analysis Institutions Strategy Transaction costs Organizational configurations Family business Networks Latin America Agribusiness ABSTRACT This study analyzes the known antecedents of firm performance in emerging markets. It proposes a configura- tional approach for identifying the combinations of antecedents that are equifinally linked to high performance under different levels of institutional voids. The paper examines a sample of 200 firms based in 12 economies, focusing on the role of family management, vertical integration, firm size, internationalization and collaboration with other organizations. This study extends the research agenda on strategy and performance in emerging markets through a novel methodological approach, focusing on asymmetric and equifinal causal relationships. It examines an understudied region (Latin America) and industry (Agribusiness). 1. Introduction This study examines organizational configurations linked to high/ low performance in emerging markets, exploring how they vary de- pending on institutional voids. The weakness of markets' supporting institutions—or institutional voids—affect emerging markets by in- creasing the costs of doing business by, for example, making it cum- bersome to obtain permits or to enforce contracts (Aulakh & Kotabe, 2008; Khanna & Palepu, 2000). Empirical evidence illustrates that firms based in emerging markets use different governance structures and strategies, such as family management and network collaborations, to manage institutional voids (Claessens, Djankov, Fan, & Lang, 2003; Gammeltoft, Barnard, & Madhok, 2010; Hoskisson, Eden, Lau, & Wright, 2000; Luo, 2003; Miller, Lee, Chang, & Breton-Miller, 2010). 2 Institutional voids are a common feature of emerging markets, but their severity varies greatly from one emerging market to another (Acemoglu, Robinson, & Woren, 2012; Luo, Sun, & Wang, 2011). In Latin America, some markets, such as Haiti, consistently rank among the worst performers in most indexes measuring institutional voids, whereas others, such as Chile, have dramatically improved the quality of their pro-market institutions and now outrank some developed economies. What remains unclear is whether and how the combination of factors that allows firms to be successful changes across countries affected by high or moderate institutional voids (Cuervo-Cazurra, Ciravegna, Melgarejo, & Lopez, 2017; Narayanan & Fahey, 2005; Peng, Sunny, Brian, & Hao, 2009). This study addresses this gap in the lit- erature by examining the antecedents of high performance of 200 firms operating in 12 emerging markets affected differently by institutional voids. The institutional perspective and the literature on emerging markets provide empirical evidence of the strategies that firms use to compensate for institutional voids. Such strategies generally involve managing transactions through non-market mechanisms, such as in- ternalizing them or using relational governance systems (Chittoor, Ray, Aulakh, & Sarkar, 2008; Hoskisson et al., 2000; Khanna & Yafeh, 2007; Kumar, Mudambi, & Gray, 2013). However, it is unclear whether any of these theory-grounded antecedents is, per se, sufficient to achieve high performance and what other antecedents need to be combined with it for the outcome to occur. For example, being vertically integrated may lead to high performance only if the firm also engages in inter- nationalization to diversify from the risk of depending on an in- stitutionally weak domestic market. In this hypothetical case, high performance would entail a combination of two antecedents, neither of https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2018.03.022 Received 20 March 2017; Received in revised form 12 March 2018; Accepted 19 March 2018 ☆ The authors are grateful to Constanza Bianchi and Santiago Mingo for their support and comments. This study was sponsored by the Steve Aronson Chair of Strategy and Agribusiness, INCAE Business School. ⁎ Corresponding author. 1 INCAE Business School, 2 km west of Procesa Nursery # 1, La Garita, Alajuela, Costa Rica. E-mail addresses: esteban.brenes@incae.edu (E.R. Brenes), luciano.ciravegna@incae.edu (L. Ciravegna), caleb.pichardo@incae.edu (C.A. Pichardo). 2 There are numerous ways to define institution. We focus here on formal institutions—ones that are formally defined, as opposed to, for example, those based on customs and unwritten rules. Journal of Business Research xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx 0148-2963/ © 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Please cite this article as: Brenes, E.R., Journal of Business Research (2018), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2018.03.022