Submit a Manuscript to the Journal
Emerging Markets Finance and Trade
For a Special Issue on
Corporate Transformation in a Changing Landscape: Integrating Technology, Institutions, and Governance
Manuscript deadline
Special Issue Editor(s)
Yanmin He,
Otemon Gakuin University, Japan
[email protected]
Xikai Chen,
California State University, USA
[email protected]
Dongyang Zhang,
Capital University of Economics and Business
[email protected]
Corporate Transformation in a Changing Landscape: Integrating Technology, Institutions, and Governance
Contemporary markets are undergoing profound transformations driven by digitalization, intelligentization, institutional change, and shifting patterns of corporate governance. Digital technologies, including artificial intelligence, big data analytics, platform infrastructures, and digital finance, are reshaping the way firms operate, compete, and create value. At the same time, firms across diverse institutional contexts continue to face substantial institutional frictions, such as regulatory uncertainty, weak market intermediaries, uneven enforcement, financing constraints, and trade disruptions. These frictions not only condition firms’ strategic choices but also shape how technology adoption translates into organizational upgrading, governance reform, and international competitiveness.
Recent research has made important progress in examining digital transformation, corporate governance, institutional environments, and firm behavior across different market contexts. However, these streams remain relatively fragmented. Studies on enterprise digital transformation often emphasize technology adoption and productivity consequences, while work on corporate governance and strategic adaptation tends to focus on ownership structures, boards, incentives, or institutional contingencies. Similarly, research on institutional frictions in finance and trade has generated valuable insights into constraints faced by firms yet has not been sufficiently integrated with the emerging literature on digital governance, Intelligentization, and firm-level transformation.
This Special Issue aims to bring these conversations together. It seeks to advance a more integrated understanding of how technology, institutions, and governance interact to shape firm behavior and market evolution in contexts characterized by institutional complexity and rapid change. In particular the Special Issue will explore the economic/financial consequences from digital governance frameworks, enterprise digital and intelligent transformation, corporate governance mechanisms, and firms’ strategic adaptation jointly influence innovation.
Submissions may address, but are not limited to, the following topics:
- Digital governance, regulation, and corporate adaptation
- Data governance, cybersecurity, and privacy protection
- Corporate digital transformation
- Artificial intelligence, Intelligentization, and organizational upgrading
- Corporate governance and strategic adaptation in emerging markets
- Corporate governance, finance, and trade under institutional frictions
- Institutional frictions, digital finance, and firms’ access to capital
- Geopolitical uncertainty and firms’ strategic reconfiguration
- New trends in innovation, productivity, and value creation
- ESG, sustainability, and responsible governance
- Cross-country differences in technology institutions, and governance
- Alternative data and new measurement approaches
Guest Editor
He, Yanmin, Otemon Gakuin University, Japan
Chen, Xikai, California State University, America
Zhang, Dongyang, Capital University of Economics and Business, China
Symposium
A special issue linked symposium will be undertaken in August/September 2026. Selected papers presented at the conference are going to be invited to submit to the special issue. The date and venue shall be announced in due course.
Kindly note that presenting at the symposium is not a pre-condition for special issue submission. Authors are welcome to submit the papers once the special issue portal is opened.
Submission Instructions
Submission Instructions
Authors will be invited to submit original and unpublished manuscripts that make significant theoretical and or empirical contributions to the study of emerging markets. All submissions should follow the journal’s author guidelines and will be subject to the journal’s standard double-blind peer-review process.
The paper should be Grammarly checked, and no more than 8,000 words. When submit to the EMFT, in the submission portal, select "Regular Issue/Symposium". In the "Special issue or article collection name", choose "Corporate Transformation in a Changing Landscape" as the targeted SI.
Submissions should be made through the journal’s online submission system. Authors are encouraged to select the Special Issue title from the submission portal when available. Questions regarding the fit of manuscripts or the scope of the Special Issue may be directed to the Guest Editors: [[email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]].