The key elements of strategic leadership capabilities to the latecomer firm: the case of RT Mart’s success in the Chinese retail industry

Many international business researchers have made strenuous efforts to examine the influences of strategic leadership capabilities on organizational performance. However, when it comes down to latecomer firms from the Asia-Pacific region, there have been very few attempts to illuminate how the strategic role and capabilities of CEOs and top management teams are crucial to achieve successful internationalization. This, in turn, poses a substantial challenge to account for the case of RT Mart in one of the most competitive global market from the systematic framework of latecomer pathways. The main findings of the study suggest that a comprehensive perspective is needed on strategic leadership and its developmental process in explaining the success of challenger firms outperforming the incumbents. The changing context and micro foundation of the company is critical step in organizational transformation, rooted in leadership capabilities and activities, including absorptive and adaptive capacity, social intelligence, and capacity to leverage resource. It signifies the synergy effect of the four variables in the function of temporality and stages with the relative strength of the capacity to leverage resource by filling the gaps between the global and local dimensions, and by providing room for exploration and experimentation.