The springboard perspective argues that emerging market multinational enterprises (EMNEs) can overcome their latecomer disadvantages via aggressive and risk-taking capability-upgrading measures in developed economies. However, extant research is mainly designed to study cross-sectional data sets rather than longitudinal process research. Therefore, the former contributes little to explaining the evolution of EMNEs’ springboard strategy in a consideration of firm-specific capability-upgrading. Building on these main tenets and echoing scholars’ appeal for further research into EMNE’s capability-upgrading and qualitative process perspective, this thesis opens the way for two new avenues of research in the springboard literature: the initial springboard assumption, the springboard advantages of specific host locations – most notably small and open developed economies, and the relationship between different ownership structures and springboard strategy. By default of process research these avenues have been poorly explored. In order to address these avenues and further uncover the evolutionary motivations and processes of springboard behavior, this study uses Chinese multinational enterprise (CMNE) cases to investigate how they achieve firm-specific capability-upgrading through a process perspective.While CMNE strategies in large European markets such as Germany, the UK, and France have received considerable attention, there is a lack of in-depth research on the locational advantages of most notably small and open economies such as Belgium, the Netherlands or Luxemburg. Given the demand for the extension of the aforementioned springboard perspective and the specificity of the research object and setting, I follow a grounded approach as part of inductive research. Grounded theorizing is especially plausible in research contexts calling for theoretical elucidation grounded in the practitioners’ own experiences. This theory can provide a more complete and convincing argument through creative interpretation and ...