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An appropriate labour context involving effective human resources practices plays a vital role in encouraging and supporting services sector activities. The importance of these practices is great in emerging economies given their lack of contract-enforcing mechanisms and wide gaps in education and infrastructure. In the dynamic environment that emerging countries face, it is necessary to update information regarding the opportunities and hampers that firms´ managers encounter. In this area, Latin American emerging markets have been under-represented in management and strategy literature. This book, therefore, contributes to a deeper understanding of restaurant managers´ perceptions regarding opportunities and hazards of the Mexican labor institutional context. It focuses specifically on the relationship between firms´ characteristics, its resources, the institutional context surrounding them and the strategies developed by managers. This work should be useful to firms´ managers and opinion leaders suggesting them strategic responses to deal with institutional restrictions or even to turn them into opportunities.

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P.H.D. Doctoral Program in Economics and Social Sciences at Johannes Kepler Universität Linz. Head of International Business Administration department at UDLAP, Puebla, Mexico.

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