Home country (in)stability and the locational portfolio construction of emerging market multinational enterprises

•South African EMNEs manage institutional instability (characteristic of emerging markets) by constructing locational portfolios.•They opt for ‘safe’, stable host locations when the home country is unstable, and for riskier, less stable host locations when the home country is stable.•The implication is that how EMNEs view locations evolves.•EMNEs need to hedge risk as a key component of managing performance.•It suggests that managing institutional instability is a feature of EMNEs that deserves more theoretical attention.