TY  - CHAP
AB  - In this chapter, we embrace the recent phenomenon of early internationalizing firms with the goal of understanding these firms in light of decades of research on multinational firms, which has long stressed liabilities of foreignness. It is often implicitly assumed that the only way to reduce liabilities of foreignness is by doing business in foreign markets and learning about the local business environment. However, in this chapter, we focus on several distinctive antecedent firm characteristics that have been shown to facilitate early international expansion by firms, but which are not commonly considered in the international business literature. We perform a systematic review of the literature on early internationalizing firms (following David & Han, 2004), based on the seminal work of Oviatt and McDougall (1994) to guide our analysis of early internationalizing firms and to identify important ways in which these firms differ from multinational firms. We argue that long-standing arguments about the impact of liabilities of foreignness on firm foreign expansion apply to newly internationalizing firms, but that these liabilities are reduced by the experiences and knowledge of the founders and top managers in these firms acquired prior to the inception of these firms.
VL  - 26
SN  - 978-1-78190-713-9, 978-1-78190-712-2/1571-5027
DO  - 10.1108/S1571-5027(2013)0000026020
UR  - https://doi.org/10.1108/S1571-5027(2013)0000026020
AU  - Bals Lydia
AU  - Berry Heather
AU  - Hartmann Evi
AU  - Raettich Gordian
ED  - Timothy M. Devinney
ED  - Torben Pedersen
ED  - Laszlo Tihanyi
PY  - 2013
Y1  - 2013/01/01
TI  - What Do We Know about Going Global Early? Liabilities of Foreignness and Early Internationalizing Firms
T2  - Philosophy of Science and Meta-Knowledge in International Business and Management
T3  - Advances in International Management
PB  - Emerald Group Publishing Limited
SP  - 397
EP  - 433
Y2  - 2024/04/18
ER  -