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Transaction cost economics sees a broad spectrum of governance structures spanned by two types of economic adaptation: autonomous and cooperative. Stakeholder theorists have drawn much inspiration from transaction cost economics but have not paid explicit attention to the centrality of the idea of adaptation in this literature. This study aims to address this gap.

The authors develop a novel conceptual framework applying the distinction between the two types of economic adaptation to stakeholder theory.

The authors argue that the idea of cooperative adaptation is particularly useful for describing the firm’s collaboration with primary stakeholders in the joint value creation process. In contrast, autonomous adaptation is more relevant for firms interacting with secondary stakeholders who are not directly engaged in joint value creation and may not have formal contractual relationships with the firm. Accordingly, cooperative adaptation can be seen as vital for resolving team production problems affecting joint value creation, whereas autonomous adaptation addresses how the firm maintains legitimacy within the larger stakeholder environment.

Similar to its significance for transaction cost economics, the distinction between the two types of adaptation equips stakeholder theory with a new systematic understanding of a potentially broad spectrum of firm–stakeholder collaboration forms.

The motivation for this study comes from decision making related to strategic marketing orientations in international markets. The authors examine if customer orientation and customer relationship orientation perform as two distinct constructs in driving firm innovativeness, and how together they support business growth among export firms. This study aims to suggest a customer-centric strategy for export firms that drive innovativeness and growth.

An international corporation specialized in company information services provided a list of the contact information of Italian companies. The authors sent an email request to respond to an online survey and received 416 effective responses from firms operating in export markets. The authors propose and empirically test a model in which customer orientation, customer relationship orientation and innovativeness predict business growth. This model controls for the effects of firm size, industry and customer type (B2B vs. B2C).

The study findings suggest that customer orientation and customer relationship orientation are two distinct strategic orientations driving innovativeness. However, they do not directly affect business growth. Instead, they require the innovativeness of an exporter to materialize as business growth.

The results of the study recommend business strategies focusing not only on customer needs and satisfaction but also on retaining current customers and building customer relationships in international markets. Firms can learn from international customers and develop effective customer-centric strategies to spread the acquired information into the internal decision-making as it contributes to firm innovativeness and business growth in international markets.

This study is one of the pioneering studies combining customer orientation and customer relationship orientation, showing their theoretical and empirical divergence. This study is also among the first which tests how the two strategic orientations together with innovativeness promote business growth among export firms. The authors add understanding of the synergistic effects both of using customer information and developing deeper relationships on firm innovativeness and performance among exporters.

This study aims to analyse how multinational corporations (MNCs) organise value chain activities to penetrate new market segments. It contributes by expanding traditional decisions regarding the vertical fine-slicing of value chain activities (whether performed internally or externally) and the consideration of resource-sharing decisions (integration or separation) for each value chain function.

The authors draw on primary data collected from two case study firms operating in the large emerging Chinese market: Volvo Construction Equipment AB and Epiroc AB. In-depth cases illustrate how foreign MNCs expand into new market segments and simultaneously target both the lower-priced mid-market and the premium segments in the Chinese mining and construction industry.

The results reveal that product diversification creates challenges for managers who must oversee new (vertical) value chains, often simultaneously. Beyond geography and modes of governance, managers must decide whether to integrate or separate value chain activities for the new product lines. The study identifies four main strategic choices for firms to address this complexity, focusing on the decision to internalise or externalise (i.e. within or across organisational boundaries) and integrate or separate value chain activities between different product lines.

This study builds upon the internalisation theory and recent international business contributions that focus on value chain configurations to explain MNCs’ product diversification as a growth strategy in a host emerging market. It also sheds light on the choice of conducting new activities in-house or externally and elucidates firms’ managerial decisions to operationally integrate or separate individual value chain activities. The study provides insights into the drivers explaining managerial decisions to configure value chain activities across product lines and contributes to the growing body of literature on MNC activities in emerging economies by highlighting that product diversification impacts entry mode diversity and resource sharing across units.

This study aims to increase understanding of factors influencing the international marketing (IM) strategy of products from emerging markets (EMs) to international markets.

This study conducted case studies by collecting qualitative data through semistructured interviews with respondents from four food product companies in Bangladesh.

This study finds that the firms employ local Bangladeshi people who are knowledgeable in the company culture. They strategically focus on countries where the Bangladeshi diaspora lives and initially target them, approaching natives later. They adapt and customize products to the importers’ requirements to make them visible and increase understanding between product providers and local customers. The findings show that EM firms encounter a mentality that poor countries produce poor quality products; this mindset makes the internationalization of their business difficult.

This research contributes to international product marketing of EM firms by constructing a model of a modern people-oriented marketing strategy for food products. This study contributes to literature on culture by illustrating that the cultural dimensions of collectivism and uncertainty avoidance enhance the development of networks and trust and impact marketing strategy.

This study theorizes the importance of context and an innovation-driven modern people-oriented IM strategy that adapts to customers’ preferences for food products and emphasizes the contribution of diaspora. This research reveals that Bangladeshi firms face challenges both because customers link the country and the companies to low-quality products and because governmental regulations prevent them from establishing a local presence in other countries. This study analyzes challenges EM firms face in the process of IM and the factors affecting Bangladesh in particular.

In this paper, the authors aim to introduce international dynamic marketing capabilities (IDMCs) theoretically derived from marketing capabilities (MCs), dynamic marketing capabilities (DMCs) and international marketing capabilities (IMCs) and provide a novel conceptualization of the concept by applying a holistic view of the international enterprise.

This is a literature review that maps the current research on MCs, DMCs and IMCs and serves as a basis for the theoretical conceptualization of a novel IDMCs concept as well as for the identification of research gaps and the development of future research directions on this phenomenon.

Existing typologies of MCs, DMCs and IMCs are classified into four categories: strategic, operational, analytical and value creation capabilities. A new typology of IDMCs is proposed, consisting of digital MC and dynamic internationalization capability as strategic capabilities, agile IMC, IM excellence and absorptive capability in IM as operational capabilities, IM resilience capability, IM knowledge management capability, AI-enabled IDMC and Industry 4.0-enabled IDMC as analytical capabilities, and ambidextrous IM innovation capability as value creation capability. Finally, the authors identify research gaps and develop research questions that open future research avenues for the coming years.

This paper offers a novel view of MCs, DMCs and IMCs and argues that, in contrast to the majority of previous research, a comprehensive understanding of these is only possible if all levels are considered simultaneously: the strategic, the operational, the analytical and the value creation level. A new conceptualization and typology of IDMCs follows this logic.

This paper aims to provide a bibliometric meta-analysis of the already substantial and growing literature on international franchising. Franchising is a model for businesses to achieve scale with limited resources. International franchising is a mode of entry that allows firms to develop new markets with relatively little risk but also little control.

Using a systematic approach, the paper identifies all articles in the ISI Web of Science from 1970 to 2018 that includes the term international franchising (in the title, the abstract or keywords) and finds 131 articles. This paper used HistCite software to analyze the bibliometric data.

Four major research clusters in the international franchising literature are identified. In addition, this study shows a change in research patterns regarding topics, theories and methodologies from the 1970s through 2018. The paper presents the most influential articles, authors and journals.

From the analyzes, this study develops a conceptual framework of international franchising and suggest avenues for future research.

The aim of this study is to develop and evaluate a market-oriented business model (MOBM) and analyze how it contributes to internationalization of SMEs' disruptive innovation.

Based on market orientation literature, an MOBM is developed and assessed through collaboration among companies, researchers and networking partners. For the evaluation of the model, qualitative data was collected through workshops, interviews and participatory observations at four case SMEs. Methodologically, the implementation of the MOBM consists of a systematic knowledge development process by following four work packages to support the companies' market-oriented internationalization.

The results show that SMEs face internal barriers to developing innovativeness that hinder them from creating effective disruptive innovation for the international buyer chain. The study finds that SMEs need to work with an MOBM for developing market intelligence within the organization and seek external support for entering the international market.

The methodological strength allows application, evaluation and modification of the MOBM in close collaboration with the SMEs that directly benefit from its implementation. Modifying the principles of market orientation by practical application, SMEs can apply the MOBM to analyze their internationalization capacity for high-tech disruptive innovations.

This article contributes to new thinking by introducing market orientation to SMEs' internationalization of disruptive innovation. The study highlights the less researched field of disruptive innovation by developing the MOBM to deal with SMEs' internationalization.

The Norwegian travel industry faces decline in important international tourism segments and needs an industry wide and future‐oriented strategy to face these challenges. Accordingly, a common understanding of future drivers and different scenarios for the industry is needed. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Using the process of scenario analysis and drawing upon the involvement of the tourism industry, this paper describes the method, drivers, scenarios, and implications.

The research identified six important drivers with predictable outcomes: uneven global economic development, digitalization, climate change, consumer demand – return on time, centralization, and demography. The Norwegian economy and Norwegian politics were the two drivers that stood out as the most significant for the tourism industry, with a very uncertain outcome, and constituted the two axes of the scenarios. This resulted in four scenarios: Money Rules, The Urban Diamond, Opportunities for All, and Master Plan.

The four scenarios represent different economic value of international tourism in Norway. The Opportunities for All and Master Plan scenarios represent the greatest economic value for Norwegian tourism. They indicate great opportunities for tourism to become the “new oil” in Norway if the oil economy declines. The two scenarios differ with respect to the degree of governance control vs market liberalization. The scenarios will be used to identify implications and risks for different parts of the tourism industry, and to further explore how governance control and market liberalization may be combined.

The research identified six drivers which are significant for the Norwegian tourism industry. This resulted in four scenarios which are used to identify implications and risks for different parts of the industry.

This paper aims to examine the growth rates of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) over a three-year period, the relationship between firm size and firm growth in the context of SMEs, and the effect of marketing capability (MC) on firm growth and how it relates to firm size. The theoretical framework is based on the resource-based view and dynamic capabilities.

Data were gathered from Finnish SMEs (n = 214) and analyzed with Latent growth curve modeling (structural equation modeling). Respondents were chief executive officers or company owners.

Results show that firm size is unrelated to the rate of change, and MC has a significant effect on both the intercept and slope parameters. Smaller SMEs have less MC than larger SMEs.

While the overall human resources level of the SME is not linked to the rate of growth, MC is. This is an important point for small business growth studies, for it shows what type of personnel is called for during rapid growth. SMEs could advance significantly and rapidly if they invest in versatile human capital, especially in the marketing area.

Majority of the MC research involves larger corporations. This study brings new insights from SME perspective. In addition, this study suggests that it is imperative to consider different types of growth separately. This study contributes to this need by demonstrating the connection between employee growth rate and MC in SMEs.

This study aims to investigate whether the participation in land rental markets helps to mitigate impacts by climate change on multidimensional poverty in Thailand and Vietnam.

The authors use precipitation data from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and self-reported shocks from the Thailand Vietnam Socio-Economic Panel (TVSEP) project to estimate climate change. Data from the TVSEP are also used to calculate a multidimensional poverty index (MPI). Fixed-effect logit panel regressions with interaction terms are implemented to analyze the above mentioned.

The results show that land rental markets are used as mitigation strategies to climate change in Thailand and Vietnam. The participation in land rental markets also reduces multidimensional poverty. However, as a mitigation strategy, land rental markets are only successful in certain circumstances.

The results show that there is potential in using land rental markets as mitigation strategies to climate change. Further research is needed to better understand which adaptation strategies, besides land rental market participation, and which combinations of different adaptation strategies are successful to mitigate negative effects induced by climate change.

The results show that there is potential in using land rental markets as mitigation strategies to climate change. Therefore, education in the participation in land rental markets and how to use them as a mitigation strategy can be a way to increase households' resilience to negative effects induced by climate change. Households make better decisions regarding their land when they are better informed on the functionality of land rental markets. Additionally, being better informed increases self-confidence to participate in land-rental markets.

Land rental markets as a mitigation strategy to climate change rarely have been studied, and if so, mainly the effect of leasing land has been studied. Additionally, the authors implement new measures of poverty – a multidimensional view on poverty which provides new insights into who are the poor and how they can be lift out of poverty.