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I am proud to be joining the many colleagues who appear in this volume, many younger but some more experienced in the marketing and the international business disciplines, honoring S. Tamer Cavusgil's retirement from Michigan State University. I am proud for many reasons, but mainly because throughout the years I have observed how Tamer's contributions to our professional and personal lives have shaped our growth as a fraternity of business scholars and teachers. I feel very fortunate to have grown as Tamer's colleague through the many papers we have published, the many doctoral students we have mentored, and the many service contributions we have made to the international business field during the past 30 years. I feel luckier, however, that I have come to know this remarkable person as a friend.

This chapter proposes a preliminary evolutionary model of the internationalisation of the small firm which includes consideration of the emergence of an internationalisation culture in this firm. Dynamism in the model is represented by the simultaneity of the interaction between the firm's commitment to the market, its knowledge of the market and its involvement in the market. The overlap and intersection between these constructs reflects an evolving internationalisation culture and represents the degree of internationalisation of the firm. Preliminary case evidence from Australia, and its analysis, offers limited support for the proposed evolutionary model.

A survey of selected theories relevant to foreign direct investment abroad is the basis for predicting when outward FDI from more developed Central European Countries begins. Slovenian experiences are used as case studies. Although inward FDI is still dominant, outward FDI is picking up in terms of sales operations in developed countries, but also as manufacturing units in other Central European countries. It is argued that outward investment can promote the restructuring of traditional industries. Outward FDI is starting today at an earlier stage of development, not only as a result of the accumulation of firm-specific advantages, but also from a position of weakness in order to learn from abroad and to strengthen competitive advantages. Outward FDI enhances the process of restructuring where such internationalisation is synchronised with the loss of comparative advantages of home countries. The case of Slovenia is evaluated in terms of geographical allocation of such investments, sectoral distribution and dynamic changes.

Learning organizations and market orientation are at the center of attention in the 1990s. Many businesses encounter cutthroat competition and operate in a turbulent, international and complex environment. To keep the business going which makes a sound profit is often a difficult challenge. Management theorists and consultants as well as marketing researchers have found these seemingly different concepts from two different disciplines of management as medicines for competition problems. This chapter tries to link these concepts in an empirical study investigating Dutch exporters. The Dutch experiment shows that there is a correlation between learning organizations, market orientation and business performance.

The internalizing decision of export operations inside the firm, with respect to their maintenance in the domain of the market through several mechanisms of external distribution, is examined with data coming from a general sample of 428 Catalan and 1,836 Spanish (non-Catalan) exporters. An interpretive framework for explaining the channel integration decision is designed and tested by means of a logistic regression model. Results seem to confirm, first, a higher relative proportion of firms which externalize their export activities in the market — versus internalize — in both groups and, more interestingly, a higher degree of internalization among Catalan industrial exporters versus the non-Catalan ones. Secondly, some hypotheses related to the selection of the optimal level of channel integration in the international context are also confirmed, though some differences emerge between these two groups of exporters. Finally, several conclusions are derived from the analysis.

As economic transformation swept the world in the last two decades, interest in providing theoretical explanations to economic emergence grew simultaneously. While scholars focused mostly on national development strategies such as import substitution and export promotion, little effort has so far been made to better understand firm behavior, particularly motives and strategies at the micro level. This chapter focuses on understanding the motives and marketing strategies of foreign firms operating in the emerging markets of Central and Eastern Europe. On the basis of data gathered from fieldwork in Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, and Slovenia as part of a major two-year project, the chapter offers insights into why firms might invest in these economies, how they might interact with host governments, what strategic priorities they might follow, how they might approach markets and why, and what competitive battles they might engage in to succeed in these markets. The chapter concludes with suggestions for future research.

Performance of the multinational firm in the special conditions of emerging market economies has become a critical issue in business research. This is because the special conditions of these economies, such as dynamism coupled with uncertainty, rapid change in the structures of firms and economic institutions along with firm and government inertia, and spells of economic growth often simultaneous with phases of deterioration, have all made the measurement of firm performance next to impossible. This chapter develops a conceptual framework and measures that might be used in such performance assessment. It also reports findings from research conducted on multinational companies operating in Turkey. These findings indicate interesting conceptual and managerial implications about competitive marketing, organizational values, and strategy formulation in emerging economy contexts such as Turkey.

The formation of international joint ventures has taken place at an unprecedented rate over the last two decades. Particularly within the context of developing nations, joint ventures have been predominantly preferred by multinationals over other types of strategic alliances. This article seeks to contribute to the comparative analysis of international joint ventures, including firms from developing countries, by conducting a detailed examination of the joint ventures established in Turkey during the 1990s. Particular focus is given on the structure, the reasons for venture formation, and the performance characteristics of these joint ventures. An analysis of foreign capital flows and joint ventures based on secondary research is coupled with an empirical analysis of 34 manufacturing joint ventures in Turkey. The findings are compared to previous studies of joint ventures in other developed and developing market economies.

The rapid transition of the Chinese economic system from centrally planned to market mechanisms created a new market structure and changed the ways in which business had been conducted in China. Among these changes is the transformation in the marketing environment, which has introduced fragmentation and uncertainty and increased the complexity of operations. This chapter discusses the effectiveness of five Belgian joint ventures in China's fragmented environment and demonstrates the contributions they have made in terms of knowledge transfer and organizational learning, particularly in terms of formulating and managing local marketing strategies.

The purpose of this paper is to review the extant literature on the institutional, market‐centered, and the resource‐based perspectives on the internationalization of BGs in emerging markets; to suggest that business group affiliation is an important ingredient in the internationalization of emerging market MNCs; and to offer examples of internationalization from one emerging market, Turkey.

This is a critical literature review integrating two strands of literature, the institutional, market‐centered and resource‐based theories of internationalization and the OLI and the LLL models of emerging market multinationals' international expansion.

The theorizing indicates that an integrated theoretical approach should lead to a better understanding of emerging market business group affiliates' internationalization.

As a literature integration paper, the paper is limited in its practical implications.

The paper is a critical literature review and is likely to lead to testable hypotheses about the internationalization of business group affiliates from emerging markets.