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Attempts to consider how a founder has reduced equivocality in relation to support networks and reducing risks, especially in an international environment. Presents the case studies of five Danish and Australian born global companies. Considers different global models and their limitations. Presents the findings of recent surveys in this area. Concludes that internationalization has not been the primary objective in the founding process and gives direction for further research.

Compares consumer preferences for goods made abroad and in the home country by both foreign and home‐country firms. These preferences and the intervening role of price‐quality attributes are assessed in an empirical study using conjoint analysis and a MANOVA procedure. Results suggest that country of manufacture and product quality strongly influence consumer decision making in globally available product categories. Specifically, compared to imported goods, consumers appear to prefer domestically manufactured goods and are often willing to pay a higher price for them. It is usually only when imported goods are of significantly superior quality that consumers will pay more to obtain them. Finally, in their purchase decisions, consumers appear not to put much weight on a product’s perceived importance to the home country’s manufacturing base.

This chapter complements the one that appeared as “History of the AIB Fellows: 1975–2008” in Volume 14 of this series (International Business Scholarship: AIB Fellows on the First 50 Years and Beyond, Jean J. Boddewyn, Editor). It traces what happened under the deanship of Alan Rugman (2011–2014) who took many initiatives reported here while his death in July 2014 generated trenchant, funny, and loving comments from more than half of the AIB Fellows. The lives and contributions of many other major international business scholars who passed away from 2008 to 2014 are also evoked here: Endel Kolde, Lee Nehrt, Howard Perlmutter, Stefan Robock, John Ryans, Vern Terpstra, and Daniel Van Den Bulcke.

Increasing numbers of small and medium sized firms (SMEs) are becoming active in international business. This phenomenon is being facilitated by numerous trends in the macro-environment of the firm. However, SMEs are typically quite resource-constrained relative to their larger, traditional rivals. Many SMEs fail to bridge the gap between initial exporting efforts and ultimate success abroad. We propose a number of programs that governments can implement to help SMEs in overcoming the initial, challenging period of internationalization.

There is much research suggesting that the image consumers hold about a product’s country of origin can influence their purchase decision, but little empirical work has focused on the underlying cognitive processing. A flexible model is devised and tested to represent country image processing, using data from large samples of US and Japanese consumers. In addition to strongly supporting the validity of the model, results suggest that country image cognitive processing is significantly more complex than previously thought, and that culture appears to play an important role in purchase decisions. The flexible model represents a substantive improvement in the depiction of cognitive processing regarding country‐of‐origin image.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of entrepreneurial orientation and networking capabilities of born global firms in an emerging market on marketing strategy and foreign market performance.

Structural equation modeling was used to analyze data from 1,001 internationalized firms in an emerging market and to test seven hypotheses regarding the development of marketing strategy and foreign market performance.

Marketing strategy was found to mediate the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation and networking capability and foreign market performance, while foreign market performance is affected by entrepreneurial orientation and marketing strategy.

Research on emerging market multinationals can be merged with that of born globals to augment our understanding of how early internationalizers from emerging markets perform in foreign markets.

This study is among the few focusing on born globals in emerging markets, which face the difficulties of newness and limited resources, as well as characteristics of emerging markets, such as institutional voids.

The paper published below was prepared by Taylor Ostrander for Frank Knight’s course, Economic Theory, Economics 301, during the Fall 1933 quarter.

Born global firms undertake international business at or near their founding. In general, they are a type of highly international small and medium-sized enterprise. In the past two decades, born globals have emerged in substantial numbers worldwide, in conjunction with evolutionary trends in globalization and advanced information and communications technologies. In this paper, I summarize extant literature on born globals. I also address their role in the emergent field of international entrepreneurship and the linkage to national competitive advantage. Finally, I suggest numerous research directions on born globals, especially in the context of emerging markets.