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Realizing that the Internet is a source of information and the possibility to transform it into knowledge, this study develops an IBK-Internalization process in which internationalizing firms in transition markets utilize the Internet to search for information about foreign markets, to assess its relevance, and then, to internalize it for their internationalization. It is found that IBK-Internalization underlies international orientation and foreign sales intensity, which in turn, has a reciprocal effect on IBK-Internalization. Further, learning orientation facilitates the IBK-Internalization process. These findings suggest that internationalizing firms should promote and value the IBK-Internalization process in order to mitigate their lack of foreign market knowledge.

Internalization theory explains the existence and functioning of the multinational enterprise. It contributes to understanding the boundaries of the multinational enterprise, its interface with the external environment and its internal organizational design. Much work in the international strategic-management sphere has unfortunately not taken on board internalization-theory thinking and lacks the insights provided by this comparative institutional approach. In this chapter, we show how well-known international strategic-management models could be enriched and their normative implications altered by adopting an internalizing-theory lens.

The present chapter puts one perspective center stage and looks at the relationship between TSC and its manifestation in individuals. More specifically, we are concerned with the relationship between processes of attitude formation and attitude change. The concept of attitudes is one out of several psychological constructs which are known to have mediating influence on actual behavior. Thus, it is a possible starting point to positively influence behavior in road traffic toward higher levels of (commitment to) safety. Understanding how safety culture is internalized by individuals and how it shapes safe conduct shall be theoretically described and practically exemplified to show how this approach can become useful and relevant for practitioners in the field of road safety.

The argument is developed in three parts. In the first part, Herbert Kelman’s (1958) conceptual scheme of three stages of attitude change is presented in which the levels of compliance, identification, and internalization of values are distinguished. In the second part, it is argued that these different levels of value integration correspond with three different kinds of psychological theories which address the relationship between attitudes and deliberately conducted behavior (action). It is a well-known fact in the science of human action that there is no direct relationship between attitudes, decision making, and action. Using Kelman’s three levels of value internalization as a scheme of reference, the conditions under which persons act in line with their attitudes can be conceptualized more precisely. From a normative point of view, it is argued that persons who align their actions and attitudes with reference to socially appreciated values are said to be elaborated. They orient their conduct by an ethos of safety to which they feel committed and they are able to interact in mindful ways. We discuss some of the basic constructs at each level and underpin their importance with reference to behavioral change toward higher levels of safety with empirical findings that have been published. In a third part, we present our findings in a summarizing table and suggest a list of factors and themes which mainly correspond to one of the three stages of attitudinal change and value internalization. Finally, we outline some examples of how traffic safety interventions can be conceptualized at these different levels.

This chapter discusses the global factory paradigm. We show how mainstream international business (IB) thinking, namely, internalization theory, can guide multinational enterprise (MNE) strategic decision-making in the context of a global factory network.

We identify the key assumptions made in the global factory paradigm about the fine slicing of economic activities and the related implications for the ownership status and location of each activity. In order to overcome the global factory paradigm’s relative lack of predictive capacity, as compared to internalization theory, we propose an asset-bundling approach. This approach uses a clear and unambiguous criterion, namely, the tradability of resources (and resource combinations) to determine which sets of activities can best be left to external market contracting or should on the contrary be internalized on the basis of efficiency considerations.

We describe the enhanced role of developing/transition countries in the functioning of the global economy and show that these countries represent an increasing share of worldwide economic activities. Given this macrolevel development, the global factory, as a complex organizational form governing both internal activities and contracts with external parties, is rapidly gaining in importance. We describe, at the conceptual level, the strengths and weaknesses of the global factory and propose a “decision dynamics” matrix to support global factory, senior managers’ strategies in the realm of ownership status and location.

Future research on the MNE should focus on in-depth analysis of firms that embody “global factory”-type characteristics in order to understand better the evolution of this type of company and to capture the close requisite links among the focal firm, external contracting parties, and the broader environment. Such research should also lead to a better understanding of innovative resource combination processes and the transferability of non-location-bound firm-specific advantages (FSAs) across the global factory network.

In the global factory, the MNE head office assumes the role of resource orchestrator and is responsible for key strategic decisions on ownership status and location. Here, the head office must assess critically the operations that are part of the MNE’s value chain and reflect on the firm’s international dispersion of economic activities on an ongoing basis, given a myriad of broad environmental changes and changes in external competitive pressures. Our “decision dynamics” matrix provides a simple but effective managerial tool supporting MNE ownership status and location decisions, but the head office’s capability to make these decisions should not be overestimated.

We explicitly link internalization theory with the global factory paradigm and explore unresolved issues in the relevant literature. Internalization theory prescribes the optimal ownership status and location for each economic activity considered. The theory focuses on the bundling of firm-level resources and complementary ones held by external parties, for each fine-sliced economic activity. It also considers explicitly the nature of the linkages among these activities.

To identify points of similarity and differences of emphasis between internalisation theory and global value chain (GVC) theory and to highlight how the latter’s particular approach is useful in analysing the impact of private sustainability standards.

Review of some key texts and reviews of internalisation theory combined with author’s reflections on GVC theory based on his contributions to its development.

GVC theory shares much common ground with the internalisation theory of international business, but their different starting points lead to different strengths and weaknesses. Internalisation theory is strong on the logic of decisions by transnational companies to internalise or externalise their activities. GVC theory is strongest in its consideration of how and why companies manage externalised activities in different ways, and its theory of network governance focuses on how governance challenges change in response to market requirements, shifts in the break point between enterprises, the role of codification in simplifying governance and the control of activities across multiple links in value chains. These factors explain how private and public–private standards in the field of sustainability are both a response to new external demands on value chains and, simultaneously, a means of reducing the complexity of governance challenges that such demands create.

Few attempts have been made to compare the two theories, and value chain theorists have not engaged with the international business literature. The chapter highlights the scope for a continuing and more systematic comparison of the two literatures.

This study examined whether life satisfaction varied among women who occupy different motherhood statuses, and if these variations were influenced by differences in women’s internalization of cultural motherhood norms. We distinguished among women as biological mothers, stepmothers, and “double mothers,” who were both biological and stepmothers. We also included two groups of women without children: voluntary childfree and involuntary childless women.

Data were drawn from the National Study of Fertility Barriers and analyzed using OLS regression.

Biological mothers reported greater life satisfaction than women in other motherhood statuses. Accounting for the internalization of motherhood norms, double mothers had significantly lower life satisfaction compared to biological mothers, but voluntary childfree women had significantly greater life satisfaction. More detailed analyses indicated that internalization of cultural norms only appears to influence the life satisfaction of women with biological children.

The results suggest that it may not simply be motherhood that affects women’s well-being, but rather that women’s internalization of motherhood ideals, particularly when it corresponds with their motherhood status, significantly impacts well-being. Limitations of this study include small cell sizes for some categories of women where additional distinctions may have been useful, such as lesbian or adoptive mothers. Future work should incorporate diverse family forms and expand on the newly named category “double mothers.”

By providing a more nuanced approach to categorizing motherhood status, including identifying double mothers, stepmothers-only, and two groups of childless women, the study added detail that has been overlooked in previous work on well-being.

The purpose of this chapter is to demonstrate that sound, mainstream international business (IB) thinking should be applied when assessing the economic opportunities available to multinational enterprises (MNEs) in Bottom of the Pyramid (BOP) markets.

We describe and evaluate critically the key points made in the BOP literature about the alleged attractiveness of BOP markets, and the alleged strengths of MNEs to penetrate these markets successfully. We revisit the managerial implications from the BOP literature using an internalization theory lens.

We demonstrate the weak conceptual grounding of conventional BOP thinking, which suggests that MNEs from developed economies should be very entrepreneurial and should systematically serve BOP markets with new products and business models. We also show the fallacy of the idea that a “success template” in one BOP market would be easily replicable in other BOP markets and would allow the MNE to earn economies of scale and scope.

IB researchers should start conducting serious studies on the attractiveness of BOP markets for MNEs. They should also analyze seriously the micro-foundations of successful knowledge recombination in BOP markets and the limits to the transferability of success templates. Mainstream IB theory, namely internalization theory, is particularly well equipped to analyze the costs and benefits of entering BOP markets, building upon a comparative institutional logic.

Senior MNE managers should not allow themselves to be blinded by BOP gurus, advocating the alleged great benefits of penetrating BOP markets. BOP markets may be especially challenging international expansion targets for MNEs because of large institutional voids, high uncertainty, high “distance” vis-à-vis the home country market and the difficulties of transferring relevant knowledge from one BOP market to another.

This chapter is the first to show that mainstream IB research can be usefully applied to analyze the “real” attractiveness of BOP markets for MNEs. Comparative institutional analysis is proven to provide substantially more insight to make BOP market penetration work than past guru-talk on BOP markets.

Chapter 8 synthesizes the research findings from the processes of sensory cognition into the design and configuration of the learning environment. The focus of cognition changes perspective and focus from the attributes of an external stimulus to the internal processes of integration with prior learning and internalization into a new cognition of the individual, which is labeled as the individual's learning ecology. These processes provide a plausible model for the design of the learning environment dimension, which internalizes the learning into transformational and ultimately lifelong learning. The processes of sensory cognition provide a viable and practical model to engineer learning cognition in the same way the brain does with sensory cognition. Like sensory cognition, learning cognition is the result of the structure of the learning environment.

Until recently, motivation has been considered to be an individual phenomenon. Motivational theorists have accordingly conceptualised key constructs in individualistic terms and emphasised the individual origins and nature of motivation, although they have also long recognised that contextual or social factors have a significant influence on these individual processes. Recently this conceptualisation has been questioned as theorists have suggested, after Vygotsky, that motivation, like learning and thinking, might be social in nature. This idea was first suggested by Sivan (1986) more than twenty years ago but it received a major impetus with the publication of an article by Hickey (1997) eleven years later. Since that time interest in the social nature of motivation has grown as a small number of book chapters and journal articles have been published and conference papers have been presented on the topic. Although some motivational theorists remain sceptical (e.g. Winne, 2004) of this theoretical development, the inclusion of a section on sociocultural approaches to motivation in Perry, Turner, and Meyer's (2006) chapter on classrooms as contexts for motivating learning in the 2nd edition of the Handbook of Educational Psychology suggests that this perspective is being seriously considered by motivational researchers. Similarly, the inclusion of a chapter (Walker, in press-b) on the sociocultural approach to motivation in the 3rd edition of the International Encyclopedia of Education indicates that this approach has achieved some recognition.