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Both the scope of postentry growth and the scale of postentry growth are essential for Chinese multinational enterprises' aggressive internationalization. Yet, prior literature has not considered the synergistic approach of postentry growth that seeks the scope of growth and the scale of growth simultaneously. Building upon the embeddedness perspective and the learning view, we address how structural embeddedness directly affects firms' postentry growth in the form of scope and scale and indirectly affects postentry growth via both the scope of growth and the scale of growth. Particularly, we investigate the decreasing mediating effect of the growth's scale on the growth's scope when embeddedness strengthens.

With a survey data set of 206 Chinese multinational firms from manufacturing and service industries, we conduct structural equation modeling (SEM), partial least squares path modeling (PLS-PM), instantaneous indirect effect assessment and hierarchical linear regression model to test our hypotheses.

First, Chinese multinational enterprises’ (CMNEs) structural embeddedness is positively related to their scope of postentry growth, while has a U-shaped relationship with their scale of postentry growth. Second, CMNEs' scope of postentry growth mediates the relationship between structural embeddedness and the scale of postentry growth, the mediation effect counts for 33.5% of the over effect. Finally, the indirect effect of structural embeddedness on the scope of postentry growth through the scale of postentry growth is nonlinear. As the structural embeddedness strengthens, the positive indirect effect gradually weakens.

We believe this study further connects core international business research on postentry growth to the fast-growing literature on emerging markets multinational enterprises' internationalization. In addition, we undertake an initial effort in addressing an important gap in the literature: how structural embeddedness matters to firms' postentry growth. Moreover, this study finds important evidence to support the direct and indirect effect of structural embeddedness on postentry growth.

For construction and management, the existing codes of practice of international organizations such as US Army Corps of Engineers, the Asian Development Bank, the World Bank, the United Nations Office for Project Services, etc., often prove ineffective when applied in post-war countries like Afghanistan. Domestic contractors faced maximum challenges in contractual scope management, which was implemented by such organizations based on their existing codes of practice. The purpose of this paper is to understand these barriers in scope management as faced by the domestic contractors of Afghanistan.

The research employs a mixed methodology to cater to its objectives. Face-to-face structured interviews of 14 industry experts and extensive literature review were conducted to identify unique barriers pertaining to Afghanistan construction industry. Further, quantitative assessment of these barriers through the statistical tools of “mean score ranking,” “Kendall’s test” and “independent sample t-test” was carried out to understand the severity of the barriers.

In total, 39 unique barriers were identified under the groups of “scope formulation,” “scope completeness,” “scope pricing,” “scope implementation” and “scope change control.” The consequential impacts of these barriers and their existence at different stages of the project were illustrated. The most severe barriers were identified as the “inadequacy of site investigation reports” and the “unavailability of resources in local markets.”

The understanding of the challenges faced by local stakeholders, as highlighted by this study, can be utilized by these international organizations in their strategy and planning to ensure successful projects while also propagating the adoption of sustainable construction practices.

In this chapter, we analyzed the effects of internationalization on innovation, productivity, and firm performance among multinational pharmaceutical companies as representatives of a global knowledge-based industry. The empirical analysis used multiple stepwise regressions based on a sample of 149 firms headquartered in Europe and the US. The results indicate that innovation outcomes are positively correlated to the number of foreign subsidiaries (scope internationalization), whereas surprisingly, formal research and development (R&D) does not seem to directly influence innovation. This suggests that the firms benefit from local overseas subsidiaries to create and implement new innovative offerings. The number of foreign subsidiaries has a U-shaped relationship to patent productivity suggesting that firms can gain advantages by locating cost-intensive activities in low-cost countries and critical tasks in advanced market locations. Firm performance has a U-shaped relationship to sales abroad (scale internationalization) and the relationship is further enhanced by a high focus on R&D. This suggests that sales abroad enable scale economies, where R&D improves quality and relevance of products and thereby boosts performance. Finally, to validate the findings we conducted two semi-structured interviews with representative industry experts and gained further insights for an extended interpretation of results.

There is a lack of research on how the industrial firm's international strategy is associated with basic and advanced value-adding modes of the wholly owned foreign subsidiary. The purpose of this paper is to fill the gap by answering two questions: how are relatedness between the firm and the foreign subsidiary, and the firm's international scope associated with foreign subsidiary's value-adding mode? How does the subsidiary's market experience moderate the relationships?

The study develops a conceptual model that integrates strategy theory and internationalization theory in order to explain basic value-adding modes (promotion, sales, and after-sales services), and advanced modes that also include product development and/or production. Also, the study tests the model using statistical data from subsidiaries of Swedish firms operating in Germany, the USA, and the UK.

It was found that greater relatedness between the core business unit of the parent firm and the foreign subsidiary favors a basic mode. However, the foreign subsidiary's market experience weakens the relationship, and the interaction triggers an advanced mode. Also, greater international scope of the firm favors an advanced mode.

The model test shows that research needs to consider both international strategy and market experience in explaining value-adding modes of an industrial firm's wholly owned subsidiary.

By using the study contributions the industrial firm's efforts to efficiently implement international strategy would become more efficient as strategy coherence will increase.

This paper contributes to literature on international strategy and internationalization by showing that international strategy and market experience of foreign markets mutually impact value-adding modes of wholly owned foreign subsidiaries.

This paper aims to investigate the antecedents and outcomes of international opportunity identification (IOI) in export-manufacturing firms. The fundamental question addressed in this research is: How does dynamic managerial capability (DMC) of entrepreneurs contribute to IOI and success of the firms?

The research model was tested through structural equation modeling among the readymade garment manufacturing firms in the least developed country, Bangladesh. A survey was conducted with a random sampling approach and responses were collected from 390 firms.

The salient findings are: DMC has direct and indirect impacts through IOI on financial and non-financial performance; IOI mediates the relationship between managerial social capital and non-financial performance and between managerial cognition and non-financial performance; IOI has a negative relationship with the financial performance of the firms; and scope of accelerated internationalization positively moderates the relationship between IOI and financial performance of firms.

This paper notably shows that DMC of export-manufacturing entrepreneurs leads to the identification of the right kind of opportunities, which, in turn, generate better performance. It is advantageous for this type of firm to operate a business in multiple countries.

Grounded in the Uppsala model, the purpose of this paper is to investigate specific firm factors of fashion service retailers, which include: product category offering, firm experience (limited vs extensive) and firm size (small vs large) and examines how variations in these firm characteristics produce significant differences on three aspects of internationalisation activities; scale and scope of internationalisation, market choice (geographic and cultural distance), and financial performance (international sales and profit), and whether market choice produces differences on financial performance.

Secondary sources were utilised to empirically investigate retailers (n=118). Information regarding product category offering, year of establishment, number of employees, countries entered, international sales, and profit were collected from retailer web sites, press releases, and annual reports.

There were significant differences between product category offering and firm size in retailers’ internationalisation behaviours, and there were significant differences between product category offering and market choice in their financial performance. Variations in firm experience did not produce any significant differences.

This study extends limited literature on the internationalisation of fashion service retailers and contributes knowledge of how variations in specific firm factors produce different outcomes in terms of internationalisation, market choice, and financial performance.

Retailers offering functional products may be more flexible in their internationalisation. Firms regardless of experience or size may consider being active in international markets because variations in these factors does not impact performance.

This study addresses multiple gaps in retailer internationalisation literature and findings point that product category should be considered when studying internationalisation of service firms.

In the intellectual property (IP) and management literature, the question of how external patent attorneys impact patent filings has been understudied. The purpose of this paper is to advance this area of research by examining how the use of external patent attorneys influences the patent filing strategies of firms and what impact firms’ level of experience with the exclusive use of in-house resources has on filing strategies. This study, thus, provides insights into the strategic dimension behind patent filing, a process which is affected by patent attorneys’ work and decision-making processes.

The econometric analysis is based on a patent database of 922,553 patents which is combined with an EPO patent database covering applications from 1990 to 2010. The authors test the hypotheses for this study using patent indicators addressing the impact of in-house firm experience vs the use of external patent attorneys on firm’s filing strategy.

This research finds empirical evidence that external patent attorneys’ work has an effect on patent scope, international scope, and patenting speed. Moreover, it can be shown that external patent attorneys have a positive impact on most filing dimensions, such as patent scope, international scope and the Patent Cooperation Treaty option, whereas the level of in-house firm experience has a negative impact on most filing dimensions. This implies that external patent attorneys seem to pursue a “maximization approach” while experienced firms seem to pursue a more differentiated approach to filing patents, for instance, drafting narrower and more focused patents.

The study suggests that effective filing strategies require an integrated approach between diverse IP stakeholders. More particularly, filing strategies should be communicated and aligned between all actors, including external patent attorneys in order to achieve the targeted patenting output.

The current study develops a patent filing typology, which accounts for patent attorneys’ decision options. In providing insights into patent attorneys’ work and their impacts on intellectual property rights management, the study is a useful complement to prior research, which has predominantly focused on applicants or examiners.

The authors develop a theoretical framework of how foreign competition in a firm's home country jointly interacts with other environmental factors to influence the internationalization pace. This study moves beyond the debate on whether foreign competition promotes or inhibits the internationalization pace by unpacking the nature of pace across strategic and operational dimensions. By differentiating the internationalization paces of market scope and international commitment, the study results show that foreign competition has a positive effect on the former and a negative effect on the latter. This indicates that the determinants of different paces are conditional upon the different knowledge types among foreign competitors.

Using a panel data set of Chinese construction corporations over the period from 2009 to 2015, the authors extend previous research on the effect of home country environment on internationalization behavior in an emerging economy by examining the effects of the interplay between foreign competition in home country and industrial contexts. The authors also explore the moderating effect of subnational institutions on the relationship between foreign competition and internationalization pace. They use a Poisson model and a GEE model to examine the main effects and moderating effects involved.

The results indicate that industry dynamism strengthens the positive effect of foreign competition and the pace of market scope, while industry munificence weakens the negative effect of foreign competition and the pace of international commitment. The authors’ findings support the coexistence of “pushing” and “pulling” effects of environmental factors from a firm's home country. The authors extend the argument of “institutional escapism” by focusing on subnational institutions. They show that firms located in a region with a low level of marketization are more likely to respond by accelerating the pace of their international expansion to escape from their home country.

The authors’ findings have implications for practitioners and policymakers working with emerging market firms (EMFs). The authors suggest that local governments should consider building high-quality institutions that can reduce the possibility of investment opportunities escaping EMFs. The authors’ findings indicate that international knowledge from foreign competitors may also assist EMFs in understanding more about the cultural environment before entering host countries, although it cannot help them to resolve cultural uncertainty when operating in host countries. Hence, managers should carefully evaluate their competitiveness before they decide to engage in global competition at an accelerated rate.

This paper aims to use the institutional and information-processing perspectives to explore their association with between internationalization and the Penrose effect phenomenon for business groups (BGs).

The authors use ordinary least squares regression models to test arguments about data pertaining to 101 Taiwanese BGs’ foreign direct investments.

The results indicate that greater levels of depth and scope in the process of internationalization during one period may negatively affect rates of growth in the following period. The results further demonstrate that institutional distance moderates the relationship.

Using the perspective of information-processing demands, the authors provide alternate explanations regarding the relationship between the process of internationalization (depth, scope and rhythm) and the Penrose effect.

Owners and managers should focus on both the depth and the scope of internationalization. BGs are likely to incur high dynamic adjustment costs, which then limit the rate of BGs’ growth. Managers should balance international market uncertainty with current managerial resources when determining how deeply and broadly to expand internationally and where to enter. In addition, as recent major panel studies suggest, management capabilities and practices can improve significantly, which has a positive effect on firm growth and performance. This does require the careful development and acquisition of the managerial resources needed for internationalization.

The purpose of the paper is twofold. Firstly, it provides an inclusive categorical framework of internationalisation patterns for small- and medium-sized enterprises, and secondly, it presents unique evidence from a developing country and corroborates the proposed framework.

A cross-sectional convergent mixed-method design was applied to this research. A phenomenological design was used to develop the typology framework, and subsequently, practical evidence was collected through a cross-sectional survey using a self-reporting questionnaire. A two-step hierarchical clustering analysis was performed to test the framework’s robustness, and a set of characteristics was compared between the patterns via a one-way analysis of variance, F-test.

The robustness of the constructed categorical framework of 32 internationalisation patterns is substantiated, suggesting that this framework produces veracious discrimination between all patterns of internationalisation. Evidence revealed that the majority of firms showed regional and incremental internationalising behaviour. No true born globals were observed; however, several other early or fast patterns such as “born-international”, “global new venture” and “born-again regional” emerged.

This paper presents a categorical framework and provides evidence of the behaviour of internationalising SMEs from a Middle Eastern developing economy. The categorical framework constructed in this paper uses predefined thresholds, and it is of value because it is inclusive, rigid and incisive. This paper also provides essential insights into the sub-patterns of internationalisation, specifically the born-again and regional phenomenon of internationalisation.