Search results

In February 2020, Covid-19 health crisis severely hit Italy and then spread around the world. To contrast the spreading of the virus, the whole country was initially forced in a strict lockdown, with people closed in their houses and companies shutting down their activities. Although the spread of vaccinations is slowly bringing back a sort of normality, the crisis has immediate and long-term effects. Moreover, it has shown the vulnerabilities of managing businesses on a global scale, alerting internationalizing firms about the necessity to adapt their strategic asset to face the next crisis. This chapter aims at stimulating reflections on the potential interactions among the Covid-19 crisis, digitalization and the localization decisions. Through quantitative and qualitative data related to Italian internationalizing firms, this research shows that, thanks to digitalization, value chain activities localized abroad are expected to become more geographically concentrated, while headquarters perform stronger control and coordination activities on less autonomous business functions abroad. Drawing on in-depth interviews, companies reconsidered their long-term strategies, showing that some reactions to the crisis may suggest potential rising trends in specific industries.

Purpose – The purpose of this chapter is to provide a review of literature that analyses the internationalisation of the firm, through the function and role of networks.

Design/methodology/approach – A total of 23 papers (published between 1988 and 2008) explicitly using network as a research framework to study the internationalisation process of the firm were selected. They have been analysed according to a range of factors, including the author, journal, time frame in which they were published, type of focal firm, country of origin of focal firms, market entered, methods applied in the studies, theories adopted and research topic.

Findings – Networks have emerged as one of the dominant frameworks used to explain the phenomenon of internationalisation. Having originally been applied in studies of firms from developed countries entering similar markets, network theories are now as popular in studies of firms both originating in and entering emerging markets. This review also finds that both qualitative and quantitative methods have been adopted in the studies; however, few papers have tried to combine the two. Furthermore, the network approach has been used for comparative analysis with findings from FDI theory, as well as to supplement international new venture (INV) and born global theories. Lastly, this review highlights topics that have been explored in previous studies and suggests areas for further research.

Originality/value – This is the first review paper on this subject and as such it contributes to the growing body of knowledge on the network approach and assists in understanding the internationalisation phenomenon of the firm.

This paper investigates the internationalization of consulting providers that supply to multilateral institutions such as the World Bank, United Nations and Asian Development Bank. Previous research has identified that such clients do play a notable role in the internationalization of some consulting firms, but little empirical research has been undertaken. In this paper, a “network” approach to internationalization is taken, with the findings from an interview study suggesting that while consulting providers “follow” multilateral institutions to new markets, this is only one of several “relationship strategies” that firms use in combination to enter and develop foreign markets.

The authors of this chapter investigate internationalisation strategies of small and medium-sized companies (SMEs) in China. We highlight the specific challenges that Chinese SMEs encounter when selecting international country markets in terms of distance and entry speed. The authors adopt an ambidexterity perspective that differs from traditional explanations of internationalisation behaviour by highlighting the need to balance seemingly disparate options for international expansion. Three cases provide an illustration of how Chinese companies combine distant with proximate market entries and slow with accelerated entry speed. The authors highlight how these strategies can drive and enhance international aspirations of Chinese SMEs.

In this chapter we test a conceptual model to shed light on the psychic distance (PD) hazards in cross-border acquisitions’ (CBAs’) performance. Only a few studies have sought to examine the impact of national-level dimensions on CBAs’ performance, such as cultural distance or PD, with non-conclusive and contradictory results. Event study methodology is used to scrutinize the impact of the five key dimensions of psychic distance stimuli (PDS) on the stock market performance of the US acquirer firms and 26 countries involved in the CBA. Our results support that PD, as a whole, has a negative impact on CBAs’ performance although only in the short term there is a statistically significant negative impact, whereas in the long term no effect is statistically significant. Analyzing the different dimensions of PDS, only differences in language, education, and political systems are significant. This chapter is the first to empirically examine the PD hazards on CBAs by breaking down the PDS and test the effect of each dimension on CBAs´ performance. The findings of this study may be useful for managers of firms that wish to undertake CBAs as it denotes important dimensions which hinder post-deal performance.

Purpose – We examine the fundamental assumptions and features of the Uppsala model of internationalization and argue that we need to look beyond this model for studying internationalization processes in the multinational corporations (MNCs) of today. The purpose of our paper is to identify gaps and neglected issues regarding MNCs' internationalization processes that demand further theoretical and empirical study.

Methodology – Our approach is conceptual: based on the most cited model on internationalization, the Uppsala model, we approach the complex internationalization processes that continuously go on in modern MNCs. We use related bodies of literature, on MNC structure and strategy, headquarters–subsidiary relationships, MNC subsidiary strategy and development, and opportunity seeking and entrepreneurship, to fill in the gaps and develop the emerging research themes.

Findings – We identify the following three issues that need further investigation: the opportunity recognition process preceding internationalization processes in MNCs, the internationalization of multiple products within the confines of the growing MNC, and the internationalization of foreign MNC units.

Research limitations – In this paper, we open up new research fields, but do not offer empirical studies to inform us about these relevant issues. Future research should study these issues empirically, preferably through case study methodologies and/or with longitudinal designs.

Originality – The contribution of our paper is its identification of three research issues in relation to internationalization processes of modern MNCs, which we argue are neglected by contemporary research.

This chapter explores how the recognition of opportunities regarding developing technology and entering a new market is influenced by the systemic effect of social forces. These include institutions, social networks and the entrepreneur’s cognitive frames. This study adopts a longitudinal perspective by capturing and analysing the phenomenon in two moments: first, when the businesses started to operate domestically and second, when they began to internationalise. The cases of five Brazilian technology firms are analysed. The findings reveal the systemic and mutually reinforcing effect of these social forces on the recognition of opportunities. The entrepreneurs’ cognitive frames were particularly vital in recognising opportunities to enter the Brazilian market. The institutional support provided by universities along with government mechanisms and entrepreneurs’ social networks were essential to accrue experiential and non-experiential knowledge of international markets, therefore contributing to the recognition of international opportunities. The temporal perspective employed in this research assists the understanding of how historical events shape entrepreneurs’ capabilities to recognise and change company discourse to pursue the recognition of international opportunities. The results provide guidelines for researchers, practitioners and policy-makers, particularly in the emerging economies in Latin America, to support the growth and flourishing of entrepreneurial ventures through pursuing international opportunities.

Understanding how and why firms behave differently during re-internationalization has increasingly been at a premium in international business research. The authors conducted a case study of 11 Chinese international small and medium-sized enterprise and explored how they learned and recovered from involuntary de-internationalization. From case data, the “complete” re-internationalizers learned the lessons of foreign market exits more proactively than “partial” re-internationalizers. The complete re-internationalizers adopted internal and external sources of knowledge acquisition, “middle-up-down” information distribution and ambivalent information interpretation, while the partial re-internationalizers relied on internal sources of knowledge, “top-down” or “bottom-up” information distribution and univalent information interpretation. This study contributes by identifying the crucial role of learning processes to complete re-internationalization, which is absent in existing re-internationalization research.

We investigate the role of market uncertainties as determinants of the adoption of control and prediction in the internationalization of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Building on the possibility that uncertain markets may lead to trade-offs between these strategies, as suggested by the convergence between effectuation and internationalization research, we differentiate between uncertainties originated in SMEs’ home and host countries. We test our hypotheses with a cross-country data set encompassing 597 SMEs surveyed in Brazil, China, Poland, and Italy. Our results indicate that home-country uncertainty is related to the adoption of control strategies, while host-country cultural uncertainty is related to prediction efforts. Moreover, internationalization knowledge emerged not as a moderator of these relationships but as a relevant antecedent of both control and prediction. Our findings have implications for the use of effectuation in the study of SME internationalization and also for the conceptualization of the effectuation process itself.