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This study explores whether the peer effects of internationalization exist within the subdivision industry of enterprises in the engineering field and assesses the imitation paths for the peer engineering enterprises within the industry when implementing internationalization strategies under the peer effects.

This study collected secondary and objective data on 38 Chinese engineering enterprises from the Engineering News-Record's list of the top 250 international contractors between 2013 and 2021. It employed a regression analysis to test the research hypotheses.

The findings reveal that in the process of internationalization: (1) peer effects exist within the subdivision industry of internationalization of engineering enterprises; (2) engineering enterprises within the same industry and region imitate each other; (3) non-state-owned engineering enterprises imitate state-owned engineering enterprises within the same industry; and (4) in the industry follower–leader imitation process, industry followers imitate leaders according to enterprise size and return on assets.

The results contribute to a better understanding of how peer effects influence engineering enterprises' internationalization process. This study also proposes imitation paths based on the law of imitation to provide recommendations for engineering enterprises' better development in the international market.

The purpose of this paper is to establish the relationship between foreign participation in enterprises in Africa, their internationalization intensity and the associated moderating conditions.

The study utilized data from the World Bank enterprise surveys in 46 African countries across seven years. The hypothesized relationships are estimated using the Heckman two-stage pooled cross-sectional model to correct for selection bias.

The findings show that foreign participation in enterprises has a positive effect on internationalization intensity in Africa. While we observe this positive effect, we also found that there is a lot of heterogeneity that accompanies this effect based on enterprise size, financial performance and local market competition.

The study contributes to the internationalization literature by showing that foreign participation in local enterprises can have a positive effect on the internationalization propensities of these enterprises. It also shows that the main effect is heterogeneous as it is moderated by other enterprise and environmental factors.

Enterprises should recognize the positive effect that foreign participation in them can have on internationalization intensity. Managers of African enterprises need to look beyond the investments into enterprises that foreign owners offer and take advantage of their foreign market knowledge and legitimacy. Discrimination in local markets could be considered as a push factor to internationalize.

While the study is not the first to explore the relationship between foreign ownership and internationalizing behavior, it is one of the earliest to show that the relationship is heterogeneous, and it provides some key moderators.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a reliable and valid understanding of entrepreneurship and examine the relationships between small and medium‐sized Chinese manufacturing enterprises, the intensity of their entrepreneurial orientation and the degree of their internationalization. In addition, it examines whether entrepreneurial orientation would affect enterprises' internationalization strategies and their success.

The seven‐step procedure for scale development is used and survey data have been utilized to conduct statistical analysis.

The paper finds that entrepreneurial orientation is positively related to the degree of internationalization, particularly amongst the small and medium‐sized Chinese manufacturing enterprises. The international experiences of enterprises have significant importance and positively affect the degree of their internationalization. In addition, the degree of their success depends greatly on their attitudes towards risk taking, their ability to diversify internationally and successfully compete with those already established in the market.

A lot of studies have been conducted on entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial orientation. However, few people have ever studied the relation between the degree of entrepreneurial orientation and internationalization. Empirical studies on the correlations between entrepreneurial orientation and firm performance are not abundant in China. Furthermore, very few researches on the correlations between entrepreneurial orientation and internationalization have been conducted. The research presented in this paper is intended to bridge this gap. Through empirical analyses of their relationships, this paper shows how entrepreneurial strategies can stimulate competitive advantages and drive forward the international developments of the Chinese enterprises, particularly the small and medium‐sized.

Drawing on the resource-based view, institutional logic and isomorphic pressure theories, this study constructed a theoretical model to explore the correlations between government subsidies and innovation performance. Particularly, this study aims to investigate the moderating effects of ownership types and degree of internationalization on these relationships.

To empirically test the relationships, the authors use panel data from high-tech manufacturing and automobile manufacturing industries in Chinese A stock listed companies for the period 2011–2015 and performed regression analysis.

Results indicate that government subsidies positively enhance enterprises’ innovation performance; there is a big gap between government subsidies’ incentive effect on innovation performance between state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and private-owned enterprises (POEs); with the improvement of internationalization, the promotion effect of government subsidies on enterprise innovation performance is strengthened; there is a three-way interaction between government subsidies, degree of internationalization and ownership types, such that in the presence of a low degree of internationalization, there is a big gap in the incentive effect of government subsidies on the innovation performance of SOEs and POEs; in the presence of a high degree of internationalization, the gap is significantly reduced.

This is an empirical study on the impact mechanism of ownership types and internationalization on the relationship between government subsidies and innovation performance in China. It provides valuable insights to show how internationalization can dramatically improve SOEs’ efficiency disadvantages in the allocation of government subsidies to innovation activities.

This study is devoted to examining the peer effects of engineering enterprises’ internationalization from the viewpoint of industry subdivision and how information and competition alter peer effects. Furthermore, the heterogeneity of peer effects is analyzed based on manager characteristics.

In this study, multiple regression analysis was conducted on a sample of 38 Chinese engineering enterprises listed in the Engineering News-Record’s top 250 international contractors over the period of 2013–2021. This study collected the paired data from the enterprise annual reports and the China Stock Market & Accounting Research database.

The results reveal that (1) there exist peer effects within the subdivided industry of the engineering field; the quality of information disclosure of peer enterprises and degree of market competition moderate the peer effects; (2) the peer effects of internationalization are more pronounced in engineering enterprises with managers who have lower ability, hold greater power or are older.

The findings of this study contribute to understanding the peer effect in the process of internationalization of engineering enterprises, and help enterprises to effectively supervise the irrational behavior of top managers, so as to develop better internationalization strategies.

The results extend peer effects to the subdivision industry of the engineering field. Furthermore, this study also enriches the relevant research on peer effects among enterprises by empirically supporting the moderating role of information and competition as well as analyzing the heterogeneity of the peer effects from the perspective of manager characteristics.

Many newly established Internet loss-making enterprises (NEILEs) are always willing to expand overseas within a very short time from their establishment. This phenomenon is becoming a hot research area. This paper aims to explore why these enterprises are always willing to expand overseas rapidly even if they are facing severe and persistent losses, and to study the different rapid internationalization modes and the international market entry ways for NEILEs.

This paper constructs a theoretical framework with the dual situation of negative attainment discrepancy and advantageous slack resources to explain the rapid internationalization of NEILEs. Furthermore, cross-case comparative analysis method, based on interviews, questionnaires and secondary data collection, is adopted to reveal the rapid internationalization modes and the international market entry ways of such enterprises.

Whether blocking competitors or seeking opportunities or both, NEILEs' goal of rapid internationalization depends on the severity and persistence of negative attainment discrepancy. When the severity and persistence of negative attainment discrepancy are very significant, moderate and mild, NEILEs choose sniper-type, opportunity-type and dual-type internationalization target mode in turn; it is very important for NEILEs to match advantageous slack resources and international market entry ways to achieve specific internationalization goals.

This paper enriches the understanding of NEILEs' transnational entrepreneurial behavior in the era of digital economy. The theoretical contribution of this paper is that the authors build a theoretical framework based on the logical starting point, the logical fulcrum and the logic ending point for understanding the rapid internationalization of NEILEs.

This study demonstrates that NEILEs can also expand into foreign markets according to their own characteristics. Undoubtedly, they need to choose appropriate internationalization target mode and international market entry way in line with the extent and duration of their losses, and their advantageous slack resources.

In this paper, the authors construct the rapid internationalization theory of NEILEs based on the dual situation of negative attainment discrepancy and advantageous slack resources in digital economy era. Moreover, the authors discover the behavioral characteristics and patterns of NEILEs' transnational entrepreneurship.

In recent years, the phenomena of “accelerating” and “jumping” during the international expansion of Chinese enterprises have attracted a lot of attention from scholars. However, while a CEO’s career horizon can significantly affect his or her enterprise’s strategic decision-making, few studies have explored the role of CEO career horizon in terms of “accelerating” and “jumping” internationalization.

Based on a sample of China’s A-share listed manufacturing companies from 2008 to 2017, this study explores the impact of CEO career horizon on the internationalization pace and international rhythm of enterprises.

First, the shorter the CEO’s career horizon, the more likely the CEO can avoid risky strategic decisions, which ultimately causes a negative relationship between CEO career horizon and the internationalization pace and rhythm of the enterprise. Second, for larger and older boards of directors, there is a more negative impact of the CEO’s short-term career horizon on the internationalization pace and internationalization rhythm of the company. However, given a larger proportion of female directors and non-executive directors, the CEO’s short-term career horizon has a weaker negative impact on international pace and the rhythm of internationalization.

First, based on upper echelon theory, this study interprets the influence of CEO career horizon on the time dimension of corporate internationalization (including internationalization pace and international rhythm), deepening the theory’s explanatory power. Second, by clarifying the important predictive effect of CEO career horizon on internationalization pace and international rhythm, this research enriches extant research on both variables’ antecedents, as well as that on the influence of CEO career horizon. Finally, by introducing the regulatory role of the board’s supervisory ability, this study clarifies the boundary conditions for the influence of the CEO’s career horizon on international pace and rhythm, and it expands the literature on how CEOs and boards of directors can influence corporate strategic decisions during the internationalization process.

The International Labor Organization (2020) estimates that eight out of ten enterprises (i.e. own-account workers and small economic units) are informal worldwide. However, less is known about the internationalization of informal enterprises. Here, it is argued that economic blocs, such as sub-Saharan Africa, with a greater proportion of informal enterprises, may provide broader societal legitimacy for them to operate internationally. Thus, informal firms would need to collaborate with other firms to overcome their resource constraints. Geographic colocation is one way to facilitate positive interfirm interactions that promote networking and subsequently cooperation. The purpose of this paper is, thus, to addresses two questions. Firstly, how and to what extent does interfirm marketing cooperation in geographic colocation influence the internationalization of micro and small informal manufacturing enterprises? Secondly, how do the perceived benefits of local external economies moderate this relationship?

The study draws evidence from 125 randomly selected informal enterprises located in two major clusters in Ghana, using a mixed-method approach.

The partial least square - structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) analysis applied revealed two central points. Firstly, sharing marketing costs allows informal firms to upgrade their phases of export development directly. Secondly, the linkage of increasing sales activities and local external economies encourages the progress of the phases of export development and the scope of internationalization. Results confirm that the cluster benefits of interfirm cooperation and local external economies on the informal firm internationalization process complement each other in addition to their linear relationship.

The study contributes to understanding the nexus of the informal sector, geographic colocation and the entrepreneurial internationalization literature. The results should motivate researchers and policymakers to approach informal firm internationalization through collaborative business activities.

This paper aims to reveal the influencing mechanism of the interaction between institutional environments in the home and host country on the accelerated internationalization of entrepreneurial enterprises from emerging economies (EE). The authors want to open the black box of home-country institutional environments’ moderating mechanism on the relationship between host-country institutional environments and accelerated internationalization.

The authors chose a massive interview method and case study method to answer this question. According to our standards, the authors chose four high-tech companies in Guangdong and Guangxi provinces as case study samples. During investigation in the four case companies, the authors collected print data of 150 pages and electric data of 3 pages. Then, the authors excavated concepts in data through open coding, axial coding and select-type coding and identified concepts’ dimensions and connections between them.

Well-developed home-country institutions can reduce the inhibitory effect of under-developed host-country institutions on the accelerated internationalization of entrepreneurial enterprises from emerging economies. Under-developed institutional environments in the home country are beneficial for entrepreneurial enterprises from EE to develop the institutional capability for entrepreneurial enterprises with stronger institutional capability from emerging economies. The inhibitory effect of under-developed institutional environments in the host country on their accelerated internationalization is weaker. The positive moderating role played by institutional voids in the home country on the relationship between institutional voids in the host country and the accelerated internationalization are mediated by the institutional capability of entrepreneurial enterprises from emerging economies.

The authors just refined the definition of institutional capability and divided its dimensions. Issues such as operationalization of institutional capability and the development of measurement scale are also worthy for future quantitative research. Considering the inherent defect of case study and that these four case companies are from Chinese high-tech industry, the external validity our research may be limited. The theoretical model that was constructed generally captured the relationships between dual institutional environments, institutional capability and EE entrepreneurial firms’ accelerated internationalization decision. Future studies may use a large-scale sample to verify the all propositions the authors introduced to draw more steady and reliable empirical study results.

The conclusions have significant implications for governments in EE to construct friendly institutional environments for international entrepreneurship and for entrepreneurial firms to implement internationalization strategies.

Policy makers should establish well-developed normative and cognitive institutional environment by cultivating global-orientated and open national culture and organizing experience exchange conference, thereby speeding up the implementation of internationalization strategies and further improving international competitiveness for a country.

First, the authors defined institutional capability as firms’ ability of establishing relationships with institution actors, adapting to institutional contexts, changing existing institutions or creating new ones to gain potential interests and suggested that it consists of three dimensions. Second, institutional voids in the home country positively moderate the relationship between under-developed institutional environments in the host country and the accelerated internationalization of entrepreneurial firms from EE. At last, institutional capability of firms negatively moderates the relationship between under-developed institutional environments in the host country and the accelerated internationalization of entrepreneurial firms from EE.

This paper aims to discuss the relationship between the digital economy and the model of internationalisation followed by companies resident in technology parks – institutions designed within the framework of regional and national innovation systems – to promote the country’s digital development. The authors selected Poland as the case study. It is one of the biggest European Union members that joined the EU after 2004. In the second decade of the 21st century, the Polish Government has oriented its economic strategy towards building a competitive digital economy. One of its fundamentals is to support the internationalisation of innovative firms.

The analysis interrogates the forms and determinants of internationalisation undertaken by tenants of technology parks. The study sample consisted of 300 of the total 1,584 enterprises resident at the 36 technology parks in Poland and was a stratified random sample, with particular strata classified by location at a specific park. The research applied an interview questionnaire designed to cover such issues as innovativeness, research and development, public aid and the support offered by technology parks.

The results show that around half of the investigated enterprises undertake international activities. The key factors determining the chances of a firm’s internationalisation in the digital economy are whether it conducts research and development projects and receives public aid support. Many tenants of technology parks in Poland enter foreign markets at an early stage of their development, using diverse forms of foreign expansion. The findings also show that the internationalisation of tenants of Polish technology parks usually occurs in six relatively independent modes (types).

This study contributes to a better understanding of the internationalisation patterns of firms facing digital development challenges. Technology parks have a crucial role in building a digital economy, facilitating a technological “leapfrog”. The final recommendations can guide the technology parks’ managers to adopt more relevant support services for the internationalisation of their tenants. It is a critical point for small- and mid-size young innovative enterprises.