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For many exporting firms, success in foreign markets hinges to a large extent on the performance of their foreign intermediaries (Albaum, Strandskov, & Duerr, 2002; Ellis, 2000; Root, 1987). In spite of the key role played by intermediaries in foreign markets – i.e. sales agents and independent distributors (Solberg & Nes, 2002) – exporters often regard them as temporary arrangements and second-best alternatives to conducting foreign marketing, sales, and service activities in-house. The typical assumption is that foreign intermediaries are low-control entry modes (Hill, 2003; Root, 1987) that do not have the potential of exploiting the full sales potential of export markets. In other words, foreign intermediary arrangements could have inherent limitations that foster mediocre rather than excellent market performance. Several studies report that exporters generally distrust foreign intermediaries and suspect them of shirking at any given occasion (Beeth, 1990; Nicholas, 1986; Petersen, Benito, & Pedersen, 2000). Poor performance is sometimes expected. On the other hand, foreign intermediaries often find that exporters put in place incentive structures that do not induce them to achieve excellent performance. Hence, it is asserted that foreign intermediaries may deliberately seek mediocrity rather than very poor or outstanding performance.

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.

This paper contributes to studies on the relationship between dynamic capabilities (DCs) and performance by showing how domain-specific DCs – international dynamic marketing capabilities (IDMCs) – affect the international performance of exporting firms in the context of extreme environmental dynamism – during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The authors focus on a sample of 277 exporting manufacturers from the post-transition economy of Poland. The authors use hierarchical multiple regression analysis to test this study's hypotheses.

This study's findings show that deployment of IDMCs by export manufacturers in the context of environmental jolts contributes to better performance, and this relationship is mediated by adaptation to foreign markets and product development capability. Additionally, this study's results reveal that the significant and positive indirect effect of IDMCs on international performance (through mediators) is, however, weakened under conditions of extreme environmental dynamism.

The limitations pertain to the cross-sectional nature of this study and the research sample, characterised by the dominance of export manufacturers of final products, the dominance of manufacturers operating in the business-to-business sector, or in the business-to-business and business-to-customer sectors simultaneously.

The study provides suggestions to managers on how to build resilience in international markets during turbulent times. These activities involve investments in IDMCs that support activities centred around product development and adaptation to foreign markets.

The novel construct of IDMCs is introduced and operationalized. The study empirically tests the direct and indirect relationship between IDMCs and performance contingent upon extreme environmental dynamism. The results demonstrate the boundary conditions for the effectiveness of these domain-specific DCs in such a research setting.

Building on the resource-based view (RBV), this study examines the differential roles of internal and external social capital (SC) in enhancing the marketing innovation (MI), competitive advantage and financial performance of Korean small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) in export markets.

In total, 197 valid cases were obtained from Korean manufacturing SMEs in the consumer goods sector. Then, a path analysis was employed to test the proposed hypotheses.

First, SME internal SC positively influenced MI, whereas external SC positively influenced foreign distributor's MI (or foreign distributor MI). Second, SME MI was positively associated with foreign distributor MI. Third, no statistical differences were found in the strength of the paths from foreign distributor and SME MI to competitive advantage. Meanwhile, foreign distributor MI positively affected financial performance more than SME MI. Fourth, SME competitive advantage predicted a positive financial performance. Finally, the effect of SME MI on financial performance had an inverted “U” shape.

This study fills a research gap in the MI literature by identifying MI in terms of its actors (SMEs and their foreign distributors) and examining the differential roles of internal and external SC in MI.

This paper examines the causal relationship between stock market performance and foreign exchange market in Egypt over the period 2009–2016. The study period is divided into two sub-periods: pre- and post-January 25th Egyptian revolution (ER). The reason is to examine how this revolution affects the causal relationship between the two markets' performance.

In this study, the daily basis data are used to enable good and effective observation changes in the foreign exchange rate and stock market performance over time. Stock market indexes and stock market capitalization are used as proxies for stock market performance. Further, the Egyptian pound to US$ exchange rate is used as a measure for foreign exchange market performance. The study analysis is done in stages. The first is to check the variables' stationarity for the pre- and post-revaluation. The second is to examine the cointegration among the variables. The third is to run vector autoregression (VAR) estimates, after which VAR Granger causality tests are employed.

The results show that the data are not stationary at their levels but stationary in their first difference level while there is no cointegration in the long-run among the variables in both sub-periods. Further, findings indicate that, in the pre-January 25th revolution period, there is a significant causal relationship between the foreign exchange market and stock market indexes and a significant causal relationship between market capitalization (CAP) and exchange rate at the 1% level. However, in the post-January 25th revolution period, the study does not find a significant causal relationship between foreign exchange market and stock market indexes and capitalization.

As this study focuses on the causal relationship between foreign exchange and stock markets before and after the 25th January Revolution, other macroeconomic variables such as consumer price index, interest rate and GDP were excluded for the comparison purposes with other studies. Further research is suggested to include them in the analysis to find out its effect on the performance of stock market and foreign exchange market.

The existence of long-run bidirectional causality means that portfolio managers and hedgers may have improved their understanding regarding the dynamic relationship between foreign exchange market and stock market performance as this may help them to plan and implement suitable hedging strategies to guard against currency risk in future crises or events. Investors, fund and portfolio managers and policymakers should give much attention to these event-specific interactions when they make capital budgeting decisions and implement regulation policies. Furthermore, our results may allow portfolio managers, investors and policymakers to assess the importance of informational efficiency for both markets.

This paper is an original contribution to the literature that concerns the causal relationship between stock market and foreign exchange market in the period of political instability and social unrest such as the January 25th Revolution in one of the emerging markets, namely Egypt.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a robust examination of the factors that accelerate/decelerate the divestment timing of retail banners in international markets.

The sample represents 3,235 foreign market banner operations of 132 international retailers across 144 countries using an accelerated failure time (AFT) parametric survival modelling technique.

Banner divestment is accelerated by both weak financial performance and smaller size. Furthermore, there is a synergistic negative detriment to the combination of both factors on divestment. Banner divestment is decelerated by deploying the corporation’s dominant format in the home country. Moreover, inadequately performing dominant banners are allowed more time to turn around their operations than subpar non-dominant banners. Concurrently, when host country markets are growing, poorly performing dominant banners are given more time to improve performance. When home market performance weakens, smaller, poorly performing banner divestment is accelerated.

The large data set covers more than half of the world so the authors are limited to observing corporate divestments without the benefit of the managerial decision-making process. The authors only have access to divestment data in annual units, which limits the ability to provide precise timing information. Though the authors have a wide variation in country conditions, data on smaller, poorer countries and domestic competitors is limited.

Small, poorly performing retail chains in foreign markets are divested faster than their counterparts. When retailers internationalize with their dominant chains, management tends to give these banners more time to succeed than non-dominant counterparts. Evidence also suggests that managers hesitate to withdrawal from a foreign market when the dominant banner is involved, regardless of a chain’s stunted growth and subpar performance.

This study provides the first examination of factors driving the divestment times of international retail chains using rigorous empirical survival time methodologies.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the mediating role of foreign market attractiveness on the association between export promotion programmes (EPPs) and export performance in the context of Ghanaian firms. In addition to understanding how EPPs help enhance the attractiveness of the foreign markets and thus export performance, the study contributes to the under-developed export performance literature regarding Sub-Saharan African (SSA) firms.

A mixed method approach is utilised. In the first instance quantitative analysis is undertaken on 116 Ghanaian firms via data collected using the drop and pick method. Qualitative data involving interviews with 18 managers of exporting firms are then reported upon.

The study finds full mediation effects for foreign market attractiveness. This suggests that EPPs can enhance export performance via the intervening variable of foreign market attractiveness. Specifically, EPPs should be considered as a resource in managers’ ability to develop capabilities in exporting, but need to be considered in the context of other intervening factors such as perceived foreign market attractiveness.

The literature regarding EPPs and export performance mostly overlook any link between EPPs and other determinants of export performance towards establishing an indirect relationship between the constructs. The study fills this important gap; in particular, in respect of SSA firms and specifically in the context of Ghana.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of small and medium-sized enterprises’ (SMEs) foreign agent operations on their international performance. This study thus investigates a mechanism in which market information obtained through agents is interpreted, transformed and applied for decision making and presents outcomes. In particular, the study focuses on the mediating role of adaptive capability on the relationship between market information management and export performance.

Drawing upon the theories of knowledge-based view and contingency paradigm, a research model is developed for linking the key constructs of foreign agent operations, information management, adaptive capability and performance. Structural equation modeling is applied for testing the model using data collected from a sample of 152 Korean SME exporters.

The results indicate that a firm’s operation quality of foreign agents strongly affects the quality of market information management which consequently impacts export performance. In the relationship between market information management and export performance, in particular, adaptive capability is found to play a mediating role. This implies that export performance is, for the most part, achieved by the mediation of adaptive capability, although market information leads directly to export performance to some degree. The results also confirm the existence of reciprocal causation between a firm’s export performance and foreign agent operations. The finding suggests that the outcome of SME export performance continues to provide feedback to its operations of foreign agents and consistently influence each other.

This study makes an important contribution to the body of export literature by identifying the mediating effects of adaptive capability on the relationship between market information management and export performance. In addition, the results create a recursive model for SME export performance by verifying the reciprocal relationship between export performance and operating with agents. This study thus helps extend understanding of international operations through foreign agents in the SME context.

The purpose of this paper is to improve the existing knowledge of international strategy antecedents of foreign subsidiary performance.

Hypotheses are developed regarding the impact of perceived relatedness between the foreign subsidiary and the parent firm's core business unit, and the moderating effect of the subsidiary's business strategy. In order to test the hypotheses, the study uses survey data from Europe (Germany and the UK), and the USA, and the subsidiaries belong to Swedish manufacturing firms.

Perceived relatedness regarding intangible resources affects foreign subsidiary performance positively. Competitive differentiation and market knowledge of a foreign subsidiary reinforce the performance impact of the perceived relatedness.

A foreign subsidiary's relatedness to the core business unit of its parent firm determines the subsidiary's ability to assimilate the parent firm's core competencies. The relatedness represents a synergy potential that is realized by the subsidiary's core competence exploitation and economies of learning.

The paper extends current knowledge of international strategy antecedents of foreign subsidiary performance as it applies the perceptual approach to relatedness and acknowledges the impact of foreign subsidiary strategy.

The study this chapter reports focuses on how network theory contributes to the understanding of the internationalization process of SMEs and measures the effect of network capability on performance in international trade and has three research objectives.

The first objective of the study relates to providing new insights into the international market development activities through the application of a network perspective. The chapter reviews the international business literature to ascertain the development of thought, the research gaps, and the shortcomings. This review shows that the network perspective is a useful and popular theoretical domain that researchers can use to understand international activities, particularly of small, high technology, resource-constrained firms.

The second research objective is to gain a deeper understanding of network capability. This chapter presents a model for the impact of network capability on international performance by building on the emerging literature on the dynamic capabilities view of the firm. The model conceptualizes network capability in terms of network characteristics, network operation, and network resources. Network characteristics comprise strong and weak ties (operationalized as foreign-market entry modes), relational capability, and the level of trust between partners. Network operation focuses on network initiation, network coordination, and network learning capabilities. Network resources comprise network human-capital resources, synergy-sensitive resources (resource combinations within the network), and information sharing within the network.

The third research objective is to determine the impact of networking capability on the international performance of SMEs. The study analyzes 11 hypotheses through structural equations modeling using LISREL. The hypotheses relate to strong and weak ties, the relative strength of strong ties over weak ties, and each of the eight remaining constructs of networking capability in the study. The research conducts a cross-sectional study by using a sample of SMEs drawn from the telecommunications industry in Ireland.

The study supports the hypothesis that strong ties are more influential on international performance than weak ties. Similarly, network coordination and human-capital resources have a positive and significant association with international performance. Strong ties, weak ties, trust, network initiation, synergy-sensitive resources, relational capability, network learning, and information sharing do not have a significant association with international performance. The results of this study are strong (R2=0.63 for performance as the outcome) and provide a number of interesting insights into the relations between collaboration or networking capability and performance.

This study provides managers and policy makers with an improved understanding of the contingent effects of networks to highlight situations where networks might have limited, zero, or even negative effects on business outcomes. The study cautions against the tendency to interpret networks as universally beneficial to business development and performance outcomes.