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Despite the seminal works of authors like Bartlett, Ghoshal, Nohria, Doz, Williamson, among others, because they focused on mature multinationals, newcomers in international markets find scarce information about the design and implementation of international operations networks. In this paper we analyze the internationalization process of Brazilian and Chinese firms to understand the evolution of their networks, a process influenced by factors inexistent in studies about developed country multinationals, namely global production networks (GPNs) and country-of-origin effects. The key characteristics of their international operations networks seem to be well described by a stage-based approach where emerging country multinationals start as local optimizers and then evolve by taking different strategic positions within the GPN to which they are connected. That upgrading is possible when the implementation of the international operations network reaches a certain level of maturity.

The aim of this study is to discuss how social capital is developed in the internationalization process of small and medium‐sized family enterprises (family SMEs).

This paper reports findings from an in‐depth multiple case study with four Finnish manufacturing family SMEs. The data were analyzed through the perspectives of structural holes, network closure, and the interplay between these two mechanisms.

The material in the paper demonstrated that family entrepreneurs had a large number of structural holes when launching international operations, but also after several years of running international operations. Instead of trying to span structural holes, they concentrated merely on developing the network closure with agents and subsidiary staff. The case firms spent a lot of resources on finding suitable network ties and on developing good network closure with the selected social capital ties.

There are some aspects that might differ depending on the home and target country of firms. For instance, firms in some Asian countries are able to utilize emigrant relationships that help them with networking, which was not the case here with Finnish family SMEs.

Family entrepreneurs seem to have a tendency to concentrate on a limited number of foreign partners, and to neglect the building of new relationships that could help them in future challenges.

This study: responds to calls for more research on network development in the entrepreneurial process, especially in the context of internationalization; introduces the notions of network closure and structural holes to the internationalization context; and reveals how social capital restricts and facilitates family SMEs' international operations.

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.

The purpose of this paper is to examine, and present a comprehensive review of, the existing literature on the international manufacturing network (IMN).

The original data set used for reviewing the IMN literature consisted of 107 articles selected from 21 journals: more specifically, 40 articles are concerned with plant-level analysis, and 67 articles are related to IMN-level analysis. The literature is simultaneously reviewed by two researchers. The relevance and contribution of each reviewed paper is discussed and mutually agreed upon.

The paper highlights the different concepts related to IMN and traces the evolution of IMN-related research. Based on two levels of analysis (i.e. plant and network), this paper further reviews and discusses the IMN-specific literature in detail to determine the number of IMN articles published across the journals, the dominant methodologies employed, and the research focus reflected in IMN studies. A research trajectory is finally developed to provide an integrated and intuitional view on the development of IMN research.

This is the first effort that has been made towards thoroughly investigating the existing literature on IMN, aiming to trace different concepts related to IMN from a historical perspective, to review and discuss the IMN-specific literature in detail, to provide an overview of the evolution trajectory of different existing IMN research themes, and to propose future research directions. Keeping in mind the growing importance of IMN for practitioners as well as the academic community, this study provides a timely overview of existing and emerging IMN research themes.

The purpose of this paper is to shortly overview the research in international operations management (OM), to provide background to the papers published in this special section.

As a literature review, the paper investigates the past, present, and future of international OM. It is not a systematic review; the paper just highlights the most important international operational management research networks, streams and concepts in the field.

The paper finds that there is a time lag in the field of international OM compared to other research areas within international business and management. It provides some ideas for the future to be researched.

The paper gives a focused review on international research networks which has not been done before. It also identifies two different streams of researches in international OM: the stream investigating OM differences among geographical areas, and the stream dealing with issues of international manufacturing networks.

Strategic trends towards service operations have been widely reported in the recent literature, but organisational capabilities to support such service-centred strategies are less well understood. The purpose of this paper is to identify key organisational issues in managing complex engineering service operations throughout the lifecycle.

Using instruments developed from the product lifecycle management technologies and the network configuration concept, key organisational issues for engineering service operations were identified through case studies focusing on complex engineering products and services systems across a variety of industrial sectors.

The case studies demonstrated different organisational features and strategic priorities of engineering service operations along the whole lifecycle. A generic trend has been observed for engineering systems to move from being design, development and manufacturing focused to embracing support and end-of-life recycling matters.

This paper provides an overall framework for integrating key organisational issues in engineering service operations. It contributes to the service literature by highlighting the need of developing appropriate organisational capabilities to support service-centred strategies with engineering cases. It also provides guidance for companies to manage their engineering network operations throughout the whole lifecycle of complex products and services systems.

Multinational companies have manufacturing operations in various countries; however, there is scarce evidence on how they assess performance of the network-based operations of their factories, called international manufacturing networks (IMN). The purpose of this paper is to propose a process model for the performance assessment of IMNs.

The IMN performance assessment process model was developed from the extant literature and was empirically verified in its congruency and usefulness via a multiple case research. For that, in each case the general process model was derived into a specific application that fit the type of IMN on focus. Qualitative and quantitative data were collected from the case companies’ reports, profiling forms and interviews, followed by within-case and cross-case analyses.

Evidence suggest that the process model, along with its derivations, is a valuable tool to describe and explain how IMN performance assessment unfolds in real organizational environments. Additionally, three propositions emerged: IMN performance assessment has distinct characteristics depending on the type of IMN adopted, which in turn depends on the company’s internationalization strategy; IMN performance assessment has more strategic value and importance for companies that are globally coordinated and adopt “rooted” manufacturing strategies; and companies design their IMN performance assessment on a trial-and-error basis.

As all case-based research, this paper has generalizability limitations. Thus, next steps may include a large-scale survey and an action research that will develop and implement a full-fledged IMN performance assessment.

The process model and descriptive insights provide a diagnostic tool and subsidies that may encourage managers to review and improve their current IMN performance assessment.

The process model contributes to addressing a 20-year gap concerning how to approach IMN performance assessment in a holistic and systematic manner.

The purpose of this paper is to argue that operations management (OM) scholars ought to be among the thought leaders in research into the design and management of global production networks, but too few of them currently are. It suggests possible reasons for what is holding them back and calls for ideas for removing the obstacles.

This paper is a viewpoint. Nevertheless, it reports results of an indicative survey and uses example cases to illustrate and support its arguments.

The survey confirms the conclusions from previous studies that the number of publications specifically in leading OM journals focusing on management of global operations is small. Relatively high levels of detail and dynamic complexity and hysteresis of variables affecting the management of global operations are identified as the major hurdles. Applying analytical modeling, a popular research methodology among OM scholars, may be of limited use as it mandates making too many simplifying assumptions. Empirical research is also difficult because it is time consuming and requires access to often sensitive data and may require longitudinal studies. These are tough problems with no clear solutions.

The paper urges OM scholars to take on the broad and strategic problems in management of global operations. That would not only change how the OM discipline is viewed, but it would also benefit the firm, the economy, and the society.

Based on both the observations of case studies during the last few years and on action research work on the global manufacturing strategy development, this paper introduces another type of evolutionary process that looks at the internationalisation of manufacturing systems. The paper seeks to explore the new driving forces and responses of manufacturing systems in terms of their static architectures, dynamic mechanisms, and strategic capabilities in the evolutionary process. Reviews those internationalization models developed during the last 25 years, as well as reviewing manufacturing globalisation over the last 15 years, to gain a comprehensive picture about the international manufacturing system (IMS). Based on the empirical observations of industrial issues and the difficulties faced, a new research framework is proposed that will tackle the wider issues in international manufacturing, covering the manufacturing value creation process, internationalisation process, and inter‐firm collaboration formation process. Argues that it is important for future research to develop the strategy process to synthesise the three dimensions of the IMS.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the similarities and differences in the internationalization of SMEs and MNEs and the specific factors affecting them.

The relevant literature was reviewed particularly in the context of the major theories of internationalization.

The positive and negative aspects of each theoretical approach to internationalization are present to form the basis of a new model of international entrepreneurship.

The newly developed conceptual model has not been empirically tested.

A redeveloped theoretical integrative conceptual model of international entrepreneurship is proposed based on four internationalization properties (mode, market, product, and time), internationalization performance, and key antecedents and consequences of the internationalization process.