Journal of International Business Studies – online publication March 27, 2017
Beyond categorization: New directions for theory development about entrepreneurial internationalization
Rebecca Reuber, Pavlos Dimitratos, Olli Kuivalainen
- Categorizations emphasizing the earliness of internationalization have long been a cornerstone of international entrepreneurship research. Here we contend that the prominence of categories has not been commensurate with theory development associated with them. We draw on categorization theory to explain why earliness-based categories are persistent, and argue that a greater focus on notions related to opportunity can open new avenues of research about the entrepreneurial internationalization of business. We propose and discuss three directions for opportunity-based research on entrepreneurial internationalization, involving context, dynamics and variety.
Journal of International Business Studies – online publication March 21, 2017
A time-based process model of international entrepreneurial opportunity evaluation
Yanto Chandra
- This article investigates two important research gaps in international business (IB): how entrepreneurs evaluate international entrepreneurial opportunities (IEOs) and the role of time in the evaluation process. Drawing on the literature on decision-making models and the philosophical foundation of opportunity, this study employs Gioia’s methodology and content analysis to examine how the founders of 15 early-internationalizing firms evaluated IEOs in the early- and late-stage of internationalization. The findings reveal that the interaction of time and three general rules of IEO evaluation that I coin ‘simple’, ‘revised’, and ‘complex’ influenced the entrepreneurs’ decisions. The findings show that the founders transitioned from simple to revised and to complex rules in the IEO evaluation process and that various contingent factors such as time pressure, resource availability, and type of stakeholders drove these transitions. The three general rules correspond to what I label as ‘opportunity actualization’, ‘revision’, and ‘development maximization’ processes, respectively. I propose a Time-based Process model that reconciles extant internationalization models’ (i.e., Process, Network, Economics, and Entrepreneurship) different explanations regarding why and how firms internationalize.
Journal of Business Venturing – Volume 32, 302–317
Commercialization strategy and internationalization outcomes in technology-based new ventures
Noni Symeonidou, Johan Bruneel, Erkko Autio
- Advances in business process outsourcing and open innovation practices have made the choice of technology commercialization strategy increasingly relevant for technology-based new ventures. We investigate effects of intellectual property (IP)-based, product-based, and hybrid (both product and IP) commercialization strategies on internationalization propensity and intensity in technology-based new ventures. We find that new ventures adopting a product-based commercialization strategy are less likely to internationalize than those with hybrid or IP-based strategies. In addition, new ventures using IP-based commercialization strategies exhibit higher international intensity after foreign market entry than those with hybrid and product-based strategies. These findings provide novel insights into the dependence on external resources associated with different types of commercialization strategy.
International Business Review –Volume 26, 225-238
The dynamics of experiential learning: Microprocesses and adaptation in a professional service INV
Thorsten Bunz, Lucrezia Casulli, Marian V Jones, Andreas Bausch
- In international new ventures (INVs), experiential learning happens in quick succession and across a wide number of diverse contexts. Yet, we lack an empirical understanding of the microprocesses through which INVs learn and adapt in their foreign expansion. Understanding those microprocesses is important because timely adaptation can save the venture time and resources, thus promoting sustainable growth. In this study, we investigate the dynamics of experiential learning and adaptation in the internationalisation process of an INV in the professional service sector. Findings from our study illustrate that the firm applies deliberate experiential learning by developing, revising, and finalising criteria for important dimensions in the international growth process, and adapts its internationalisation practices accordingly. We further show that deliberate experiential learning is predicated on an actively and closely monitored learning process, involving critical evaluation, adjustment of criteria, and acceptance of affordable mistakes, as opposed to learning by default.
International Business Review –Volume 26, 250-263
SME foreign market entry mode choice and foreign venture performance: The moderating effect of international experience and product adaptation
Lina Hollender, Florian B. Zapkau, Christian Schwens
- Firms’ foreign market entry mode choice attracts considerable research attention. However, the performance implications of this choice remain inconclusive, particularly in the context of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The present paper draws on the resource-based view (RBV) and develops a theoretical model specifically tailored to the context of SMEs in order to study the relationship between entry mode choice and foreign venture performance. Testing hypotheses on 133 German SMEs, we show that international experience as a resource and product adaptation as a capability improve the performance of non-equity entry modes by mitigating liabilities of smallness inherent to SMEs. We furthermore find empirical support for the joint moderating effect of international experience and product adaptation on the focal relation. Our findings contribute to the SME foreign market entry mode literature and have implications for practitioners and future research.
International Business Review –Volume 26, 288-302
Informal institutions and international entrepreneurship
Etayankara Muralidharan, Saurav Pathak
- This study examines the influence of three informal institutions, performance orientation, self-expression and social desirability, on the extent of internationalization by early stage entrepreneurial firms. We employed multi-level modeling techniques using 20,656 individual-level responses obtained from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) survey for 39 countries from 2001 to 2008, and supplementing with country-level data obtained from the World Values Survey (WVS) and the Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness (GLOBE) study. The results demonstrate that high performance orientation, high self-expression, and low social desirability of entrepreneurship in societies increase the extent of internationalization by early-stage entrepreneurial firms. The study promotes new theory and empirical findings on the relationship between informal institutions and entrepreneurial agency.
International Business Review –Volume 26, 365-379
Rapid multinationalization: Propositions for studying born micromultinationals
Heini Vanninen, Olli Kuivalainen, Luciano Ciravegna
- This study examines how so-called born micromultinationals multinationalize. Existing theoretical frameworks do not capture the multinationalization of young and small firms because of the literature gap separating studies on born globals and international new ventures from the research on multinational enterprises. However, firms go beyond accelerated internationalization and engage in accelerated multinationalization. Born micromultinationals invest and operate in multiple countries from, or soon after, their foundation. We argue that it is necessary to examine their smallness, newness and entrepreneurial nature, as suggested in the BG/INV literature, as well as to investigate why and how they invest abroad through the lenses of MNE theories. We discuss existing theories and examine them in the light of four case studies of Finnish born micromultinationals. Our results show that the organizational, locational and internalization approach and transaction costs economics for example, have explanatory power for the FDIs conducted by born micromultinationals. We suggest that the multinationalization process of born mMNEs consists of commitment decisions; reconfigurations of the value chain; and learning from, and creating and building trust with internal sources.
International Business Review –Volume 26, 380-390
When marketing and innovation interact: The case of born-global firms
Kalanit Efrat, Shaked Gilboa, Moshe Yonatany
- Previous research on born-global firms (BGs) has emphasized their strong dependency on establishing a competitive positioning from the early days of their existence. While many researchers emphasized BGs’ innovativeness as a driver of their competitiveness, the capabilities underlying BGs’ innovativeness are still under-researched, specifically, marketing, and innovation-related capabilities. Based on a preliminary stage of in-depth interviews with senior managers, we identified three capabilities, market intelligence generation, marketing adaptability, and team cohesion, that underscore the interaction between innovation and marketing. We then performed a SEM analysis based on data collected from 127 BGs. Our findings indicate that marketing intelligence and team cohesion directly and positively impact BGs’ innovativeness. Marketing adaptability was found to be moderated by environmental conditions—economic development and technological development. When economic development is high, salesforce adaptability enhances BGs’ innovativeness, while product adaptability or communication adaptability decreases BGs’ innovativeness. When technological development is high, product adaptability enhances BGs’ innovativeness, while salesforce adaptability decreases BGs’ innovativeness.