Industrial Marketing Management – Volume 101: pp. 258-271
Network exploration and exploitation capabilities and foreign market knowledge: The enabling and disenabling boundary conditions for international performance
Faroque, A.R., Torkkeli, L., Sultana, H. & Rahman, M.
This empirical study analyzes how strategic orientations influence the relationships between exploration and exploitation-related networking capabilities, foreign market knowledge, and market performance of 198 internationally operating firms in Bangladesh. The results of hierarchical regression showed that a higher level of network exploration capability and network exploitation capability individually generate greater foreign market knowledge. In addition, our results show that international entrepreneurial orientation reinforces the positive effect of network exploration capability. The positive association between market knowledge and performance, in turn, is accentuated by a proactive export market orientation but attenuated by a responsive export market orientation. These findings suggest that, while both types of networking capabilities are beneficial to develop stocks of foreign market knowledge, firms can acquire and create greater knowledge if they strategically align entrepreneurial orientation with network exploration capability. Further, to use this market knowledge with the goal of improving their position in international markets, firms need to develop a proactive rather than a responsive export market orientation. The current study contributes to the literature on networking capabilities by analyzing firms’ networking capabilities with the lens of exploration-exploitation typologies and incorporating strategic orientations as the contextual factors of such capabilities.
Journal of International Entrepreneurship – DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10843-022-00307-0
Are born global firms really a “new breed” of exporters? Empirical evidence from an emerging market.
Moen, Ø., Falahat, M. & Lee, YY
This study investigates and compares born global (BG) firms and non-BG firms in Malaysia. We employed the multigroup analysis technique with structural equation models to test six hypotheses to determine the differences and similarities between two proposed models of BG and non-BG firms across a wide range of industries. The study reveals differences between the antecedents of marketing capabilities for BGs versus non-BGs, indicating that the performance enabling mechanisms differ between the groups. More precisely, the ability of BG firms to convert digital and entrepreneurial orientations into marketing capabilities is found to be a distinguishing characteristic of these firms. Moreover, non-BGs utilize government support to build marketing capabilities and obtain superior performance in the international market. This result suggests that governmental export promotion initiatives in Malaysia should be adjusted to increase relevance for BGs. The findings indicate that marketing capabilities play an essential role in the international market performance of both BGs and non-BGs. An important implication is that managerial focus and actions need to be adjusted depending on the type of firm. The two types of firms are not equal; if they are managed similarly, misjudgment will arise.
Sustainability – Volume 13(24), pp. 14002
The Role of Digitalization on the Internationalization Strategy of Born-Digital Companies
Vadana, I., Kuivalainen, O., Torkkeli, L. & Saarenketo, S.
Digital technologies have led to born-digital companies, defined by their highly digitalized value chains, designed at their inception. Born-digital (BD) companies leverage digitalization across their value chains in the internationalization path. However, despite this emergence, very few empirical studies in international business literature have explained the impact of bricolage in conducting value chain activities and exploiting the internationalization strategy of BD companies. The present study responds to these omissions of how the digitalization of the value chain activities and the internationalization strategy enhance companies by allowing them to reach customers (users) and partners with available resources and less time. The results indicate that the digitalization of value chain activities facilitates the re-use and mixing of the resources at hand to overcome challenges, innovate solutions, or create new opportunities for international growth, in line with the bricolage theory. Overall, this study contributes to international business literature regarding, specifically, the behaviors of born-digital companies as they strategically approach internationalization efforts.