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.
We study taxi markets in Singapore to understand market entry in the field. Although market-entry games in the laboratory consistently produce equilibrium outcomes, we show that a lack of market ...knowledge hinders the markets from consistently reaching equilibrium in the field. In Singapore, a small, 720-square-kilometre island city that can be divided into 29 taxi markets, full equilibrium is elusive: 68% of the market-entry decisions made by the 2,728 taxi drivers in our data could be improved. Using three months of earnings and detailed movement data from these taxi drivers, we find an average 20% gap in marginal wage rates across markets. We use dynamic programming to derive the optimal solution for more than 3 million search decisions and find that only 32% of the searches ended in an optimal market. Finally, we find that market knowledge developed in a given month explains an additional 3% variation of the earning losses in the 2.6 million decisions for the subsequent two months, an improvement in model fit of 74%, whereas strategic thinking and minimization risk have no impact on earning loss.
This paper was accepted by Yan Chen, behavioral economics and decision analysis.
In this study we provide evidence that firms considering entering new markets are more likely to appoint directors with experience in those markets; and subsequently, we show that directors' market ...experience increases the likelihood of new-market entry. Moreover, we explore the presence of constraints in both, acquiring experienced directors and utilizing their experience. Specifically, we find that experienced directors are less likely to join firms with financial restatements in the recent past as well as firms with a lower status than the firms where they currently serve. In addition, we find that interlocking directors' experience is less likely to lead to new-market entry for firms that lack new-product development experience and that exhibit a high level of market overlap with interlocked firms.
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BFBNIB, FZAB, GIS, IJS, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SBCE, SBMB, UL, UM, UPUK
The Uppsala internationalization process model is revisited in the light of changes in business practices and theoretical advances that have been made since 1977. Now the business environment is ...viewed as a web of relationships, a network, rather than as a neoclassical market with many independent suppliers and customers. Outsidership, in relation to the relevant network, more than psychic distance, is the root of uncertainty. The change mechanisms in the revised model are essentially the same as those in the original version, although we add trust-building and knowledge creation, the latter to recognize the fact that new knowledge is developed in relationships.
Studies in the behavioural strategy literature have examined the influence of attainment discrepancy on new geographic market entry with inconclusive results. We clarified the relationship between ...attainment discrepancy and new geographic market entry by considering the moderating effects of managerial pay gaps with concentration on vertical pay disparity and horizontal pay dispersion. The framework also contributes to our understanding of tournament theory and social comparison theory by identifying specified performance contexts under which types of pay gaps conform to or violate theoretical predictions. Empirical analyses based on a panel data of Standard and Poor’s (S&P) 500 firms from 1996 to 2006 showed that our hypotheses are largely supported.
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BFBNIB, FZAB, GIS, IJS, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, SBCE, SBMB, UL, UM, UPUK
The choice of a mode of market entry is a critical component of the internationalization strategy, and numerous empirical studies have focused on this topic. Prior research, however, has provided ...mixed empirical evidence and thus, is difficult to interpret and review.
This study examines the external antecedents of the choice of entry mode by meta-analyzing data from 72 independent primary studies. We focus on the decision between wholly owned subsidiaries and cooperative entry modes. For each variable, hypotheses about the theoretically expected direction of effect are posited and tested.
We find a strong positive relationship between power distance as a cultural trait of the firm's home country and the propensity to establish a wholly owned subsidiary. On the other hand, we find a negative association between country risk, legal restrictions, market growth, and market size and the preference for wholly owned subsidiaries. We extensively discuss the implications of the meta-analytical results and investigate moderating effects of industry type and the time of the study. The relationship between income level of the host country and entry mode depends, to some degree, on the industry type. Service companies exhibit a negative relationship between income level and wholly owned subsidiaries, while manufacturing companies show a positive relationship.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK
Little research addresses the likely enabling character of the discovery and creation of opportunities during the internationalization of small firms or how international opportunities are found and ...constructed during the process of foreign market entry (FME). This article therefore studies how opportunities become connected during small firms' FME. By incorporating the concept of duality, this article conceives of the discovery and creation of opportunity as mutually enabling rather than opposed. From this duality perspective, opportunity discovery and creation facilitate each other during internationalization processes. This case study involves five high-tech Australian firms and 30 FMEs. The findings show that knowledge, networks, and capabilities enable opportunities in the FME context. International opportunities are connected and nested in different levels of generality and specificity. The FME opportunities may be based on opportunity embeddedness, because each opportunity has implications for other opportunities. The findings lead to a model and propositions to explain the relationships between opportunity discovery and creation in FME.
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BFBNIB, IZUM, KILJ, NMLJ, NUK, OILJ, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Purpose
– The purpose of this study is to examine the decision-making process for entrepreneurial firms when entering foreign markets and how and why they entered those markets.
...Design/methodology/approach
– A nascent theory in entrepreneurship called effectuation is combined with internationalization process theory as the conceptual framework to study decision-making under uncertainty. The central concept in both these theories is relationships and how they can be used to gain knowledge and thus reduce uncertainty and in the case of effectuation to co-create opportunities to enter foreign markets. The research design involves a multiple case study of software firms from Finland and New Zealand.
Findings
– It was found that entrepreneurs differentiate between foreign market selection and foreign market entry during their internationalization process, potentially using different decision-making processes in them. They tend to interweave effectuation and causation logics as substitutes in their decision-making. Uncertainty during foreign market entry is not always a barrier because it can provide opportunities depending on the logic used. In addition, there is evidence that entrepreneurs who have existing relationships in foreign markets tend to use effectuation to select and enter foreign markets.
Originality/value
– This paper transposes effectuation from its original field of entrepreneurship research to the context of internationalizing entrepreneurial firms. Consequently, it contributes toward understanding the decision-making process for selecting and entering foreign markets.
This study examines the effects of family involvement on international market entry. Bridging theories of interorganizational imitation with the notion of socioemotional wealth protection, we argue ...that family-managed firms are more likely to act as “intuitive statisticians,” using the internationalization outcomes of industry peers to determine when to internationalize. An event history analysis of 2427 manufacturing firms supports this position. Family-managed firms’ likelihood to internationalize increases as prior entrants’ performance mean and variance increase. Ultimately, our study demonstrates that this imitation strategy enables family-managed firms to reduce risk and endure longer in broached international markets.
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BFBNIB, FZAB, GIS, IJS, KILJ, NUK, OILJ, SAZU, SBCE, SBMB, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Extant literature on foreign entry increasingly recognizes firms' heterogeneity as a potential reason for inconsistency in results on the establishment mode choice, that is, whether and under which ...conditions firms should choose to enter a new country through a greenfield investment or an acquisition. Our study contributes to this debate by identifying family ownership and family involvement in management as potential powerful sources of such heterogeneity. Integrating international business studies with both corporate finance literature on family firms and recent contributions from the Socio Emotional Wealth perspective on family ownership, we claim that, due to greater risk aversion and lower access to information, the family involvement both in the firm ownership and management leads to a higher propensity towards greenfield initiatives (vs acquisitions). However, we also find that such a propensity decreases with international experience especially in family-owned firms given the greater ability of professionalized management to overcome family-related concerns on making acquisitions. Our analysis on 1045 foreign initiatives undertaken by 311 Italian family and non-family firms between 2003 and 2013 confirms our expectations, indicating family ownership as a significant driver of firms' international strategies.
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