Speed in the Internationalization Process of the Firm

While firm internationalization processes have been understood as being dynamic, the dimension of speed has rarely been the main focus of research efforts, which, until a decade ago, focused principally on explaining sequences of entry modes and choices of markets. The emergence of the study of international entrepreneurship has enhanced the role of speed, although this has usually been measured in terms of the time lag between a firm's foundation and its initial international action, with little attempt at defining and explaining the speed of the process once it is under way. This study reviews the concept of speed from an internationalization perspective, describes the multidimensional nature of the concept and sets out the different aspects that link timescales with the types of changes – continuous and discontinuous – that take place during internationalizing processes. The paper concludes with a research agenda as a guide for future work on considering the role of speed in the internationalization process.     

The Influence of Context on the Strategic Decision‐Making Process: A Review of the Literature

This paper critically reviews the strategic decision‐making process literature, with a specific focus on the effects of context. Context refers to the top management team, strategic decision‐specific characteristics, the external environment and firm characteristics. This literature review also develops an illustrative framework that incorporates these four different categories of contextual variables that influence the strategic decision‐making process. As a result of the variety and pervasiveness of contextual variables featured within the literature, a comprehensive and up‐to‐date review is essential for organizing and synthesizing the extant literature to explicate an agenda for future research. The purpose of this literature review is threefold: first, to critically review the strategic decision‐making process literature to highlight the underlying themes, issues, tensions and debates in the field; second, to identify the opportunities for future theory development; and third, to state the methodological implications arising from this review.     

The role of networks in early internationalizing firms: A systematic review and future research agenda

Despite considerable research, the international entrepreneurship (IE) literature lacks systematic knowledge of how early internationalizers use networks to overcome their resource deficits in different phases of internationalization. Further, a systematic guide for future research to expand the current knowledge of early internationalizers' network dynamics throughout their internationalization process is missing to date. To fill these voids, the present paper conducts a systematic review of sixty-one journal articles on the role of networks in the cross-border expansion of early internationalizing companies. We contribute to existing research by taking stock of the current state of knowledge regarding the role of networks in early internationalizing firms in different faces of internationalization. We also use the findings obtained from our review as a platform to systematically identify opportunities for future research regarding early internationalizers’ network dynamics throughout the internationalization process.     

Top Team Diversity,Internationalization and the Mediating Effect of International Alliances*

This study examines the mediating effect of international alliances for the relationship between TMT (top management team) job‐related diversity (educational, functional background, outside industry experience and international exposure) and firm internationalization. We argue that firms with greater TMT diversity will use more international alliances, resulting in higher firm internationalization. Based on a sample of 226 US firms during the period 1988–1994, we find that international alliances partially mediate the relationship between TMT international exposure diversity and firm internationalization. However, we do not find international alliances to mediate the relationships between other forms of TMT diversity and firm internationalization. We discuss implications and directions for future research.     

International Experience in International Business Research: A Conceptualization and Exploration of Key Themes

International experience, the experience that firms accrue from operating internationally, is a key concept in explaining firm internationalization. This paper reviews the conceptualization of international experience in the international business literature. It highlights how prior research has identified three dimensions of the international experience construct (length, scope and diversity), thereby demonstrating that international experience should be treated as a multidimensional construct. In addition, intensity is presented as a fourth and novel dimension of international experience. The importance of this multidimensional conceptualization is highlighted in an explanation of why the international diversification and international experience constructs are not synonymous. In light of the importance of international experience in explaining firm internationalization, the authors explore how the source of the firm's international experience will determine the limits to its application in foreign markets. In particular, the authors distinguish between location‐bound international experience and non‐location‐bound international experience as sources of firm‐specific advantages (FSAs). The FSAs that the firm develops from its experience with equity and non‐equity entry modes are presented as examples of specific FSAs developed within the firm's bundle of FSAs concerning internationalization. The paper concludes with some implications of the conceptualization of international experience for several issues of international business research as well as providing managerial implications.     

Heterogenous internationalization processes of emerging economy MNEs: A review and research agenda

The internationalization of emerging economy MNEs (EEMNEs) is a major topic in international business (IB) research. IB scholars testing the applicability of existing internationalization theories to EEMNEs, or developing new EEMNE theories, have failed to explain that the heterogeneity in EEMNE internationalization is due to their being based in different countries, being active in different industries, and having different resource endowments. With these differences investigated mostly in isolation, the research to date has been fragmented. We take a more holistic view. Our paper synthesizes the literature to show that heterogeneity in EEMNE internationalization processes are due to the interaction between country, industry, and firm and this allows us to explain the “where,” “how,” “when,” and “how much” of it. We use a top-down approach, that is, how macro-level and industry factors impact firm-level ones. We disentangle studies on home-country, industry, and firm-level antecedents to internationalization, which yields rich insights. We develop an integrative framework that identifies the antecedents of EEMNE internationalization and their interrelationships. We then use the framework to review and summarize past research, outlining gaps and contradictions, and most importantly, we present crucial findings. Finally, we propose research questions that we believe will advance the EEMNE internationalization field.     

Building cross-disciplinary bridges in leadership: Integrating top executive personality and leadership theory and research

The top executive personality literature has grown significantly in recent years. We review this literature, consider its contributions to leadership research and practice, and discuss how future research on top executive personality should draw more heavily on the broader leadership literature. The paper first describes the top executive context and highlights the advantages and challenges of studying top executives. We then review the top executive personality literature in four areas that capture the bulk of the research: leadership of human resources, ethical leadership, strategic leadership and corporate governance, and firm performance. We examine how the top executive personality research in each area compares with other research on leaders' and their personalities that has been conducted on similar topics. The paper concludes with a future research agenda, which identifies other leader, team, and contextual considerations to advance our understanding of top executive personality and its influence. We also address methodological challenges related to measurement and endogeneity, because they are important for theory development and have received much attention in top executive personality research. In short, our paper examines how the literatures on top executives and leadership inform one another, and it helps lay a foundation for integrating these literatures more thoroughly.     

The New CEO and the Post‐succession Process: An Integration of Past Research and Future Directions

The early tenure of a new Chief Executive Officer (CEO), also referred to as ‘the CEO post‐succession process’, is a critical phase in the history of an organization, because it is associated with a high rate of organizational failure and CEO dismissal. Research on this important process has grown rapidly over the last decade, focusing particularly on the question of how the match between the CEO, the organization and the environment is created in the post‐succession process. Yet, the respective literature is highly fragmented, which suggests that there is a need for a systematic review and evaluation of existing works. Adopting the conceptual vocabulary of the practice perspective, the authors review this literature in terms of what it reveals about (1) the practices adopted by new CEOs and other actors involved in the post‐succession process, (2) the properties of the key practitioners involved, and (3) the practical context of the post‐succession process. This review suggests that new CEOs are primarily involved in practices aimed at integrating the new CEO into the organization, and practices aimed at realigning the organization with its environment. The important insights that the existing literature affords are identified, and the gaps in this body of research are highlighted. On this basis, a concrete research agenda is developed in terms of topics, methodologies and theories.     

Search and Recombination Process to Innovate: A Review of the Empirical Evidence and a Research Agenda

The view of innovation as a process of searching and recombining existing knowledge elements has been adopted in several industries. The innovation management literature has recognized the fundamental role that search and recombination play in innovation development. However, the relevant research has provided complex, fragmented and mixed results. The authors aim to identify areas of convergence and provide directions for future research by collecting empirical evidence regarding how firms conduct the search and recombination process. They conducted a systematic literature review of 87 empirical articles in the innovation management field. The review reveals differences among the solutions adopted both within and across organizational boundaries. Specifically, it shows that the variety and diversity of knowledge elements are critical in creating breakthrough innovations. Therefore, this paper discusses how to provide access to a variety of knowledge elements. It also highlights other fundamental questions calling for further investigation, such as how scientific knowledge elements are successfully recombined and how recombination and search dynamics occur in small and medium‐sized firms. The review concludes by summarizing the current state of affairs and suggests promising directions for future investigation.     

Paradoxes and Dual Processes: A Review and Synthesis

Paradox and dual‐process theories are used by management and organization researchers in studying a variety of phenomena across a wide range of management sub‐fields. Cognition is a focal point of both of these theories. However, despite their growing importance and shared areas of inquiry, these two theories have developed largely in isolation from each other. To address this lack of integration, the authors conducted a review and synthesis of relevant aspects of the paradox and dual‐process literatures. Focusing bidirectionally on how paradox theory informs dual‐process theory and how dual‐process theory informs paradox theory, they highlight the ‘nestedness’ of intuition and analysis in paradox (a paradox within paradoxical thinking). On the basis of the review and synthesis, they identify four themes (epistemological and ontological assumptions in the relationship between intuition and analysis; psychological and psychometric issues in the relationships between intuition and analysis; managers’ experiences of tensions between intuition and analysis; managers’ approaches to tensions between intuition and analysis) and introduce an integrative framework that assimilates these two perspectives and sets out an agenda for future research and implications for management.     

Towards a re-conceptualization of firm internationalization: Heterogeneous process,subsidiary roles and knowledge flow

This paper proposes a re-conceptualization of firm internationalization to understand and predict the rapid global expansion of firms since the 1990s, especially those from emerging markets. First, based on a review of existing literature, we re-conceptualize firm internationalization as a heterogeneous process of strategic development of subsidiaries in overseas countries or regions. This re-conceptualization captures the pluralistic character of the process of firm internationalization.Second, we delineate peculiar roles played by subsidiaries in pursuit of multinational enterprise (MNE) headquarters' internationalization strategies. We argue that the HQ's heterogeneous strategies toward overseas subsidiary development define the corresponding roles of subsidiaries, which in turn shape the knowledge-flow patterns within the MNEs. Finally, we link firms' internationalization strategies with different subsidiary roles to generate hypotheses concerning the effect of such links on subsidiary performance. We argue that the proper alignment of HQ's internationalization strategies with subsidiary roles will lead to success of the overseas subsidiaries; by contrast, a mismatch will lead to subsidiary failure. The paper thus contributes to the field of firm internationalization by linking its new conceptualization with the literature on subsidiary roles and knowledge flows in MNEs.     

Changing Public Service Organizations: Current Perspectives and Future Prospects

As governments and public service organizations across the globe engage in strategies of institutional and organizational change, it is timely to examine current developments and a future research agenda for public governance and management. The paper commences with reflections on the state of the field, based on an analysis of papers published in the British Journal of Management over the last decade. While there was some variation apparent across the set, the ‘typical’ article was found to be influenced by the discipline of organizational behaviour, set within the health‐care sector, using case‐study methods within field‐based studies, and investigating shifts in roles and relationships and the management of change. It has also in the past been UK‐centric, though the journal editorial policy and our own article call for a stronger international and comparative focus in the future. The second section of the article summarizes the articles and themes contained in this collection of papers on public service organizations. The third section explores a possible research agenda for the future, arguing for the significance of public sector research for the understanding of management more generally, and for examining the interface between private and public organizations (an increasingly common phenomenon). We suggest the need to set public services research in policy and political contexts, and suggest this may reveal organizational processes of wide interest. We call for a wider set of disciplines to engage in public management research, and to engage in moving the agenda from the study of efficiency to effectiveness as defined by a variety of stakeholders. We address the issue of how far public management researchers should become directly engaged with the world of policy and suggest that whether researchers engage in Mode 1 or Mode 2 research, their work would benefit from a stronger theoretical base.     

Knowledge Management and Balanced Scorecard Outcomes: Exploring the Importance of Interpretation,Learning and Internationality

The topics of shared interpretation, organizational learning and firm internationalization have been studied extensively. Though considered important factors that shape the international competitive landscape, research synthesizing these interrelated areas has been limited to date. We use the balanced scorecard as a framework for assessing how organizational learning and sensemaking influence actions relating to a global marketing strategy and subsequent financial performance. Using data from 169 multinational corporations, findings indicate that a specific set of knowledge activities is related to balanced scorecard outcomes (e.g. customer performance, innovation and learning performance, and internal process performance). The hypothesized importance of customer performance is confirmed as the only balanced scorecard outcome significantly related to financial performance. A post hoc analysis revealed further insights for future research opportunities. Overall, these results suggest that firms can improve their competitive position by emphasizing shared interpretation within the organization and including balanced scorecard elements when assessing performance.     

Liminality in Management and Organization Studies: Process,Position and Place

This paper explores liminality, a concept receiving increased attention in management and organization studies and gaining prominence because of its capacity to capture the interstitial and temporary elements of organizing and work. The authors present a systematic review of the literature on liminality, covering 61 published papers, and undertake a critical analysis of how the concept of liminality has been used in prior research. This review reveals associations with three main themes: process; position; and place. For each theme, the authors identify the central research questions posed, while comparing individual and collective levels of analysis. During this process, the authors revisit several ideas central to the original, anthropological research on liminality, a perspective from which they suggest a rejuvenation of liminality research in management and organization studies. This paper argues for a greater focus on the liminal experience itself – especially its ritual and temporal dimensions – and for improving the comparative analysis of liminality following the three themes identified in this paper. The authors suggest that revising the agenda for liminality research along these lines could facilitate more informed responses to the challenges of an increasingly temporary and dynamic work life.     

The Internationalization of Chinese Firms: A Critical Review and Future Research*

The important phenomenon that the internationalization of Chinese firms (ICF) represents has attracted increasing interest from scholars from multiple fields over the past 20 years (1991–2010). Although this proliferation of research has the potential to significantly improve understanding of Chinese multinational enterprises (MNEs), the necessary step of consolidating and integrating extant knowledge is absent. This paper reviews the scholarship on the ICF and offers insights into the specific areas in critical need of further development. By focusing on articles published in major scholarly journals during the period 1991–2010, the authors develop a coherent framework to organize and review conceptual and empirical findings from disciplines as far ranging as management, international business, cross‐culture and area studies. Within the reviewed literature, three primary streams of enquiry are identified which focus on the antecedents, processes and outcomes of the ICF. Achievements within each of the three research streams are carefully reviewed using content analysis, whereby a number of important issues are identified which have remained consistently untouched, and recommendations are provided for future research, aimed at developing a more integrated research agenda on the ICF for management and international business scholars.     

Guilt in Marketing Research: An Elicitation–Consumption Perspective and Research Agenda

Guilt regulates many consumption processes and, consequently, marketers frequently use appeals based on guilt to influence consumers' behaviour. Owing to the multidisciplinary interest in this emotion, however, the literature is diverse and fragmented. The effectiveness of guilt appeals is contested, and some authors suggest that the use of this emotion in marketing might be unethical. Furthermore, research to date has not explored the potential relationships between the experience of guilt in consumption and the elicitation of this emotion through marketing appeals. This paper analyses existing research on guilt in marketing, developing four specific contributions based on the evidence reviewed. First, it shows under what circumstances feelings of guilt support consumer self‐regulation processes. Second, it outlines evidence‐based managerial recommendations on how to produce effective guilt appeals and avoid the potentially unethical consequences of marketing through this emotion. Third, it identifies a gap in existing theorizing and presents an elicitation–consumption perspective of guilt in marketing as a framework that complements current approaches to this research topic. Fourth, it develops an agenda for future research and suggests eleven research hypotheses for the advancement of this field. Through the analysis of research produced within different disciplinary perspectives, this study develops a necessary foundation for future work on the role of guilt in marketing processes.     

Perception and Communication of Flood Risks: A Systematic Review of Empirical Research

Flood hazards are the most common and destructive of all natural disasters. For decades, experts have been examining how flood losses can be mitigated. Just as in other risk domains, the study of risk perception and risk communication has gained increasing interest in flood risk management. Because of this research growth, a review of the state of the art in this domain is believed necessary. The review comprises 57 empirically based peer‐reviewed articles on flood risk perception and communication from the Web of Science and Scopus databases. The characteristics of these articles are listed in a comprehensive table, presenting research design, research variables, and key findings. From this review, it follows that the majority of studies are of exploratory nature and have not applied any of the theoretical frameworks that are available in social science research. Consequently, a methodological standardization in measuring and analyzing people's flood risk perceptions and their adaptive behaviors is hardly present. This heterogeneity leads to difficulties in comparing results among studies. It is also shown that theoretical and empirical studies on flood risk communication are nearly nonexistent. The article concludes with a summary on methodological issues in the fields of flood‐risk perception and flood‐risk communication and proposes an agenda for future research.     

The social regulation of corporate social irresponsibility: Reviewing the contribution of corporate reputation

Whilst it is assumed that stakeholders penalize and deter corporate social irresponsibility (CSI), instances of CSI persist. Correspondingly, the literature on social regulation—which describes how non-governmental stakeholders exert their regulatory influence on organizations—remains fragmented. To act as a springboard for future studies, this review examines the contribution of corporate reputation to our understanding of how CSI is socially regulated. Our analysis of a large (n = 448 studies) multidisciplinary body of literature unearths a set of nuanced relationships between CSI and corporate reputation. We synthesize a conceptual framework in order to map the diverse landscape of literature and its contributions. We then highlight important gaps among—as well as between—research streams to present a future research agenda. Accordingly, this review contributes to closing ‘the loop’ between CSI, corporate reputation and social regulation, thereby opening up new pathways for future research.     

The role of firm ownership on internationalization: evidence from two transition economies

This paper investigates how different types of owners influence the extent of firm internationalization, measured by the share of firm exports in total sales. The results of the analysis carried out using firm level data of Estonian and Slovenian firms, show that the firms under the control of the insider owners are, on average, more internationalized. State control, on the other hand, hampers internationalization efforts. Further, more productive firms, larger firms, more capital-intensive firms and those with high level of investment in both fixed capital and R&D are more successful in internationalization process. Finally, high market share also leads to increased internationalization through exports as firms seek to expand in foreign markets after having dominated the domestic ones.