Small International Firms: Typology, Performance and Implications

Zusammenfassung

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The remarkable increase in heterogeneity among international firms in the past decade constitutes a challenge to traditional thinking about the internationalization process of firms. This paper contributes to the literature by offering a typology of small and medium-sized international firms defined by the rapidity and extent of their internationalization. The firms are compared on competitive profile, international motivation, behavior, and performance. Implications for managers, scholars and policy-makes are also discussed. Small and medium-sized international firms naturally falls into three categories; namely Born Globals, Early Internationals, and Late Internationals. The firms are clearly distinct in terms of international motivation and behavior, but differs less in terms of performance.

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Auszug

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Small International Firms: Typology, Performance and Implications

Key Results

* Small and medium-sized international firms naturally falls into three categories; namely Born Globals, Early Internationals, and Late Internationals.

* The firms are clearly distinct in terms of international motivation and behavior, but differs less in terms of performance.

Introduction

Stage models and incremental internationalization of established firms has been the reigning paradigm in international marketing research for the last decades of the 20th century. However, the emergence of new types of small international firms has been given considerate attention more recently. One example of such firms is the emergence of a group of rapidly-internationalizing firms, labeled "International New Ventures" (McDougall/Shane/Oviatt 1994) or "Born Global" firms (Rennie 1993, Knight 1997, Aspelund/Moen 2001, Moen 2002). Born Global firms are firms that seek internationalization from inception and derive a considerable portion of total sales from foreign markets in their first years of operation (Rennie 1993, Knight 1997). Traditionally seen only as an obscurity, there is a strong evidence for their prevalence (McDougall/Shane/Oviatt 1994, Bell 1995, Madsen/Servais 1997) and increasing numbers in the last decade (Preece/Miles/Baetz 1 999, Aspelund/Moen 2001, Moen 2002).

Even though several studies have shown that new international firms have features distinguishing them from other types of exporters (Jolly /Alahutha/Jeannet 1992, Rennie 1993, Boter/Holmquist 1996, Madsen/Rasmussen/Servais 2000, Aspelund/Moen 2001, Stray/Bridgewater/Murray 2001, Moen 2002) the results are hard to compare, as there has been no attempts to establish a rigid typology of such small international firms. Although it was the promising growth prospects of Born Global firms that caught the initial interest of scholars in the field (Rennie 1993), no research has unveiled the long term performance of Born Globals and the longitudinal effects of rapid and extensive internationalization strategies remai...

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