This paper contributes to the literature on internationalization processes by showing that a born... more This paper contributes to the literature on internationalization processes by showing that a born global can experience nonlinear internationalization (deand re-internationalize) after radical/fast initial growth, and use some subsidiaries as bases for further gradual expansion. After studying a case of a Belarusian door producer that has invested to seven and exported to 11 more countries, we conclude that a home country's political/economic environment can be a crucial 'push' factor for a firm's fast internationalization but, thereafter, it can internationalize gradually due to lacking knowledge or other resources, and deand re-internationalize due to various internal and/or external reasons.
We examine how technology-focused innovation-based fast internationalizers' (TIFIs&#3... more We examine how technology-focused innovation-based fast internationalizers' (TIFIs') performance measures change as they mature. Based on 42 interviews with Australian entrepreneurs and industry experts, we show that young TIFIs employ exploratory strategies for developing cutting-edge solutions and prefer using subjective measures for assessing their export performance. Later, becoming more complex organizations, employing exploitative strategies, they use additional objective, profit-based measures. The implications of destructive forces (e.g., COVID-19) to the performance of these firms were modest. Due to being digitally-based industry disruptors, they remain focused on innovation as the source of their independence and survival. Their creativity drives constant change/disruption to industries, requiring back-and-forth movement among exploratory and exploitative strategies, integrating subjective and objective performance measure simultaneously, as their newto-the-world solutions are developed to withhold 'creative destruction' over time.
Purpose This paper aims to give an overview of the literature on Central and Eastern European (CE... more Purpose This paper aims to give an overview of the literature on Central and Eastern European (CEE) firms’ successful internationalization: different authors’ understanding of success, and, thereafter, these firms’ internationalization processes, external factors, internal motivators and actions that affect successful internationalizers’ initial and subsequent foreign activities, and, finally, internationalization outcomes. Design/methodology/approach This is a systematic-narrative hybrid literature review paper that focuses on CEE firms’ successful internationalization. Findings This paper concludes that CEE firms’ “success” is understood and measured differently, successful internationalizers can experience various internationalization paths, they are affected by a large number of external impact factors, internal motivators or actions and their internationalization outcomes vary considerably. Thus, there is no “ideal” type of successful internationalization: as different CEE firm...
This study aims to find out which variables predict the internationalization type of academic spi... more This study aims to find out which variables predict the internationalization type of academic spinoffs. This topic has not yet received any attention in academic spin-offs' internationalization literature. We use a sample of Spanish spin-offs, with four dependent variables reflecting internationalization types and a large selection of independent variables reflecting various domains considered in the extant literature. Logistic regression is applied to outline marginal effects and prediction accuracies. The results show that academic spin-offs which are oriented towards international markets from the beginning of their activities and constantly pursue new international opportunities are more likely to internationalize fast and remain international for a longer time period than other firms. Being the first to introduce product or process innovations and cooperating with international government institutions, competitors, customers, and/or suppliers is also relatively useful for such internationalizers. The study also demonstrates that predicting if an academic spin-off will become a less active internationalizer results in a higher accuracy than forecasting if it will become a born global. Moreover, predicting if a firm will internationalize later results in a higher accuracy than forecasting if this will happen during the first three years since the spin-off's foundation.
This initiative examined systematically the extent to which a large set of archival research find... more This initiative examined systematically the extent to which a large set of archival research findings generalizes across contexts. We repeated the key analyses for 29 original strategic management effects in the same context (direct reproduction) as well as in 52 novel time periods and geographies; 45% of the reproductions returned results matching the original reports together with 55% of tests in different spans of years and 40% of tests in novel geographies. Some original findings were associated with multiple new tests. Reproducibility was the best predictor of generalizability—for the findings that proved directly reproducible, 84% emerged in other available time periods and 57% emerged in other geographies. Overall, only limited empirical evidence emerged for context sensitivity. In a forecasting survey, independent scientists were able to anticipate which effects would find support in tests in new samples.
This study aims to find out how useful managers' past general and export experience is in predict... more This study aims to find out how useful managers' past general and export experience is in predicting whether young manufacturing firms become fast internationalizers. Extant literature about the role of managerial experience in determining young firms' internationalization type is scant. This paper fills this gap by providing systematic evidence on which kinds of general and export experience can be used for accurate predictions of two firm types: born globals and general fast internationalizers. Our dataset encompasses information about managerial experience of the whole population of young Estonian manufacturing firms. Based on using four different prediction methods (logistic regression, rough sets, decision tree, neural networks) and a large variety of variables reflecting managers' past experience, the results indicate that in prediction models, export experience variables are more valuable than general experience variables. Born globals can be predicted with an accuracy of at least 90% in case of all applied machine learning methods, while the precision is lower in case of general fast internationalizers. The study leads to important implications for international business theory and practice.
Review of International Business and Strategy, 2019
PurposeThis paper aims to study how firms’ export behavior is associated with their corporate gov... more PurposeThis paper aims to study how firms’ export behavior is associated with their corporate governance.Design/methodology/approachThis study uses whole population data of Estonian small and medium-sized enterprises: 9,530 exporters and 73,619 non-exporters. Several theory-driven corporate governance variables and exporting variables (based on previous studies) are used. Binary logistic regression is applied to study how exporters’ corporate governance differs from that of non-exporters. Eight additional continuous dependent variables are used to portray exporters’ internationalization with ordinary least squares regression. The robustness of the obtained base results is checked for younger/older and smaller/larger firms.FindingsHaving female board members did not lead to a higher likelihood of export activities. Experience – tenure’s length, board members’ age and other board memberships – provided mixed results. Having a larger board was associated with a higher export propensity...
The main objective of this paper is to investigate the relationships between exporting success an... more The main objective of this paper is to investigate the relationships between exporting success and variables that affect the economic and financial structure. For a set of 242 Small and Medium-Sized Estonian firms, we will analyze how financial variables contribute to the achievement of higher export success rates. We select the relevant variables with Principal Component Analysis and use an Artificial Intelligence method (PART algorithm) to study the role of them. The results show that the more relevant financial variables to analyze the success in international market are the ones related to the liquidity of the assets, the level of interest payments, sales growth, the ones related to firms' own funds and the age of the company. In addition, although some financial factors are more significant than others, none of them is clearly a key factor for all companies and situations, that is, no single factor can lead to success or failure.
Review of International Business and Strategy, 2019
PurposeThis paper aims to find out what kind of export and failure risk patterns exist among youn... more PurposeThis paper aims to find out what kind of export and failure risk patterns exist among young Estonian manufacturing exporters and explore their interlinkages.Design/methodology/approachThe sample consisted of 208 young Estonian manufacturing exporters. Based on internationalization literature, export patterns were detected with a consecutive three-stage clustering of export sales share from total sales, outside-Europe sales share from export sales and number of target markets, while failure risk patterns were detected by clustering failure probabilities obtained from a universal prediction model. The interconnection of export patterns with financial ratios and failure risk patterns was studied with statistical tests.FindingsSix main internationalization patterns existed. In all, 49 per cent of firms exported to a single European market and their export share was constantly very low, while even most of the firms with high export shares (39 per cent of the sample) were also acti...
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to set the papers included in the special issue into their... more Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to set the papers included in the special issue into their unique contextual stage of entrepreneurial eco-systems in Nordic and Baltic countries. Design/methodology/approach – The editorial first presents the current status of entrepreneurship in the Nordic and Baltic regions. It then provides an overview of the papers included in this special issue, while highlighting their contributions. Finally, it concludes with suggestions for further research, while pointing out promising areas for future investigations. Findings – The papers included in this special issue help advance the understanding of important aspects of entrepreneurship in general, and within the context of Nordic and Baltic countries in particular. The first two papers focus on antecedents of entrepreneurial behaviour, namely – education and passion, while the last two papers address entrepreneurial behaviour and its outcome in terms of both growth aspiration and actual growth. Fi...
Abstract Purpose We aim to identify the factors that led to a Belarusian firm’s initial fast inte... more Abstract Purpose We aim to identify the factors that led to a Belarusian firm’s initial fast internationalization and the reasons for slowing the process down thereafter. Methodology/approach The chapter is based on a single case study. We collected the data via 9.5 hours of interviews and also used the firm’s annual reports. Findings The case firm’s internationalization was “pushed” by the Belarusian economic environment – especially, the fear of governmental takeover. The founders felt that internationalizing would be less risky than fully focusing on their domestic market. It was also “pulled” by growth opportunities on foreign markets and also a founder’s personal contacts. The slowdown of the firm’s internationalization was caused by the lack of foreign market knowledge and other resources. Practical implications Despite of slowing the internationalization down and experiencing several fluctuations in foreign activities, the founders are satisfied with the firm’s internationalization. Thus, managers should not automatically regard such internationalization a failure: adjustments in the firm’s internationalization pace can be justified as it has to react to the changing economic and business environment. Originality/value The chapter shows that a born global’s internationalization can slow down, it can use its subsidiaries as bases for further gradual internationalization, and it can also experience fluctuations in internationalization.
This paper contributes to the literature on internationalization processes by showing that a born... more This paper contributes to the literature on internationalization processes by showing that a born global can experience nonlinear internationalization (deand re-internationalize) after radical/fast initial growth, and use some subsidiaries as bases for further gradual expansion. After studying a case of a Belarusian door producer that has invested to seven and exported to 11 more countries, we conclude that a home country's political/economic environment can be a crucial 'push' factor for a firm's fast internationalization but, thereafter, it can internationalize gradually due to lacking knowledge or other resources, and deand re-internationalize due to various internal and/or external reasons.
We examine how technology-focused innovation-based fast internationalizers' (TIFIs&#3... more We examine how technology-focused innovation-based fast internationalizers' (TIFIs') performance measures change as they mature. Based on 42 interviews with Australian entrepreneurs and industry experts, we show that young TIFIs employ exploratory strategies for developing cutting-edge solutions and prefer using subjective measures for assessing their export performance. Later, becoming more complex organizations, employing exploitative strategies, they use additional objective, profit-based measures. The implications of destructive forces (e.g., COVID-19) to the performance of these firms were modest. Due to being digitally-based industry disruptors, they remain focused on innovation as the source of their independence and survival. Their creativity drives constant change/disruption to industries, requiring back-and-forth movement among exploratory and exploitative strategies, integrating subjective and objective performance measure simultaneously, as their newto-the-world solutions are developed to withhold 'creative destruction' over time.
Purpose This paper aims to give an overview of the literature on Central and Eastern European (CE... more Purpose This paper aims to give an overview of the literature on Central and Eastern European (CEE) firms’ successful internationalization: different authors’ understanding of success, and, thereafter, these firms’ internationalization processes, external factors, internal motivators and actions that affect successful internationalizers’ initial and subsequent foreign activities, and, finally, internationalization outcomes. Design/methodology/approach This is a systematic-narrative hybrid literature review paper that focuses on CEE firms’ successful internationalization. Findings This paper concludes that CEE firms’ “success” is understood and measured differently, successful internationalizers can experience various internationalization paths, they are affected by a large number of external impact factors, internal motivators or actions and their internationalization outcomes vary considerably. Thus, there is no “ideal” type of successful internationalization: as different CEE firm...
This study aims to find out which variables predict the internationalization type of academic spi... more This study aims to find out which variables predict the internationalization type of academic spinoffs. This topic has not yet received any attention in academic spin-offs' internationalization literature. We use a sample of Spanish spin-offs, with four dependent variables reflecting internationalization types and a large selection of independent variables reflecting various domains considered in the extant literature. Logistic regression is applied to outline marginal effects and prediction accuracies. The results show that academic spin-offs which are oriented towards international markets from the beginning of their activities and constantly pursue new international opportunities are more likely to internationalize fast and remain international for a longer time period than other firms. Being the first to introduce product or process innovations and cooperating with international government institutions, competitors, customers, and/or suppliers is also relatively useful for such internationalizers. The study also demonstrates that predicting if an academic spin-off will become a less active internationalizer results in a higher accuracy than forecasting if it will become a born global. Moreover, predicting if a firm will internationalize later results in a higher accuracy than forecasting if this will happen during the first three years since the spin-off's foundation.
This initiative examined systematically the extent to which a large set of archival research find... more This initiative examined systematically the extent to which a large set of archival research findings generalizes across contexts. We repeated the key analyses for 29 original strategic management effects in the same context (direct reproduction) as well as in 52 novel time periods and geographies; 45% of the reproductions returned results matching the original reports together with 55% of tests in different spans of years and 40% of tests in novel geographies. Some original findings were associated with multiple new tests. Reproducibility was the best predictor of generalizability—for the findings that proved directly reproducible, 84% emerged in other available time periods and 57% emerged in other geographies. Overall, only limited empirical evidence emerged for context sensitivity. In a forecasting survey, independent scientists were able to anticipate which effects would find support in tests in new samples.
This study aims to find out how useful managers' past general and export experience is in predict... more This study aims to find out how useful managers' past general and export experience is in predicting whether young manufacturing firms become fast internationalizers. Extant literature about the role of managerial experience in determining young firms' internationalization type is scant. This paper fills this gap by providing systematic evidence on which kinds of general and export experience can be used for accurate predictions of two firm types: born globals and general fast internationalizers. Our dataset encompasses information about managerial experience of the whole population of young Estonian manufacturing firms. Based on using four different prediction methods (logistic regression, rough sets, decision tree, neural networks) and a large variety of variables reflecting managers' past experience, the results indicate that in prediction models, export experience variables are more valuable than general experience variables. Born globals can be predicted with an accuracy of at least 90% in case of all applied machine learning methods, while the precision is lower in case of general fast internationalizers. The study leads to important implications for international business theory and practice.
Review of International Business and Strategy, 2019
PurposeThis paper aims to study how firms’ export behavior is associated with their corporate gov... more PurposeThis paper aims to study how firms’ export behavior is associated with their corporate governance.Design/methodology/approachThis study uses whole population data of Estonian small and medium-sized enterprises: 9,530 exporters and 73,619 non-exporters. Several theory-driven corporate governance variables and exporting variables (based on previous studies) are used. Binary logistic regression is applied to study how exporters’ corporate governance differs from that of non-exporters. Eight additional continuous dependent variables are used to portray exporters’ internationalization with ordinary least squares regression. The robustness of the obtained base results is checked for younger/older and smaller/larger firms.FindingsHaving female board members did not lead to a higher likelihood of export activities. Experience – tenure’s length, board members’ age and other board memberships – provided mixed results. Having a larger board was associated with a higher export propensity...
The main objective of this paper is to investigate the relationships between exporting success an... more The main objective of this paper is to investigate the relationships between exporting success and variables that affect the economic and financial structure. For a set of 242 Small and Medium-Sized Estonian firms, we will analyze how financial variables contribute to the achievement of higher export success rates. We select the relevant variables with Principal Component Analysis and use an Artificial Intelligence method (PART algorithm) to study the role of them. The results show that the more relevant financial variables to analyze the success in international market are the ones related to the liquidity of the assets, the level of interest payments, sales growth, the ones related to firms' own funds and the age of the company. In addition, although some financial factors are more significant than others, none of them is clearly a key factor for all companies and situations, that is, no single factor can lead to success or failure.
Review of International Business and Strategy, 2019
PurposeThis paper aims to find out what kind of export and failure risk patterns exist among youn... more PurposeThis paper aims to find out what kind of export and failure risk patterns exist among young Estonian manufacturing exporters and explore their interlinkages.Design/methodology/approachThe sample consisted of 208 young Estonian manufacturing exporters. Based on internationalization literature, export patterns were detected with a consecutive three-stage clustering of export sales share from total sales, outside-Europe sales share from export sales and number of target markets, while failure risk patterns were detected by clustering failure probabilities obtained from a universal prediction model. The interconnection of export patterns with financial ratios and failure risk patterns was studied with statistical tests.FindingsSix main internationalization patterns existed. In all, 49 per cent of firms exported to a single European market and their export share was constantly very low, while even most of the firms with high export shares (39 per cent of the sample) were also acti...
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to set the papers included in the special issue into their... more Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to set the papers included in the special issue into their unique contextual stage of entrepreneurial eco-systems in Nordic and Baltic countries. Design/methodology/approach – The editorial first presents the current status of entrepreneurship in the Nordic and Baltic regions. It then provides an overview of the papers included in this special issue, while highlighting their contributions. Finally, it concludes with suggestions for further research, while pointing out promising areas for future investigations. Findings – The papers included in this special issue help advance the understanding of important aspects of entrepreneurship in general, and within the context of Nordic and Baltic countries in particular. The first two papers focus on antecedents of entrepreneurial behaviour, namely – education and passion, while the last two papers address entrepreneurial behaviour and its outcome in terms of both growth aspiration and actual growth. Fi...
Abstract Purpose We aim to identify the factors that led to a Belarusian firm’s initial fast inte... more Abstract Purpose We aim to identify the factors that led to a Belarusian firm’s initial fast internationalization and the reasons for slowing the process down thereafter. Methodology/approach The chapter is based on a single case study. We collected the data via 9.5 hours of interviews and also used the firm’s annual reports. Findings The case firm’s internationalization was “pushed” by the Belarusian economic environment – especially, the fear of governmental takeover. The founders felt that internationalizing would be less risky than fully focusing on their domestic market. It was also “pulled” by growth opportunities on foreign markets and also a founder’s personal contacts. The slowdown of the firm’s internationalization was caused by the lack of foreign market knowledge and other resources. Practical implications Despite of slowing the internationalization down and experiencing several fluctuations in foreign activities, the founders are satisfied with the firm’s internationalization. Thus, managers should not automatically regard such internationalization a failure: adjustments in the firm’s internationalization pace can be justified as it has to react to the changing economic and business environment. Originality/value The chapter shows that a born global’s internationalization can slow down, it can use its subsidiaries as bases for further gradual internationalization, and it can also experience fluctuations in internationalization.
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