Table 1 - uploaded by David G. Collings
Content may be subject to copyright.
Source publication
The nature of born global firms which from inception, seek to derive significant competitive advantage from the use of resources and the sales of outputs in multiple countries remains poorly understood. Given the lack of resources which born globals tend to have compared with larger international competitors the importance of social capital and net...
Contexts in source publication
Context 1
... indigenous Irish companies are found investing money into the Irish animation sector, which builds the industry in the hope of securing long-term employment positions (Duncan, 2010). Table 1 provides an overview of the key players in the industry in the Irish context. These 15 firms comprised the population of our empirical study. ...
Citations
... International business strategy has been an area of interest for many years, which has contributed to the development of different theories aiming to explain the processes undertaken by companies. Traditionally, these theories were focused on large multinational corporations (Johanson and Vahlne 2009;Mtigwe 2006), but the focus recently has been on the analysis of smaller companies, international new ventures, and born-global companies, as they seem to internationalise faster and differently (Oviatt and McDougall 2005;Smith et al. 2012). ...
Sharing Economy platforms have expanded their operations all around the globe at an unexpected rate. Due to its “asset-lite” nature, traditional internationalisation theories may not be able to fully explain or predict their expansion patterns. This lack of theoretical background puts at risk the phenomenon’s future and stops traditional companies from coming up with a solid plan to compete against platforms. To ease the creation of a Sharing Economy internationalisation paradigm, this paper intends to review the existing research regarding the internationalisation of sharing platforms as well as the applicability of existing theories. Through a systematic literature review, the existing research was reviewed, and afterwards, internationalisation theories and their distinct factors extracted were noted to address the applicability of these within the singularities of the sharing phenomenon. This classification of factors was done according to the exiting literature in the field. After this research, we can confirm the lack of explanatory power of traditional theories regarding sharing platforms and confirm the insufficient research regarding these operations. We propose a list of factors that should be considered for future research as a guideline for the further development of the Sharing Economy internationalisation theory. Additionally, the factors classification is tested upon the case of the internationalisation of Blablacar, the most extensive carpooling network operating, to check if the theoretical and the practical approaches converge.
... Using the keywords born global(s), early internationalise firm(s), international new venture(s)/firm(s), export-oriented firm(s) and international young venture(s)/firm(s), this study has identified 566 journal articles After reviewing abstract and research context section of the article, this study has identified 230 journal articles where the BGFs are selected for their primary investigation Quantitative papers: 86 papers Qualitative papers: 88 papers Mixed method: 15 papers Conceptual papers: 41 papers A* ranked paper: 41 papers A ranked paper: 108 papers B ranked paper: 10 papers C ranked paper: 6 papers Others: 64 papers It is interesting to note that different journals focused on different areas related to BGFs. For example, JIE published papers related to the roles of network, social network and social capital (Johnson, 2004;Coviello and Cox, 2006;Han, 2006;Dib et al., 2010;Kiss and Danis, 2010;Naude and Rossouw, 2010;Lin et al., 2016); JWB mostly covered papers related to organisational-level capabilities Jantunen et al., 2008;Prange and Verdier, 2011), dynamic capability and network theory (Gracia-Canal et al., 2002;Gleason and Wiggenhorn, 2007;Loane et al., 2007;Styles and Genua, 2008;Manolova et al., 2010;Musteen et al., 2010;Smith and Ryan, 2012;Gerschewski et al., 2015); JIBS mainly focused on multidisciplinary context of BGFs research such as organisational-level capability (Knight and Cavusgil, 2004;Knight and Kim, 2009;Lu et al., 2010;Prashantham and Floyd, 2012;Cavusgil and Knight, 2015), social capital and role of networking (Coviello, 2006;Zhou et al., 2007;Ellis, 2011) and international opportunities (Mathew and Zander, 2007;Zhou et al., 2010;Zander et al., 2015); IBR papers focused on the role of knowledge, innovation and technology (Yli-Renko et al., 2002;Sharma and Blomstermo 2003;Presutti et al., 2007;Freeman et al., 2010;Coviello, 2015); and MIR covered research related to innovation and technology (Oesterle, 1997;Knight and Cavusgil, 2005;Almor et al., 2014;, psychic distance (Trudgen and Freeman, 2014;Pellegrino and McNaughton, 2015) and opportunity (Ibeh, 2005;Johanson and Vahlne, 2006;Nummela et al., 2014). ...
The phenomenon of born global has received significant attention by international business scholars because of its distinctive characteristics. Several theories, perspectives and frameworks have been adapted to investigate and scrutinise the characteristics of born global phenomenon. This study aims to review and critically evaluate the literature to (1) discuss the diverse theoretical approaches,(2) discuss the findings from qualitative and quantitative studies,(3) develop a holistic framework and (4) propose avenues for future research. The in-depth critical literature review includes the analysis of 230 articles published in peer-reviewed journals over a 24-year time-span between 1993 and 2017. The result shows that the interest in born global research has increased gradually. Both theoretical and empirical scholarships have contributed significantly to this interest. Based on the results, a theoretical model has been developed to describe the unrivalled factors to achieve BGF’s success. This study also provides deeper insights into the born global knowledge and highlights the areas for future research.
... EPOs can also provide resources and information which reduces uncertainty to which international firms are exposed and can limit costly mistakes or lost opportunities (McAuley, 1993;Toften & Rustad, 2005). In many countries and regions, policy makers encourage and provide support for the international growth of firms through governmentfunded EPOs (Ahmed, Mohamed, Johnson, & Meng, 2002;Francis & Collins-Dodd, 2004;Leonidou, Katsikeas, Palihawadana, & Spyropoulou, 2007;O'Gorman & Evers, 2011;Smith, Ryan, & Collings, 2012). ...
... Business Sweden and Swecare are partly owned by the Swedish state, which means that firms using their services could take advantage of Sweden's good reputation in foreign markets. Intermediary networks, which are present on international markets, were instrumental in bridging different networks (Burt, 1992;Ryan et al., 2019;Smith et al., 2012 shows the importance of interacting with social and political actors in addition to business actors (Hånell & Ghauri, 2016). In line with the aforementioned, this study gives some insights into the discussion on strong and weak ties important for firm internationalization (Granovetter, 1973). ...
This study explores which networks are beneficial for gaining resources for firms' internationalization. Little is known about firms' use of organizational, personal, and intermediary networks to gain access to resources for internationalization. Firms are seeking resources through their organization's relationships (organizational networks) and individuals' personal contacts (personal networks). Governmental and industry actors are implementing networks to promote international growth and act as an intermediary between business actors (intermediary networks). We conduct in‐depth interviews with firms and representatives for intermediary networks complemented with a survey. The findings reveal which resources are accessed through the different networks. We find organizational networks provide considerable access to most resources (except financial resources) that are beneficial for internationalization, whereas intermediary networks provide access to reputational, human, and market resources. Personal networks primarily provide access to human resources. This study contributes to theory by giving a more fine‐grained understanding of how different types of networks give access to different resources valuable for internationalization.
... BGs rely extensively on a range of networks which provide the skills and expertise to help build and sustain legitimacy within the competitive environment (Evers et al. 2012;Ojala and Heikkilä 2011;Sepulveda and Gabrielsson 2013;Smith et al. 2012). Vasilchenko and Morrish (2011) suggest that BGs utilise social and business network forms. ...
This paper examines the HR practices of mature born-global firms from 29 emerging economies. Through an examination of large scale survey data the paper questions the extent to which firm size impacts the employment of temporary workers, the employment of skilled workers and the extent of employee training. Findings suggest that as firm size increases the use of temporary workers decreases, the number of skilled workers increases and the number of employees receiving training also increases. The paper highlights how born-global firms are able to shift away from externalized, market-based approaches towards more internalized, commitment-based approaches in order to survive, adapt and grow.
The theory of networks has attracted increasing attention in international business (IB) research. However, despite its growing theoretical utilization, the systematic description, modelling and analysis of network relationships has been scarce in IB. The field has taken a stand in favour of conventional methodological approaches, which hinders the close interaction between theoretical development and empirical reality in network-based IB research. This study seeks to contribute to IB research by incorporating social network analysis (SNA) as an innovative and promising research tool and aims to shed light on the richness of SNA in fostering IB research, through adding more nuanced network understanding. In particular, it calls attention to its potential applications through exemplifying around two fundamental IB phenomena: firm internationalization and multinational enterprises (MNEs). It concludes by suggesting future directions for utilising SNA in the IB field.
