Peter Liesch

The University of Queensland | UQ

We contend that the Uppsala internationalisation process (IP) Model offers the basis, yet unrealised, for a process theory of growth of the internationalising firm. From the Model’s origins, particularly in Penrosean theory, we develop this potential by offering a theory extension that explicates the organisational changes within the firm required...

Research summary Negative externalities in global value chains (GVCs) create challenges for regulation. We establish conditions under which firms are more likely to adapt their GVCs to rectify negative externalities that occur at global scale. Firms in GVCs vary in relation to their active involvement in attending to negative externalities in a pre...

Foreign subsidiaries of multinational enterprises (MNEs) have been conducting outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) into new overseas destinations. Drawing upon the behavioural theory of the firm, we explain that such OFDI can occur in response to performance shortfalls relative to aspirations. When performance shortfalls in subsidiaries are att...

We investigate how organizational goal setting impacts slack resource allocation between markets at home and overseas, and argue that organizational goals, publicly announced, impact managers' evaluations of resource allocation opportunities. Based on a sample of Chinese publicly listed manufacturing firms for the period 2010 to 2016, we find that...

We report a phenomenographic study that reveals philosophies elicited on talent management (TM) systems in a sample of Australian subsidiaries of foreign multinational enterprises. We label these philosophies as The Carrot, The Risk, The Caretaker, The Conversation and The Strength. Each philosophy portends a unique TM system, guided by an overarch...

We investigate the degree and duration of the effects of deceptive signaling on globalized digital platforms, vis-à-vis naturally formed organic signaling such as importer review scores and discernible inducing signaling such as banner advertisements. Sponsored listing has emerged as a powerful tool for facilitating Internet-mediated exchanges in i...

It is assumed in the international entrepreneurship and international business literatures that firms entering overseas markets possess attributes that are unique and valuable, providing them with an advantage that offsets their liability of foreignness. There is a further assumption that the market knowledge acquired through exporting is independe...

International entrepreneurship is typified by market-making activities which can be technological or cultural. Technological innovations are created by experimentation whereas the change through cultural innovation is shaped by the collective endeavours of entrepreneurs. For cultural and technological innovation, we theorise how international entre...

This paper uses data from a qualitative study and a range of secondary sources to explore both the micro-level practices of real- time translation work and the macro context in which they occur. The aim of this paper is to explicate the nature of the translation work undertaken by a collective of actors to translate high-tech knowledge in multiple...

We examine the role of learning firm-specific advantages of small and medium size (SME) service firms in their internationalization. We focus on technical services that have received limited scholarly attention. We theorize that innovative born global firms build a set of capabilities in market, internal and relational learning that will provide ne...

In this study, we developed a practice-based account of knowledge transfer in the empirical Chinese contexts. Through empirical analysis, we develop insights on the outcomes associated with four practices of knowledge transfer – efficiency improvement, human development, connections development, and knowledge problematisation – enacted through six...

The Uppsala Internationalization Process Model is the most cited model within the field of international business. However, even with its most recent formulation, the model is predicated on a key set of assumptions about the limiting and releasing mechanisms in a 'change of state' decision.  The model assumes that uncertainty, risk, lack of trust,...

Phenomenography is proposed here as a qualitative methodology for investigating how owner-managers practise internationalisation in small firms, and it is applied in an empirical study of internationalising owner-managed small Australian wineries. The findings show a common internationalisation activity cycle but four qualitatively different ways i...

In this editorial for the Special Issue on International Entrepreneurship, we inter-relate key concepts about the pursuit of opportunities from the entrepreneurship and international business literatures. In doing so, we consider the assessment of opportunities as an individual-level cognitive activity, the construction of opportunity as a firm-lev...

Vahlne and Johanson (2017) present the multinational business enterprise (MBE) as a new form of cross-border organization that supersedes the multinational enterprise (MNE). They offer a ‘general model of the evolution of the MBE,’ arguing that the MBE evolves through ongoing internationalization processes by proactively and entrepreneurially engag...

We interpret the wait-and-see strategy as a decision to maintain unchanged the firm’s commitments to its business network relationships. To explain why firms choose a wait-and-see strategy, we propose an extension to the relationship commitment decisions aspect of the Uppsala internationalization process (IP) Model. With this development, we explai...

This paper sets out to understand how entrepreneurial founders of born global firms acquire, transform and deploy new knowledge resources for early internationalization. Adopting a dynamic capabilities view and using a sample of high-tech B-to-B firms, we report that the new firm's early entry into international markets is executed through three tr...

In an increasingly globalised world, firms generally have become more internationalised utilising a range of different modes of operation. In the case of small-medium sized enterprises (SMEs), exporting is the favoured mode of international market entry, at least in the early stages of internationalisation, and many governments have supported SME e...

A recent and promising trend in international business and international management research has been to consider institutions not only as taken-for-granted constraints that need to be accommodated, but also the outcomes of agency; purposive action by individuals, firms, coalitions and other actors. We elaborate the development of research in this...

How do different kinds of planning orientations affect entrepreneurial firms' innovation outputs? To address this question, we position real options reasoning (ROR) and net present value (NPV) as business planning orientations with distinctive heuristics. We empirically investigate heterogeneity in entrepreneurs' business planning in terms of these...

Specialization within professions creates challenges for maintaining the macro-level values of the profession in the everyday work of specialists at the micro level inside organizations. By conducting a qualitative study of emergency-department physicians and their interactions with other hospital specialists, we show how specialists maintain profe...

In this paper, we summarize how internationalization research has evolved over time, where it stands today, and how it might evolve going forward. Specifically, we examine internationalization research from earlier times to the present day. We contrast the incremental internationalization characteristic of older multinational enterprises with the e...

Modern domestic barter systems are operating in Australia at the local community level, and at the national level for business exchanges. The Australian Government, and Australian firms practise countertrade at the international level. These exchange regimes appear to have become institutionalised in an economic system which is organised on the pri...

Government mandated-countertrade (G M-C) is practised in Australia as offsets policy. Its objectives and implementation have been refined over recent years to recognise the inefficiency of conventional arm’s length exchange for the international transfer of technologies, skills and capabilities. Earlier formulations of offsets policy in Australia s...

We study the internationalisation efforts of entrepreneurs who intentionally orchestrate opportunity identification activity in the internationalisation process. The internationalisation of the firm is a process of entering new international markets that becomes possible only after an individual within the firm has identified opportunities in those...

Small business enterprises are a vital part of Australia's domestic economy. Small business make a major contribution to the economy in terms of enterprise numbers, employment, employment growth, output and wealth creation (Williams 1987, Hall 1992, Hawkins 1993, Australian Bureau of Statistics 1993). Small businesses also have the potential to con...

Strategy-making assists small firms in managing change and uncertainty by developing suitable strategic options. We move beyond the conventional formal–informal dichotomy to show how three informal approaches—internal participation, external participation, and centralized strategy-making—help both entrepreneurial firms and conservative firms to nav...

In response to criticisms that management education is hampered by insufficient empirical examples of how evidence-based management plays out inside organizations, we present an illustrative case study of an EBM decision process. Our empirical investigation focuses on a hospital emergency department in Australia and the decision process a physician...

Organizational learning has been studied as a key factor in firm performance and internationalization. Moving beyond the past emphasis on market learning, we develop a more complete explanation of learning, its relationship to innovation, and their joint effect on early internationalization. We theorize that, driven by the founders’ international v...

To represent the modern world economy, we introduce the worldwide market for market transactions concept to enable us to model the organization of the firm. Outsourcing and offshoring are changing the nature of the firm, presenting internalization/externalization decisions for international managers, and producing unprecedented international reloca...

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 expe...

This article uses complex network analysis to investigate the question of the contribution international trade makes to growth in small-population, developed economies, with an emphasis on Australia. Using a longitudinal data set, the empirical work investigates the opportunities available to these economies to improve their position within the int...

This article discusses research, teaching, and engagement in international business. The article aims to capture some kind of consensus, identify where new challenges might prompt a revision of the IB domain, and outline any implications for the scope and activities of the AIB. To do so, it focuses on the distinctive characteristics and features, b...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to advance the domain of entrepreneurial marketing (EM) responding to the challenge to EM scholars to more fully develop EM as a school of marketing thought. The paper seeks to argue that the context of the born global firm is an appropriate and novel context in which to undertake this research. Design/methodol...

To represent the modern world economy, we introduce the worldwide market for market transactions concept to enable us to model the organization of the firm. Outsourcing and offshoring are changing the nature of the firm, presenting internalization/externalization decisions for international managers, and producing unprecedented international reloca...

In this article we review how risk and uncertainty in the international expansion of the firm are treated in the internationalisation and international entrepreneurship literatures, including emerging research in both fields. We conclude that there is need for a more nuanced treatment of risk and of uncertainty in the international expansion of fir...

Traditional linear models of innovation, in which it is assumed that government funding of R&D will axiomatically create innovative industries, have become obsolete. This paper suggests that innovation is in fact a complex and interactive process that involves cycles of learning. However, these "knowledge cycle" models of innovation are largely unv...

This study examines the influence of culture on Chinese consumers’ intentions to purchase Australian products. Data were obtained from an online survey completed by 3,171 respondents across 20 cities in China. Results indicate that ingroup influence, product perception, but not marketing efforts have a significant main effect on purchase intentions...

Macro-environmental trends such as technological changes, declining trade and investment barriers, and globalizing forces impacting both markets and production worldwide point to the heightened importance of international business (IB) and the relevance of IB research today. Despite this, a leading scholar has expressed concerns that the IB researc...

Phenomenography is proposed here as a qualitative methodology for investigating how owner-managers practise internationalisation in small firms, and it is applied in an empirical study of internationalising owner-managed small Australian wineries. The findings show a common internationalisation activity cycle but four qualitatively different ways i...

We study the narratives of executive managers of internationalizing firms to understand their organization of time in the internationalization process. While most of the international business literature has studied internationalization processes in terms of objective ‘clock time’, we seek to understand how managers perceive and construct time in a...

In this note we revisit two core propositions of the knowledge-based view of the firm found in the seminal work of Kogut and Zander: (1) that multinational corporations (MNCs) exist because transfers and re-combinations of knowledge occur more efficiently inside MNCs than between MNCs and third parties; and (2) that the threat of opportunism is not...

There have been recent calls for the field of International Business to retool its routines by becoming genuinely interdisciplinary. This paper takes such an approach by using recent advances in the fields of evolutionary economics and applying them to IB. Evolutionary economists are now viewing the economy as an actual network. Consequently, one t...

Totally generalisable theories of firm internationalisation in the post-industrial era of international business, where national barriers are becoming less significant and technology becoming more influential, appear to be illusory. Stepwise or evolutionary models that predict gradual internationalisation are under challenge from empirical evidence...

Using a novel modelling approach to represent the firm in the market, we develop a theoretical explanation of externalisation to clarify the phenomena of outsourcing and offshoring of technical and administrative tasks. We employ hypothetical firm illustrations to elaborate the worldwide market for market transactions and increased opportunities fo...

An expanded theory of planned behaviour (TPB) model was used to examine the influence of attitudes, subjective norms, perceived behavioural control, self-identity, and past behaviour on Chinese consumers’ intention to purchase Australian products and/or services. Data were obtained via an electronic survey completed by 3,171 respondents in China. H...

Our study of 16 entrepreneurial narratives of internationalising firms uses qualitative coding to identify six broad constructions of time. As Gartner (2007) acknowledges, stories are told for particular purposes, and studies have shown that creating and maintaining shared time-frames represents a key role for the entrepreneur in driving growth of...

In this study we incorporate a pre-internationalisation phase into the traditional Uppsala model of firm internationalisation to address the question: Where does the process begin? We identify through the literature four concepts fundamental to the ability of an Uppsala type firm to begin internationalisation of its operations: stimuli, attitudinal...

The internationalisation process of firms has attracted much research interest since the 1970s. It is noted, however, that a significant research gap exists in studies with a primary focus on the pre-internationalisation behaviour of firms. This paper proposes the incorporation of a pre-internationalisation phase into the traditional Uppsala model...

The results of 2 yr of field trials evaluating various chemical and biological controls of Phyllophaga anxia (LeConte) white grubs in a Fraser fir [Abies fraseri (Pursh) Poir] Christmas tree production field are reported here. Chemical insecticides evaluated included bifenthrin, chlorantraniliprole, thiamethoxam, and time-released imidacloprid tabl...

This study reports an application of the theory of planned behavior as a framework to investigate how beliefs influence purchase decisions of Chinese consumers. Data were obtained from an online survey (N = 2002) that assessed respondents’ behavioral, normative, and control beliefs in relation to their intentions to purchase Australian products and...

Research has identified two distinct influences on the direction of firm internationalisation, cultural distance, and regionalisation. This paper sets out to test the strength of these influences on the direction of exports in circumstances where they act in different directions. The paper applies a quantitative methodology to a large, purposively...

Terrorism threatens international business (IB) through its direct and indirect effects. As governments tighten security at public sites, businesses have become more attractive terrorist targets, with important implications for the operations and performance of multinational firms. While terrorism has been substantially studied in other fields, the...

Today there are more technology, technologists, knowledge and experts than at any time in human history; but from a global perspective, it is difficult to argue that this accumulation of knowledge and technology has put the world in an unambiguously better position than it was in the past. Business is not getting any easier to do and major corporat...

International trade and investment economies are highly integrated and interdependent and can be exploited by organized, international terrorism. The network of inter dependencies in the international economy means that a terrorist attack has the potential to disrupt the functioning of the network, so the effects can reverberate around the world. G...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to study compatibility variations in buyer‐seller relationships between Mainland Chinese firms and Hong Kong Chinese buyer firms that act as intermediaries to markets in the West. Design/methodology/approach Data are drawn from 19 multiple in‐depth case study interviews with Mainland and Hong Kong Chinese firms...

Outsourcing and offshoring are changing the nature of the firm, and producing unprecedented international relocation of economic activity. We engage with Williamson’s (1996) challenge to organizational scholars to address ‘which transactions go where and why?’ to explain the outsourcing/offshoring phenomenon. We present a novel modelling approach t...

Networking through international joint ventures (IJVs) is considered to be an important mechanism of exchanging skill sets across culturally different societies. IJVs could be used as an internationalisation entry mode by foreign companies to access, and participate in, the different and changing cultural environments of the host country and the ho...

This exploratory study links organizational learning and dynamic capability in an Australian firm internationalization study to hypothesize how international experience lays the foundation of a dynamic internationalization capability in the firm. Interacting with the degree of internationalization, the influence of international experience on firm...

International trade plays a central role in economic growth. However, there is a need to better explain the mechanism through which this occurs. This paper uses complex network analysis to investigate the contribution international trade makes to growth in small population developed economies, with an emphasis on Australia. Using a longitudinal dat...

This paper analyses the recently issued accounting standard prAASB 1016 and its predecessor ED 71 in the light of the historical development of equity accounting in Australia and overseas. Empirical research shows that equity accounting was not universally adopted before being banned and that, given a voluntary choice of accounting method, firms ar...

In this study we incorporate a pre-internationalisation phase into the traditional Uppsala model of firm internationalisation to address the question: Where does the process begin? We identify through the literature four concepts fundamental to the ability of a firm to begin internationalisation of its operations: stimuli, attitudinal/psychological...

A salient characteristic of the changing environment in dynamic, knowledge-intensive industries has been the growing adoption of collaborative organisational forms in the international operations of firms. Recent developments in these industries demand a re-evaluation of traditional explanations of these choices as resource constraints mandate coll...