Acceleration and Deceleration in the Internationalization Process of the Firm

By adopting a processual and dynamic view on internationalization, we develop the concepts of acceleration and deceleration, providing analytical tools to enhance our understanding of the non-linearity and multidimensionality of internationalization. We argue that acceleration and deceleration are embedded in the internationalization process and are a consequence of the firm’s capability to absorb and integrate acquired knowledge, and to find and exploit opportunities. In addition, we advance the idea that changes in speed are further influenced by how the firm integrates and coordinates the resources it has deployed within and across various internationalization dimensions. Thus, it emerges that the overall evolution of commitment to internationalization is more complex than received theories tend to present; therefore, empirical studies should aim to include a wide set of international activities and processes embedded in time

Rapid Internationalization of Traditional SMEs: Entrepreneurial Decision-Making and Organizational Changes

In the last 15 years, several traditional Small-Medium Enterprises (SMEs) internationalized rapidly operations in psychic distant countries with limited market knowledge, limited use of networks, and limited entrepreneur's international experience. This thesis draws research attention to this internationalization phenomenon here named Production-Oriented Internationalization (POI) of traditional SMEs. The investigation is focused on three issues: internationalization pathway of traditional SMEs, entrepreneurial decision-making process during the internationalization, and consequences of the internationalization on the firm's organizational elements. Firstly, by analyzing five case firms from Italy, I describe the peculiar path followed by SMEs during POI and show that the leading literature does not contemplate it. I argue that traditional SMEs are able to shift their internationalization process (from gradual to rapid) becoming actual international players. Given the high relevance of the traditional SMEs in many national economies (e.g. Italy, Spain, Portugal, Denmark) it is interesting to study how these firms can catch up rapidly with the increasing global competition. Secondly, I investigated the entrepreneurial cognitive process during the SMEs' internationalization of operations. Using the same sample of the first part, I show that the decision-making process can be explained through Effectuation theory. I argue that in the situation of high uncertainty, goal ambiguity and environmental isotropy (typical situation in case of internationalization of SME) even experienced entrepreneurs of already existing organizations tend to adopt effectuation logic during the decision-making process, rather than causal one. Thirdly, I focused on the the impacts of the internationalization of operations on internal organizational elements in traditional SMEs. From the same dataset emerges that traditional SMEs were forced to perform a relevant number of adaptations spread in time that affected different organizational elements. I argue that these adaptations accumulated into a continuous radical change for the company; it is a complicated process; nevertheless, traditional SMEs through this process are potentially able to develop resources/capabilities that improve their international competitiveness.Negli ultimi 15 anni un rilevante numero di Piccole-Medie Imprese (PMI) ha internazionalizzato rapidamente le proprie operazioni in paesi distanti (culturalmente, linguisticamente, geograficamente, ecc). nonostante avendo una limitata conoscenza del mercato, ricorrendo limitatamente all'utilizzo dei propri network e avendo una limitata esperienza internazionale da parte dell’imprenditore. Questa tesi pone l'attenzione a tale fenomeno di internazionalizzazione che è stato chiamato: Production.Oriented Internationalization (POI) delle PMI tradizionali. La ricerca si è focalizzata su tre questioni: il èpercorso di internazionalizzazione seguito dalle PMI tradizionali, il processo decisionale dell’imprenditore durante l’internazionalizzazione e le conseguenze dell’internazionalizzazione sugli elementi organizzativi dell’impresa. In primo luogo, attraverso l’analisi di cinque imprese-caso italiane, è stato descritto il particolare percorso seguito delle PMI durante POI e si dimostra che la principale letteratura di riferimento non ha contempla il fenomeno. Si sostiene, altresì, che le PMI tradizionali sono in grado di cambiare la loro velocità di internazionalizzazione (da graduale a rapida) diventando effettivi protagonisti internazionali. Data l’elevata importanza delle PMI tradizionali in molte economie nazionali (per esempio: Italia, Spagna, Portogallo, Danimarca) è interessante studiare come queste imprese possano riuscire ad agganciarsi rapidamente alla crescente competizione globale. In secondo luogo, è stato investigato il processo cognitivo dell’imprenditore durante l’internazionalizzazione delle operations da parte delle PMI. Usando lo stesso campione della prima parte, sono state fornite prove che il processo decisionale può essere spiegato ricorrendo alla teoria dell’Effectuation. Si sostiene che in casi di elevata incertezza, ambiguità degli obiettivi e isotropia ambientale (situazione tipica nel caso di PMI che si internazionalizzano) anche gli imprenditori esperti di organizzazioni già esistenti tendono ad utilizzare la logica effettuale durante il processo decisionale, piuttosto che quella causale. In terzo luogo, l’attenzione si è focalizzata sugli impatti dell’internazionalizzazione sugli elementi organizzativi interni alle PMI tradizionali. Dallo stesso set di dati emerge che le PMI tradizionali sono state costrette ad effettuare un non trascurabile numero di adattamenti diffusi nel tempo che hanno investito diversi elementi organizzativi. Si sostiene che tali adattamenti si sono accumulati in un cambiamento continuo e radicale per l’impresa. Il risultato ne è un processo complicato, ma, nonostante ciò, le PMI tradizionali attraverso di esso sono potenzialmente in grado di sviluppare risorse/capacità che migliorano la loro competitività internazionale

Internationalisation of SMEs and Changes in Organisational Elements

In the last 15 years, several Traditional SMEs internationalised their production in low-cost countries where they did not have previous selling presence. This paper aims at drawing research attention to this internationalisation phenomenon that we call Production-Oriented Internationalisation of SMEs. Firstly, it is shown that existing theories do not explain Production-Oriented Internationalisation of Traditional SMEs. Subsequently, a framework to direct the research on this phenomenon is proposed. The research is focused on the changes in Organisational elements induced by this kind of internationalisation. The empirical investigation adopted the method of retrospective case studies. The five cases considered are traditional Italian SMEs belonging to different sectors. All the companies internationalised the production in the Eastern Europe in the period 2000-2004. The analysis shows that the Production-Oriented Internationalisation is a phenomenon with both complex and potentially positive implications. The fact that several Traditional SMEs may undertake such a kind of internationalisation process makes this Production-Oriented Internationalisation of significant practical relevance

Traditional SMEs: Production-Oriented Internationalization and Strategic Implications.

In the last 15 years, several Traditional SMEs internationalized their production in low cost countries where they did not have previous selling presence. Firstly, we show that existing theories do not explain Production-Oriented Internationalization of Traditional SMEs and we propose a research framework. Subsequently, we focused the research on the changes that are stimulated by this kind of internationalization and on the consequent impact on SMEs competitiveness. Finally, we present a case-study. The empirical analysis is definitely a preliminary one and deserves a more thorough investigation. It suggests that the Production-Oriented Internationalization is a phenomenon with complex and positive implications

Rapid Internationalization of Traditional SMEs: Between Stage Models and Born Globals

In the last 15 years, several traditional Small-Medium Enterprises (SMEs) have rapidly internationalized operations in psychic distant countries with limited market knowledge, limited use of networks, and limited international experience of the entrepreneurs. The overall purpose of this paper is to draw research attention to this internationalization phenomenon that we call Production-Oriented Internationalization (POI) of traditional SMEs. We describe the peculiar path followed by SMEs during POI by analyzing five case firms from Italy, and show that the leading literature does not contemplate it. We argue that traditional SMEs are able to speed up their internationalization process (from gradual to rapid) thus, becoming actual international players. Given the high relevance of the traditional SMEs in many national economies (e.g. Italy, Spain, Portugal, Denmark), it is interesting to study how these firms can catch up rapidly with the increasing global competition

Entrepreneurial decision-making process during the internationalization

This inductive study analyzes the entrepreneurial cognitive process during the Small-Medium Enterprises\u2019 internationalization of operations. By analyzing 5 case studies we show that the internationalization process can be explained through Effectuation theory. We argue that in the situation of high uncertainty, goal ambiguity and isotropy even experienced entrepreneurs of already existing organizations tend to adopt effectuation logic during the decision-making process, rather than causal one

Economic horizons

The concept of supply chain management (SCM) has occupied serious research a! ention in recent years. This concept goes beyond intra-organizational boundaries to achieve a greater value of the entire supply chain network. The development of ICT, together with the Internet environment, has an impact on the management concept of traditional supply chains, allowing the integration of participants and the management of complex interfaces between organizations in the supply chain network. The e-business model connects the separate activities of the supply chain in an integrated, coordinated, fl exible, effi cient and responsive system. This paper analyzes the key aspects of e-SCM and diff erent supply chains architectures in an e-environment as the starting point for defi ning the generic architecture model of e-SCM

MEASURING THE DATA MODEL QUALITY IN THE ESUPPLY CHAINS

The implementation of Internet technology in business has enabled the development of e-business supply chains with large-scale information integration among all partners.The development of information systems (IS) is based on the established business objectives whose achievement, among other things, directly depends on the quality of development and design of IS. In the process of analysis of the key elements of company operations in the supply chain, process model and corresponding data model are designed which should enable selection of appropriate information system architecture. The quality of the implemented information system, which supports e-supply chain, directly depends on the level of data model quality. One of the serious limitations of the data model is its complexity. With a large number of entities, data model is difficult to analyse, monitor and maintain. The problem gets bigger when looking at an integrated data model at the level of participating partners in the supply chain, where the data model usually consists of hundreds or even thousands of entities.The paper will analyse the key elements affecting the quality of data models and show their interactions and factors of significance. In addition, the paper presents various measures for assessing the quality of the data model on which it is possible to easily locate the problems and focus efforts in specific parts of a complex data model where it is not economically feasible to review every detail of the model

SUPPLY CHAIN INFORMATION INTEGRATION THROUGH SERVICE ORIENTED ARCHITECTURE

In recent years information integration became significant problem for both natural and legal persons in everyday operations. Huge amount of information are available, but insufficiently processed in order to have useful value. Choosing the right combination of tools and technologies for integration is prerequisite for requiring information from multiple heterogeneous sources and their qualitative and simple using after.In this paper, we have focused on information integration within companies which are parts of supply chain or network. This environment typically includes a various mix of sources, structured (such as relational or other databases), and unstructured (such as document repositories, spreadsheets, documents, web pages, emails and others). Effective information integration and sharing significantly enhances supply chain practices. Service oriented architecture (SOA) is an architectural style for building software applications that use services available in a network such as the web. The use of SOA to achieve inter-enterprise supply network information integration has many advantages

MULTIOBJECTIVE SUPPLIER SELECTION USING GENETIC ALGORITHM: A COMPARISON BETWEEN WEIGHTED SUM AND SPEA METHODS

Supplier selection is one of the basic and most important activities of purchasing management. This activity often includes solving of multiobjective optimization problems with different and usually conflicting objectives. Modern supplier selection techniques involve novel multiobjective optimization algorithms based on computational application. In this paper supplier selection using genetic algorithm is presented. The authors used two different methods: weighted sum method and SPEA method. Weighted sum method belongs to category of Decision before Search methods. SPEA method is a member of Search before Decision group of methods. As criteria for selection optimization variance of quality and total costs are used. Results show that described methodology can be applicable for the practical purposes. Finally, comparative analysis of two different methods, used in this research, is presented