SMEs entry mode decision making process: Rational or cybernetic?

Entry mode choice is a critical decision when a firm expends its business to foreign markets. By applying rational and cybernetic strategies to international strategic decision-making process, this paper investigates how small and medium sized firms (SMEs) decision makers decide their entry mode choices. By focusing on the entry decision making process, this research distinguishes the prior entry mode studies that emphasize the relationship between influencing factors and their impacts on entry mode choices. The results of this study show that SME managers normally adapt a combination of rational and cybernetic strategies in their international entry decision making process. This highlights that SMEs’ international entry decision making process is dynamic and complex

Impactful learning: exploring the value of informal learning experiences to improve the learning potential of international research projects.

The Horizon 2020 (H2020) is the largest EU funded research programme, which supports mobility of international researchers through secondments to engage in collaborative research activities to enhance individual and collective research capacity within the EU. This paper explores how an analysis of secondees’ informal learning experiences can highlight opportunities for increasing individual and collective learning capacity of an international partnership and achievement of project objectives. A thematic analysis method (Miles and Huberman, 1994), was applied to 19 secondee’s individual learning reports. The main findings discussed three themes elicited through secondees informal learning, including living and working in a host country and developing an academic career. The paper outlines practice, policy and research implications for improving the learning potential of international research projects

Strategic market entry choices : experience of Chinese SME managers

There is intensive research in international business studies exploring strategic decisions relating to the choice of entry mode. As a frontier issue the choice of entry mode has been widely recognised as being one of the critical decisions in a firm's internationalisation. However, most of the research primarily focuses upon Western multi-national enterprises (MNEs) rather than small-medium sized enterprises (SMEs). Recently, interest in the international business activities of SMEs has been increasing. Nevertheless, little has been done in light of the choice of entry mode in the SME sector, especially for SMEs from developing countries. This study explored how Chinese SME managers make their strategic market entry choices when entering the UK to address the issue of whether Western MNEs' foreign investment theories are applicable to Asian SMEs. The decision making of entry mode choices involves complicated social processes such as social relationships both in and outside the firm. This research takes a social constructionist paradigm, trying to understand and interpret the Chinese SMEs decision maker's unique experiences, perceived values and embedded Chinese culture that can have great impact on their choice of entry modes. Cohering with this philosophical stance, 10 Chinese SMEs managers in the North East of the England were involved in qualitative interviews and data was analysed through template analysis. The findings of this thesis offer a more holistic picture of SME managers' decision making in terms of their entry mode choices. This study is inconsistent with the more classic motives of firms' internationalisation, such as securing raw materials and seeking low-cost labour as it reveals 2 previously unrecognised motives of Chinese SMEs' internationalisation, namely `seeking entrepreneurial freedom' and 'building their own international teams'. Moreover, 4 entry modes were used by the Chinese SMEs' entering the North East of England markets, including direct exporting, joint venture and wholly-owned subsidiary and internet entry mode. Interestingly, the joint venture mode used by Chinese SMEs in this study is operationally different from traditional joint ventures. Furthermore, a number of influencing factors emerged from the Chinese SME managers' accounts: firm-specific factors, strategy-factors, product-specific factors, networks and social culture factors and the decision maker's personal characteristics. In drawing upon their motives, influencing factors, and entry modes a 3-stage decision making process was discovered which combined rational and cybernetic strategic approaches that have been adopted by Chinese SMEs managers at different levels. Contributively, this study offers alternative understandings of the choice of entry mode. By drawing upon experiences of Chinese SME managers it extends the foreign investment theories based on Western-MNEs and offers a contribution to practice grounded in an Asian-SME context. Significantly, this thesis develops a practice-based framework by integrating factors into the whole decision making process, providing practical guidance for SME managers to inform their entry mode choices

Educational Mobility in Transition: what can China and the UK learn from each other?

The purpose of this study is to explore the differences in international student mobility in two contrasting countries: UK and China at national, institutional and individual levels. They are countries in transition in a greater global context. The objective is to identify what these countries can learn from eachother about the issues and policies surrounding the management of educational mobility. An inductive approach was employed to understand real-life experience via case studies. Participant observation and semi-structured interview methods with a variety of stakeholders were used to collect data which were then subjected to a thematic analysis to identify in which areas countries had developed good practice. Over-arching themes were developed through comparing national findings. These reveal that national policy and family support are most influential in China, while British universities largely drive student mobility at an institutional level. Concluding that no one country has a comprehensive and complete approach, this study proposes the areas in which both could develop and details good practice. The value therefore emerges from the comparison and contrast and the practical focus of the research

Take Your Partners! Transcending national culture to implement diverse international projects: the supremacy of individuals and influence of organisations

Globalisation of the world economy and trade, internationalisation of industries and organisations, born-global firms: these have all resulted in international working becoming the norm for ordinary people. Working internationally presents particular challenges over and above simply living in multicultural societies. International project work involves a further set of challenges, skills and keys to success due to constraints on resource, temporary teams, demands of delivery and time/scope limits. Based on an extensive series of in-depth interviews with participants and leaders in a 11-year series of different, but connected, international projects, this article explores the keys to success and reasons for failure in international working. These projects involved organisations and individuals in the higher education industry in 10 countries. This paper suggests that organisational culture and structure is a greater influence on individual attitude and behaviour than national culture. Individual attitude and behaviour is the key driver of success and relationship sustainability in international project working

Opinion:Can working abroad ever be worthwhile?

Despite assumptions of automatic benefits, sending people abroad can sometimes be bad for business, while working abroad can be as much of a pain, as a perk or privilege.Over the last 3 years, we have managed and participated in a major international staff exchange programme supporting research and innovation, funded by the European Commission. A consortium of 16 partner organizations of varying size, in different industries and across five countries in Europe and Asia undertook to complete 270 months of international secondment between them.The results have been overwhelmingly positive and successful: new and fruitful relationships between individuals and institutions, a diverse network growing in size and stability, increasing confidence, creativity and innovation within the project, a rapidly developing international profile and significant new skills sets, international experience and effectiveness for all involved. We have navigated stormy geopolitical waters involving Brexit and US-intra-Korean relations. The development of such capacity is a key aim of our project.However, we have arguably learned more from our failures than our success. In this opinion piece we want to take the rare opportunity reflect on the mistakes we have made and how we rectified them, recovered and thrived. By the end of our staff exchange project, we believe we will have perfected the creation of value from international mobility and everyone can learn from our experience and the solutions we have developed

A comparison of algorithms for generating efficient choice experiments

Stated choice (SC) studies typically rely on the use of an underlying experimental design to construct the hypothetical choice situations shown to respondents. These designs are constructed by the analyst, with several different ways of constructing these designs having been proposed in the past. Recently, there has been a move from so-called orthogonal designs to more efficient designs. Efficient designs optimize the design such that the data will lead to more reliable parameter estimates for the model under consideration. The literature dealing with the generation of efficient designs has examined and largely solved the issue of a requirement for a prior knowledge of the parameter estimates that will be obtained post data collection. However, unlike orthogonal designs, the efficient design methodology requires the evaluation of a number of designs, and hence is computationally expensive to undertake. As such, the literature has suggested and implemented a number of algorithms to locate efficient designs for SC experiments. In this paper, we compare and contrast the performance of these algorithms as well as introduce two new algorithms

From INERTIA to BEYOND: achieving cognitive engagement through international mobility or how we developed our students’ talent by sending them away and bringing them back again. A Working Paper

This working paper outlines a 4-year action research study into student engagement with international experience from Europe to Korea. It describes how students’ engagement was developed and exploited through structured cycles of action research intervention and analyses short-term results for students and institutions. Experiencing ‘inertia’ in students’ behavioral engagement towards international opportunities, emotional engagement was employed to help students invest in their learning, go beyond expectations and relish the challenge of studying and working abroad. Using the ‘scaffolding’ L&T approach and other best practice, a series of ‘support points’ required by a student in the process of application / preparation were pinpointed. The importance of guidance from a teacher or more competent peer were important as students entered their ‘zones of proximal development’ to consider and manage living abroad. The results show rapidly increasing participation in specific international experience opportunities and enduring staff collaboration. A developed theory of student engagement is proposed

Lundgren Tours: Out of the Frying Pan and into the Fire. A young entrepreneur survives and thrives after the ‘double-whammy’ of Brexit and Coronavirus. A Teaching Case Study

Lundgren Tours (LT) is an awarding-winning regional tour company founded by a student entrepreneur in 2016. In 2020, the UK left the EU and the country's first Covid-19 patients were identified, leading to international anti-coronavirus restrictions and the cancellation of tours for 12 months. The case considers several aspects (explained in ‘Themes’) of the catastrophe through the founder's eyes, revealing the influence of entrepreneurial psychological capital and how striving to survive disaster can lead to new strengths and opportunities

Literacy matters in sustainable livelihood development among refugee adults in South Africa

Background: Political and economic upheavals in the current millennium globally have displaced millions of people, making cross-border and forced migration a reality. Many refugees are forced out of their countries and flee to other countries to find new languages with which they are not familiar. South Africa as a signatory to the 1954 UN Convention on refugees and stateless persons accepts refugees (asylum seekers) from all over the world. The displaced persons are mostly illiterate in English and the indigenous languages of their new settlement countries. Objectives: The study was set up to investigate the socio-economic value of literacy in the lives of refugee adults in South Africa. Hence, in this article, literacy refers to the ability to read, write, calculate, communicate and function in any language with a basic understanding in one’s environment. Method: This ethnographic qualitative study used interviews, observations and focus group meetings to explore how literacy matters in the sustainable development of entrepreneurial activities among the refugee adults and youths in South Africa. The study is grounded in Paulo Freire’s critical pedagogy theory and has some implications for adult literacy throughout the developing world where millions of adult refugees find themselves vulnerable. Results: The study revealed that refugee adults learn functional literacy in English and other 11 local South African languages informally as communication skills for the survival of their small businesses and for social and economic use in their ‘adopted home’. They find it difficult to get employment in the formal sector and often use their ingenuity to create their own jobs for survival and livelihoods in informal trade and entrepreneurship. Conclusion: The article concludes that within the public adult learning interventions by the Department of Basic Education, where literacy programmes are offered, refugees should be encouraged and supported in attending formal classes to deal with their livelihoods and small businesses for survival.Adult Basic Education (ABET