An Empirical Investigation of the Role of Industry Factors in the Internationalization Patterns of Firms

Research on companies’ internationalization has mainly focused on firm-level and country-level factors in order to explain firms’ cross-border activities. With the exception of a limited number of studies emphasizing rivalistic behavior in oligopolistic industries, industry factors have been neglected as potential determinants of companies’ internationalization. We argue that differences across industries with regard to competition level, research intensity, tangibility of the products, and the existence of clusters should influence the impetus and opportunities to internationalize. This study examines the role of such factors using data covering the internationalization patterns of the 100 largest non-financial Norwegian companies over the period 1990 to 2000. We find that industry factors contribute significantly to explaining the internationalization of these companies, and that the effects of industry factors remain strong when firm-level characteristics are taken into account. Key words: Internationalization, multinational companies, industry factors, Norway JEL classification: F21, F23, L1

Impetus and Switching

We thank the anonymous reviewers, Harald Biong, and Myles Shaver for their very helpful comments, Kim Vasant Nielsen for excellent research assistance, and Vibeke Henriksen for editorial assistance. Previous versions of this paper have been presented at the Academy of Management Annual Meeting, San Diego, August 1998, the 23rd EIBA Annual Conference, Stuttgart, December 1997, and in seminars at University of Vaasa, Swedish School of Economics, Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration, Norwegian School of Management BI, and at the University of Melbourne. We thank participants at these meetings and seminars, in particular Ingmar Björkman, Andrew Delios, Carl Fey, Karin Fladmoe-Lindkvist, Mats Forsgren, Jean-Francois Hennart, Jan Johanson, Heli Korhonen, and Stephen Nicholas for their many comments and suggestions

Insights for International Strategic Management

Companies’ choice of foreign operation modes (FOM) has been a core subject of international business studies basically from its beginning (Hymer, 1960 [1976]; Root, 1964). A halfcentury of research has brought us a set of established perspectives on companies’ foreign operation mode choices; the most important being the economics based approaches of internalisation and transaction cost theories (Anderson and Gatignon, 1986; Buckley and Casson, 1976; Hennart, 1982), evolutionary and resource based approaches (Andersen, 1997; Kogut and Zander, 1993; Madhok, 1997), institutional approaches (Kostova and Zaheer, 1999; Meyer and Peng, 2005), and process models based on learning and decision behaviour theories (Johanson and Vahlne, 1977, 2009)...

A theoretical perspective

Internalisation theory informs us about why and when multinational enterprises (MNEs) internalise foreign operations, but has less to say about how the internalisation should be prepared and exercised when foreign market operations initially are carried out by local, outside agents. Drawing on insights from managerially-oriented literature, this paper explores the role of management in situations where the market transaction costs of using outside agents are negligible at market entry, but grow over time. A key question pertaining to this situation is: what management instruments may ensure persistent concurrence between changing pressure for internalisation in a foreign market and the effectuated internalisation of an MNE in that market? Management instruments and strategies that potentially support ‘staged internalisation’ include appropriation of the local outside agent’s financial assets (including equity) as well as non-financial assets in relation to user rights, customer relations, and value added activities

Into the unknown: the extent and boldness of firms’ international footprint

Research Summary Firms make footprints as they internationalize. Going beyond simple measures of firms' internationalization, we conceptualize and measure the extent of a firm's international footprint as the number of location‐mode combinations it is active in, whereas the boldness of the footprint shows how widespread (across modes and locations) firms' international activities are, compared to other firms with similar extent. Extent describes the complexity of international activities, and boldness captures the risk‐taking associated with operating in less know contexts. Consistent with a microfoundations lens on global strategy, we find that boldness correlates with managerial risk‐taking attributes, while the extent of internationalization strongly correlates with capabilities conducive to managing more complex operations. These measures offer a highly suitable tool for analyzing the relationship between internationalization and performance. Managerial Summary Traditional ways of measuring firms' international footprints do not describe well what they do globally. We develop a more nuanced and sharper view of firms' international footprints and a new way of thinking about the roles of complexity and risk‐taking in internationalization; what we call the extent and the boldness of a footprint, respectively. The new measures are potentially particularly useful for analyzing the relationship between internationalization and performance, which is at the core of what strategy research may offer to managers and business decision‐makers. The new measures are a stepping‐stone toward a better and managerially relevant understanding of global strategy decisions

Influence of the meso-substituents of zinc porphyrins in dye-sensitized solar cell efficiency with improved performance under short periods of white light illumination

The sensitization activity of four zinc metalloporphyrin dyes: meso-tetrakis(4-pyridyl)porphyrinato Zn(II) (a), meso-triphenyl-(4-carboxyphenyl)porphyrinato Zn(II) (b), meso-tetrakis(4-carboxyphenyl)porphyrinato Zn(II) (c) and meso-tripyridyl(4-carboxyphenyl)porphyrinato Zn(II) (d) is reported here, in terms of current-potential curve, open-circuit potential, fill factor, and overall solar energy conversion efficiency which have been evaluated under 100 mW/cm2 light intensity and their performances compared to the benchmark N719 (di-tetrabutylammonium cis-bis(isothiocyanato)bis(2,2′-bipyridyl-4,4′-dicarboxylato) ruthenium(II)). This work focus the structural aspects of dyes with anchoring groups using TiO2-based Dye Sensitized Solar Cells (DSSCs), which includes pyridyl and carboxyphenyl acid groups and argue how the combination of both anchoring groups, in the same structure, may allow relevant optimization of DSSCs performance in the near future. Also, a noticeable improvement in the photovoltaic performance of all dyes, reaching a maximum increase from 25% to 69% in the overall DSSC efficiency under short periods of white light illumination is discussed.publishe

Multiwavelength studies of MHD waves in the solar chromosphere: An overview of recent results

The chromosphere is a thin layer of the solar atmosphere that bridges the relatively cool photosphere and the intensely heated transition region and corona. Compressible and incompressible waves propagating through the chromosphere can supply significant amounts of energy to the interface region and corona. In recent years an abundance of high-resolution observations from state-of-the-art facilities have provided new and exciting ways of disentangling the characteristics of oscillatory phenomena propagating through the dynamic chromosphere. Coupled with rapid advancements in magnetohydrodynamic wave theory, we are now in an ideal position to thoroughly investigate the role waves play in supplying energy to sustain chromospheric and coronal heating. Here, we review the recent progress made in characterising, categorising and interpreting oscillations manifesting in the solar chromosphere, with an impetus placed on their intrinsic energetics.Comment: 48 pages, 25 figures, accepted into Space Science Review