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The internationalization strategies of rapidly internationalizing high-tech UK SMEs: planned and unplanned activities

journal contribution
posted on 2017-10-06, 10:53 authored by David Crick, Jim Crick
PURPOSE. The purpose of this paper is to investigate aspects of causation and effectuation decision-making in respect of the planned and unplanned nature of the internationalization strategies of a small sample of rapidly internationalizing, high-tech UK small and medium enterprises (SMEs). These exhibit four different rates of scale of international intensity (percentage of overseas sales to total sales) and market scope (geographical coverage and commitment). DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH. Interviews with managers of 16 independently owned high-technology-oriented manufacturing SMEs were undertaken in this investigation to reduce the potential effect of bias from parental decision-making and firm size, also trade sectoral conditions. These were drawn from an existing database. FINDINGS. Aspects of both causation and effectuation logic were evident in planned and unplanned aspects of decision-making. Moreover, industry factors were seen to affect internationalization strategies in various ways and not least in respect of the need to exploit windows of opportunity in international niche markets and the usefulness of utilizing managers’ experience and networks in the sector in which firms operated. ORIGINALITY/VALUE. The contribution of this study is to build on earlier work where authors have used different terminology to describe firms that have internationalized soon after their foundation. Specifically, with respect to the planned versus unplanned nature of respective internationalization strategies and the causation as opposed to effectuation logic in decision-making.

History

School

  • Business and Economics

Department

  • Business

Published in

European Business Review

Volume

26

Issue

5

Pages

421 - 448

Citation

CRICK, D. and CRICK, J., 2014. The internationalization strategies of rapidly internationalizing high-tech UK SMEs: planned and unplanned activities. European Business Review, 26 (5), pp.421-448.

Publisher

© Emerald

Version

  • VoR (Version of Record)

Publisher statement

This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Publication date

2014

ISSN

0955-534X

Language

  • en

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