Alex Rialp, Josep Rialp,
& Gary A. Knight talk with ScienceWatch.com
and answers a few questions about this month's Fast
Breaking Paper in the field of Economics &
Business.
Field: Economics & Business Article Title: The phenomenon of early
internationalizing firms: what do we know after a decade
(1993-2003) of scientific inquiry?
Authors:
Rialp,
A;Rialp, J;Knight, GA
Journal: INT BUS REV
Volume: 14
Issue: 2
Page: 147-166
Year: APR 2005
* Univ Autonoma Barcelona, Dept Econ Empresa, Edificio B,
E-08193 Barcelona, Spain.
* Univ Autonoma Barcelona, Dept Econ Empresa, E-08193
Barcelona, Spain.
(addresses may have been truncated; see full
article)
Why do you think your paper is highly
cited?
Essentially this article deals with a research topic which has received
increasing attention from several researchers in the fields of
international business, international marketing, and international
entrepreneurship during the past several years. Actually, early
internationalizing firms are usually described as a frontier research issue
within any of these highly interrelated fields of scientific research.
Accordingly, researchers focusing on any of these fields or, more
concretely, at the intersection of these disciplines, might have found this
paper of special interest, particularly in the sense that it provides a
quite exhaustive, updated, and critical literature review regarding this
emerging phenomenon—usually labeled as "born globals" or
"international new ventures"—firms that implement a global strategy
from inception, and which, at the point in time when it was published, had
not been readily available elsewhere.
Does it describe a new discovery, methodology, or
synthesis of knowledge?
Rather than discovering a new phenomenon (some researchers identify this
born global behavior earlier than the ’90s, though usually considered
as an anomaly regarding the empirical verification of the gradualist
approach—the so-called Internationalization Process Model or Uppsala
Model), the paper manifests the rise in number of these type of early and
rapid internationalizing firms (as well as of the related conceptual and
empirical research focused on this phenomenon) during the last decade.
"...there is considerable
interest in methodologies that can selectively target
mitochondrial oxidative damage and other
malfunctions."
We make use of a very detailed research methodology for both selecting and
analyzing the most relevant literature available in the field—at
least until 2003—thus providing a synthesis of what we know, along
with what we don’t know, about early internationalizing firms, in
order to help future researchers to initiate research activities in this
area and/or improve current research efforts conducted so far.
Would you summarize the significance of your paper in
layman’s terms?
It hopefully contributes to the diffusion of scientific knowledge regarding
the emerging phenomenon of early internationalization by means of a deep
characterization and critical analysis of research objectives conducted so
far, theoretical frameworks of reference being most commonly applied,
methodological issues, and the main findings and conclusions found by the
most relevant scientific literature existing in the area.
Actually, we seek to elucidate not only the most relevant benefits and
contributions, but also the potential drawbacks and discrepancies, as found
in the research activities conducted to date. In addition, a new
resource-based model of early internationalizing firms is anticipated which
will hopefully address future research on this issue.
How did you become involved in this research, and were
there any problems along the way?
One of the co-authors can be considered a pioneer in this area of research,
mostly from the international marketing field. At the time of considering
our potential contribution, we came up with evidence that, although this
area of research had increased dramatically from different perspectives
beyond only international marketing—also international
business/management and increasingly from entrepreneurship
research—no systematic review and research agenda for the future had
been provided yet from all these different angles and, accordingly, the
existing literature on the issue was highly fragmented, dispersed, and
heterogeneous.
Then, we thought that a systematic and multidisciplinary-oriented
literature review and analysis was indeed needed to organize more
exhaustively this research field and promote and facilitate better and more
integrated research efforts further along. As regards problems in
developing this study, it was very critical to select the most relevant
scientific literature in order to develop the most elaborate picture of
this state-of-the art. Thus, we had to deal heavily with selection criteria
and also to undertake a search of both manual and electronic sources of
knowledge.
Where do you see your research leading in the
future?
We are very much interested in contributing to the development of the
international entrepreneurship field as a multidisciplinary scientific
discipline and born-globals constitute the type of firms that fit perfectly
into the scientific domain of this emerging and still not well-established
discipline, in which entrepreneurship and internationalization become the
two most relevant aspects.
In addition, the combination of qualitative and quantitative research
techniques and conceptual frameworks or paradigms which emerged in
different research programs regarding these firms, seem to be the only way
to contribute to a significant increase of knowledge in this area.
Do you foresee any social or political implications for
your research?
Socio-political implications of our research have mostly to do with the
desirable creation and development of new firms displaying an international
and entrepreneurial condition from their establishment as well as with the
support programs to be developed by public and/or private agencies in
charge of promoting entrepreneurship and internationalization of the firms
under their areas of economic influence.
Such programs cannot be designed in a rather generic way, but have to take
into account particular characteristics shown by these firms (usually
highly technological and marketing-oriented) in order to define more
tailored programs which cover their specific needs in terms of external
resources.
Alex Rialp Criado, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Department of Business Economics
Autonomous University of Barcelona
Bellaterra (Barcelona), Spain
Josep Rialp Criado, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Department of Business Economics
Autonomous University of Barcelona
Bellaterra (Barcelona), Spain
Gary A. Knight, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Department of Marketing
Florida State University
Tallahassee, FL, USA