How do International New Ventures Gain International Performance?

Ding Zhenkuo; Ye Guangyu; Huang Sheng

doi:doi:10.16538/j.cnki.fem.2018.09.003

Summary

Since 1994, when Oviatt and McDougall published the seminal paper Toward a Theory of International New Ventures, international new ventures have attracted more and more scholars’ research interest. International performance is an important research issue in the filed of international new ventures. A number of studies on the antecedents of international new ventures’ international performance have focused on the impact of international speed, international degree, international scope, international orientation, entrepreneurial orientation, dynamic capabilities, international business skills, and so on. Although the current literature has conducted a large number of studies on international new ventures from different perspectives, it does not answer how international new ventures gain international performance. Focusing on this research issue, we choose four new international ventures from China to conduct a longitudinal cross-cases exploratory study. By integrating the resources-based view, the strategy formulation and other perspectives, this paper eventually reveals a path mechanism of different stages of internationalization. The firm resources of international new ventures are transformed into international performance through strategies based on different formulation methods. In other words, there are two main findings in this paper: First, in the initial stage of internationalization, international new ventures face resource constraints, applying an entrepreneurial bricolage approach to form a informal strategy; international new ventures adopt the strategy based on the entrepreneurial bricolage to translate limited resources into international survival performance. Second, in the subsequent stage of internationalization, resource constraints faced by international new ventures have been alleviated, applying a planning-analytical approach to form a formal strategy; international new ventures adopt the strategy based on the planning-analytical approach to translate abundant resources into international growth performance. The research conclusions not only help to explain the international performance differences among different international new ventures, identify important intermediary factors between firm resources and international performance in different stages of internationalization, and increase our understanding of international entrepreneurship; but also have management implications for international new ventures from China to promote international performance.