Internationalization Process Models in Global Business
Summary
The internationalisation of firms has long been conceptualised as a dynamic progression through which organisations expand operations across national borders. Early process models emphasised incremental market entry, experiential learning and cautious resource commitments, reflecting a gradual narrowing of psychic distance. Extensions to the foundational stage-based framework incorporated network perspectives, showing how ties with customers, suppliers and ethnic or social groups supply knowledge, trust and entry pathways. The emergence of born-global firms challenged linear narratives by demonstrating rapid international engagement from inception, driven by digital technologies and entrepreneurial ambition. Recent scholarship has introduced microfoundations, probing managerial cognition, affective dynamics and collective sense-making in international decision-making. This behavioural lens reveals how opportunity formation, organisational capacity and asynchronicities between external opportunity seeking and internal development can produce non-linear growth trajectories. Integrated approaches now examine how knowledge development, resource commitments and network orchestration interact with digitalisation and global value chains, equipping firms to navigate complexity and sustain competitive advantage worldwide.
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Internationalization Process Models in Global Business publication trend
The graph below shows the total number of articles in internationalization process models in global business across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).
Technical terms
Uppsala model: A stage-based framework describing how firms gradually increase international involvement through experiential learning and incremental resource commitments.
Born global: An enterprise that engages in international activities shortly after inception, bypassing traditional incremental stages through rapid global engagement.
Asynchronicity: A temporal mismatch between a firm’s external opportunity seeking and its internal capacity building, leading to non-linear growth and organisational discontinuities.
Social networks: Interconnected relationships among individuals, organisations and communities that provide knowledge, trust and access to foreign markets.
Affective cognition: The influence of emotions and feelings on managerial decision-making processes, shaping opportunity evaluation and risk assessment in internationalisation.
References
- Asynchronicities of growth: a process extension to the Uppsala model of internationalisation. Journal of International Business Studies (2024).
- Internationalization through social networks: A systematic review and future research agenda. International Business Review (2024).
- The microfoundations of international commitment decisions: Creating joint opportunity meanings. Global Strategy Journal (2024).
- Managers and internationalization decisions: An affect‐enacted model. Global Strategy Journal (2024).
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