IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/pal/jintbs/v38y2007i7p1132-1148.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Internationalising in small, incremental or larger steps?

Author

Listed:
  • Harry G Barkema

    ([1] Department of Organisation and Strategy, Tilburg University, Tilburg, The Netherlands [2] Department of Management, London School of Economics, London, UK [3] Department of Technology and Innovation Management, Rotterdam School of Management, Rotterdam, The Netherlands)

  • Rian Drogendijk

    (Department of Business Studies, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden)

Abstract

We argue that companies may enter foreign environments either incrementally, as suggested by long-established theory, or by taking larger steps that may result in lower initial performance but, through learning and experience, lead to increased performance in future expansions. This idea is corroborated by the experience of Dutch companies entering into Central and Eastern Europe. We also find that expansion steps may be too large, thereby limiting the exploration of foreign environments. Our study suggests that sequential internationalisation strategies do still matter, and that companies have to balance exploitation and exploration in internationalisation. Journal of International Business Studies (2007) 38, 1132–1148. doi:10.1057/palgrave.jibs.8400315

Suggested Citation

  • Harry G Barkema & Rian Drogendijk, 2007. "Internationalising in small, incremental or larger steps?," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 38(7), pages 1132-1148, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:pal:jintbs:v:38:y:2007:i:7:p:1132-1148
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.palgrave-journals.com/jibs/journal/v38/n7/pdf/8400315a.pdf
    File Function: Link to full text PDF
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: http://www.palgrave-journals.com/jibs/journal/v38/n7/full/8400315a.html
    File Function: Link to full text HTML
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pal:jintbs:v:38:y:2007:i:7:p:1132-1148. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.palgrave-journals.com/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.