Paper info

INTERNATIONAL OPPORTUNITY NETWORKS AND INTERNATIONALIZATION OF EMERGING MARKET FIRMS

Wensong Bai and Martin Johanson

The paper was published at the 32nd IMP-conference in Poznan, Poland in 2016.

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In light that opportunity seeking has acquired increasing importance in explaining firms’ internationalization but understanding of how opportunity is developed is rare, this study attempts to probe into the creation of opportunity in international network that may drive internationalization. Based on the notion of opportunity in the entrepreneurship literature with theories on network and SMEs internationalization, we bring together the concepts of relationships, networks, capabilities and opportunity in a structural model, where we hypothesize that opportunity creation is dependent on international network capability, which, in turn, is positively influenced by network closure and relational embeddedness. We test the model with a sample of 200 Chinese firms. The analysis supports the model and we conclude that the firm’s capability to act in international networks is a mediating factor between network structure and opportunity creation. The paper ends with a discussion of the results and suggestions for future research.