تصمیم گیری برای ورود خرده فروشان به بازار خارجی: چشم انداز سازمانی

Institutional theory emphasizes the relationship between organizations and the environment. Institutions consist of political, cognitive and sociological elements that form the external and internal environment of a firm. Both external and internal environments affect firm decisions and behaviors. This paper introduces institutional theory as a complementary framework to explain international retailers’ foreign market entry choices and suggests propositions for further research. We also consider managerial implications in relation to this theoretical perspective as an explanation for retailers’ internationalization.

About two centuries ago, the industrial revolution transformed small, rudimentary family-centered manufacturing into mass production activities, and the subsequently available economies of scale and scope made it possible for national firms to further become multinational corporations by expanding into other countries and developing global markets (Kleindorfer, Kunreuther, & Schoemaker, 1993). Consequently, entry location (whether to enter a market or not), entry mode (how to enter a market), and entry timing (when to enter a market) are among the dilemmas that challenge firms who are concerned with international expansion in the face of an uncertain and complex world. These foreign market entry choices are important strategic decisions for a firm: the appropriateness of foreign entry decisions not only accounts for the parent company's competitiveness in the global arena (Root, 1987), but also for foreign subsidiaries’ performance in overseas markets (Gielens & Dekimpe, 2001; Pan & Li, 1998). Previous studies have focused on explaining international expansion using Dunning's eclectic theory (Agarwal & Ramaswami, 1992; Kim & Hwang, 1992) and/or transaction cost analysis (Gatignon & Anderson, 1988), and researchers have gathered considerable evidence regarding determinants of entry decisions. However, concerns have been raised about the explanatory limits of these theories. For example, why do firms avoid investing in certain countries where property rights are not well protected? Why are there so many commonalties across firms in entry decisions? Why do foreign subsidiaries resemble their parent corporations? Correspondingly, scholars began challenging the importance given to prevalent theories such as transaction cost theory. For example, Davis, Desai, and Francis (2000, p. 241) suggest, “existing frameworks are ambiguous and could offer contradictory explanations for the patterns of entry-mode choices.” Therefore, they propose institutional theory as an effective complementary explanation for foreign entry decision-making. Institutional theory emphasizes the relationship between organizations and the environment. A key insight from this theory is an acknowledgment of the institutional environment—the environment consisting of political, cognitive, and sociological elements such as laws, rules, norms, cultural beliefs, and habits shared by relevant members (Handelman & Arnold, 1999). It focuses on the roles of the institutional environment in affecting organizational behavior and the fact that a firm has to follow the institutional rules in order to gain legitimacy (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983). The institutional environment influences not only an organization's growth (see Arnold, Kozinets, & Handelman, 2001) but also inter-organizational relationships (see Grewal & Dharwadkar, 2002). From both an economic orientation (North, 1990) and a sociological orientation (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983), scholars agree that institutional forces affect organizational decision making from both a macro and micro perspective. Applying these concepts to an international context, pressures from both the macroenvironment (the home and the host countries) and microenvironment (the firm itself) exert influences on a firm's foreign expansion choices (Davis, et al., 2000). Extant studies on internationalization have mainly focused on manufacturers (Doherty, 1999). Meanwhile, retailers are expanding dramatically overseas. In 2005, 39 of the Top 50 retailers had foreign operations and these retailers accounted for 65.3% of Top 100 sales, up substantially from 55.5% in 2002, 45.1% in 1996 and 29.3% in 1986. In 2005, the Top 10 retailers in the world generated on average 25.9% of their sales volume outside their home countries (Badillo & Kidder, 2007). Blindly applying international business paradigms to retail internationalization without considering organizational differences between manufacturers and retailers could be dangerous, as cautioned by Dawson (1994). Retailers are different from manufacturers in international expansions. For example, retailers must have physical presences in foreign countries while manufacturers can use export as one means of internationalization. Further, retailers have direct contact with consumers in foreign countries, which makes retailing highly culture specific (Vida, Reardon, & Fairhurst, 2000). As retailers internationalize, it is important to understand their uniqueness and distinguish their behaviors from manufacturers’. Therefore, this paper has two objectives: (1) to introduce institutional theory as a framework to explain international retailers’ foreign entry choices; and (2) to suggest propositions for further research. The paper is organized as follows: firstly, a brief review of institutional theory is presented. Secondly, propositions regarding retailer behavior in international activities are developed under three institutional dimensions, and finally, discussions and implications are provided.

The purpose of this article is to provide a complementary perspective to explain the decision-making choices in the area of retailers’ international expansions. We emphasize the environmental influences of regulative, normative, and cognitive institutions on retailers’ strategic decisions of foreign entry location, entry timing, and entry mode. There are many empirical issues that are involved in the conceptualization of propositions and theoretical and managerial implications that flow from the theoretical framework. Therefore, we present a research agenda and discuss implications accordingly. 4.1. A research agenda Our objective is to introduce the influences of the institutional environments on retailers’ international expansion choices. We describe the two challenges that may exist in an empirical study, namely, (1) operationalizing the institutional environment aspects, and (2) choosing the appropriate research method. Operationalization: The first challenge is to develop proper sets of measures for assessing the corresponding constructs under each institutional dimension. For example, under the regulative dimension, a researcher may determine the degree of institutional pressures on retailers at the country level. The imposition and inducement may be measured either by retailers’ perception or the actual number of relevant regulations or policies. These types of measures will help greatly in building a comprehensive understanding of the impacts of the macroenvironment on international retailers. Table 1 shows some more operationalizations of three institutional dimensions. Research method: The second challenge involves choosing the appropriate research method to test propositions. For example, under the regulative dimension, the first two propositions propose the relationship between entry choices and the strength of the rule of law in the host country. Such a study may require a longitudinal analysis of events or a consideration of the historical context to examine the process of foreign retailers’ entries along with the rule of law in the host country. Therefore, the secondary data sources consisting of information about the host country's political risk change and foreign retailers’ entries during a period of time may be required. As a result, choosing appropriate host countries for testing this proposition is important as well, because the rule of law in host countries needs to incorporate changes to develop a meaningful empirical test. Emerging markets such as Central European countries could be a good choice because of political changes before and after 1989, and their recent policies to limit foreign ownership of retailing ( Dawson, 2004). Testing of propositions three to five may be achieved by using either primary data or secondary data sources depending on whether the researcher uses the perception of retailers or the number of relevant regulations as the measures. Similarly, propositions under cognitive dimensions (proposition nine and ten) could also be tested using survey-based primary data or historical data of a company. 4.2. Implications This paper answers Vida et al. (2000)'s call for the inclusion of external environment factors into the development of a model of retail internationalization by introducing institutional theory as a potential theoretical framework. On one hand, while institutional theory is a relatively new theory as related to international retailing, its incremental explanatory power is evident. Specifically, unlike the conventional perspectives (e.g. transaction cost analysis) that focus on economic rationales, institutional theory posits that firms, limited by bounded rationality, choose organizational practices and structures such as entry location, entry timing, and entry mode to gain legitimacy from both internal and external environments (Yiu & Makino, 2002). On the other hand, the institutional perspective does not contradict the economic perspective. As Palmer, Jennings, and Zhou (1993) state, institutional theory assumes that organizations select among alternatives based on efficiency while adopting forms that are considered as legitimate by other institutions. This decision-making heuristic simplifies a complex conceptual problem because the substantial uncertainty and restricted attention to legitimated structure allow firms to identify “the efficiency-satisficing” (as opposed to maximizing) solution while saving time and effort (Simon, 1959). Therefore, institutional theory is proposed as a complement rather than a competitor to existing theories. Our institutional framework provides relevant managerial implications for international retailers as well. First, retailers have to understand that their choices are limited and external and internal institutional environments influence their decisions. The institutional forces may influence entry decisions at different levels—the regulative dimension at the country level, the normative at culture or business level, and the cognitive at the firm level. Therefore, it is important for retailers to identify institutional pressures and manage the institutional environment strategically. For example, depending on whether the new market is similar to or different from its previous entered one, the retailer may choose to rely on its own prior experience or look to other retailers’ experience in deciding the entry structure. Second, for an international retailer, the impacts of three institutional dimensions in reality should not be considered separately; rather, all of these facets need to be viewed as “contributing, interdependent and mutually reinforcing ways” (Scott, 2001, p. 51). Indeed, three institutional forces reinforce each other. For example, normative forces may influence cognitive forces as shown by Lu (2002) which showed that Japanese firms are prone to habitual mimetic behaviors that may be related to a normative reason—namely, their collectivism community. In addition, institutional forces may influence entry decisions in different magnitudes. Therefore, retailers must take all institutional forces into consideration when evaluating entry strategies and determine which dimension and under what circumstances a dimension plays a more important role than the others. For example, in addition to regulations imposed by the foreign government and cultural differences in a foreign country, international retailers need to be aware of any differences particular to retailing including those among target customers and industry practices. Retailers need to understand that adaptation may be required and takes place not only in terms of changes in merchandise but also changes in format and formula as they enter new markets. Future research may involve the following issues: first, researchers need to choose the appropriate research method and devise measures to test hypotheses based on propositions developed in this paper. Second, we propose institutional theory as an efficiency-satisficing strategy for the decision-making choices in a retailer's international expansion. Further studies need to explore whether institutional theory is an effective tool for evaluating success and the performance measures of international retailers. Lastly, institutional theory is introduced as a complement to rather than replacement for the extant theories. Future research should investigate how to integrate institutional theory and other prevalent theories to increase their explanatory power on international retailing issues.