یک مدل پویا از مراحل رشد و بقا در سرمایه گذاری های جدید بین المللی بنگاه به بنگاه: اثر تعدیل منطق تصمیم گیری

The growth and survival of international new ventures (INVs) has not been the subject of extensive in-depth qualitative study and our understanding of their decision-making is deficient. On the basis of empirical analyses in a small and open economy, a dynamic model was developed that explains the growth phases through which INVs pass as they mature in the high-technology business-to-business field. The model also recognizes rapid advancement, survival crises, and retrenchment. Propositions were devised regarding the impact of opportunities, resources and capabilities, entrepreneurial orientation, and learning on growth phases and survival. A novel finding is that the decision-making logic moderates the impact of these factors. These findings have important implications for industrial marketing scholars and practitioners.

International new ventures (INVs) have received increasing attention from a number of researchers. Much of this research has focused on the early years of INVs (see e.g. Chetty and Campbell-Hunt, 2004, Knight and Cavusgil, 1996 and Madsen and Servais, 1997). Nevertheless, its contribution to our understanding of the global growth and survival of INVs (Mudambi and Zahra, 2007 and Sapienza et al., 2006) and their decision-making has been limited (Sarasvathy, 2001). INVs are an especially interesting group of firms as they have been able to internationalize rapidly and market their offering globally. This is challenging and thus this knowledge is expected to be valuable for industrial marketing researchers and firm managers. In the management literature a number of multistage models have been proposed in which predictable patterns in the growth of organizations are assumed to exist (Greiner, 1972, Kazanjian and Drazin, 1989, Massey et al., 2006 and McMahon, 2001). These earlier models have been criticized for being too sequential and linear (Levie and Lichtenstein, 2010 and Phelps et al., 2007) and it has been proposed that development should be seen as changes in dynamic states, i.e. as a series of configurations. Earlier research on the internationalization of firms found patterns in the stage-wise progression of companies towards greater foreign market involvement (Johanson and Vahlne, 1977 and Luostarinen, 1979). However, it has been argued that these models are not applicable in today's global environment, that small companies proceed more rapidly to international markets (Oviatt & McDougall, 1994), and that this is particularly true of business-to-business firms (Laanti, Gabrielsson, & Gabrielsson, 2007). Recent research has suggested that international growth is pursued within business networks and that the process is driven by knowledge of opportunities abroad instead of by efforts to overcome uncertainties concerning institutional conditions in foreign markets (Johanson & Vahlne, 2009). International new venture theory emphasizes the importance of unique entrepreneurial characteristics such as innovativeness, proactiveness, and risk-taking, all of which allow firms to identify and address foreign growth opportunities and leverage the network resources necessary for rapid growth (McDougall, Shane, & Oviatt, 1994). They do not, however, adequately explain the decision-making of INVs. Some researchers have argued that we need to go beyond theories of the firm and include the entrepreneurs in the investigation (Sarasvathy, 2004). We expect that inclusion of considerations related to entrepreneurial decision-making may be especially fruitful as it has been argued that INVs often operate in a three dimensional problem space (Andersson, 2011 and Sarasvathy, 2004) consisting of Knightian uncertainty (Knight, 1921), Marchian goal ambiguity (March, 1976), and Weickian enactment (Weick, 1979). This means that the future is unpredictable, goals are unspecified or unknown, and decisions made by INVs may affect the environment. All three of these considerations can be expected to influence how entrepreneurs decide about issues related to growth and survival (Sarasvathy, 2004). The ability of INVs to make decisions is limited by their imperfect knowledge and their goal-setting, which is at best satisfactory (Simon, 1947). Hence, new theory development would benefit from capturing the decision-making logic used in INVs that operate in an uncertain environment (Sarasvathy, 2001). Effectuation theory, an approach to entrepreneurial expertise based on cognitive science that can be placed under the larger umbrella of decision-making under uncertainty, has the potential to address this gap (Jones et al., 2011 and Read, Dew, Sarasvathy, Song and Wiltbank, 2009). We expect that understanding of the decision-making logic may reveal how INVs are able to meet the huge challenge of global growth problems and survival crises despite their liabilities regarding newness, size, and foreignness (Zahra, 2005). Effectuation logic, which emphasizes improvisation, exploitation of contingencies and market creation through alliances and partnerships, offers great hopes in this respect (Sarasvathy, 2001) due to its potential to mitigate resource requirements. Recent research has also emphasized the importance of understanding decision-making in business-to business contexts (Forkmann, Wang, Henneberg, Naudé, & Sutcliffe, 2012). Due to small home markets and limited trade barriers that force rapid internationalization, INVs are more likely to originate in small and open economies (SMOPEC) than in larger countries (Fan & Phan, 2007). Moreover, as INVs have been found more often in the high-tech (Autio, George, & Alexy, 2011) and business-to-business field (Laanti et al., 2007), we decided to develop initial insights in this context. Hence, the research objective is to develop a dynamic model explaining the growth and survival of high-tech business-to-business INVs originating in small and open economies from the perspective of decision-making logic. This research defines INVs in keeping with Oviatt and McDougall (1994, p.49), who originally defined them as a “business organization that, from inception, seeks to derive significant competitive advantage from the use of resources and the sale of outputs in multiple countries.” Other researchers have operationalized this by setting criteria for the rapidity of foreign market entrance and the degree of exports. A cut-off of 25% (Knight and Cavusgil, 1996 and Knight and Cavusgil, 2004) and three years (Zhou, Barnes, & Lu, 2010) has commonly been used. Hence, to qualify as an INV in this research, foreign sales had to account for 25% of total sales within three years of foundation. Moreover, it is important to note that few researchers have measured the extent to which international new venture firms grow beyond the initial export phase to become global firms (Chetty and Campbell-Hunt, 2004 and Lopez et al., 2009). The article addresses the debate around whether a model can be developed for international new venture growth (Oviatt & McDougall, 1994) and survival (Mudambi & Zahra, 2007). The contribution of our study to business-to-business marketing and entrepreneurship research is two-fold; we provide an explanation of the phases through which business-to-business INVs evolve as they mature and then develop a dynamic model explaining this process, including the effects of decision-making logic. The model advances our understanding of the impact of resources and capabilities on growth and survival (Sapienza et al., 2006). It highlights the crucial role of opportunities in driving growth (Alvarez & Barney, 2007) and the importance of learning for survival (March, 1991). It also contradicts much of the existing wisdom according to which an entrepreneurial orientation is mainly beneficial (Lisboa, Skarmeas, & Lages, 2011). Earlier research results have shown that a stronger international entrepreneurial orientation drives INVs to develop the high-quality goods that are associated with international success (Knight & Cavusgil, 2004). In contrast, our research suggests that it is not always beneficial to have a strong international entrepreneurial orientation. A novel finding is the importance of effectuation logic as a moderator that either accelerates or mitigates the influence of antecedent factors on the growth and survival of INVs in the high-technology business-to-business field.

The novel contribution of this study is its examination of the decision-making logic (Sarasvathy, 2001) associated with growth phases and survival (Sapienza et al., 2006) of high-technology business-to-business (Hughes & Morgan, 2007) INVs (Oviatt & McDougall, 1994) originating in small and open economies. For industrial marketing scholars, our study provides knowledge of the growth and survival of INVs in the high technology, business-to-business field, and of the influence of antecedent factors and decision-making logic. As many INVs are found especially in the business-to-business field, these results are especially relevant for business-to-business marketing. The novel contribution to business-to-business marketing is that effectuation logic can enable rapid international commercialization of products and is reflected in the way industrial firms leverage the resources of business partners in distribution and marketing in an uncertain environment. We answer to the recent call for a more holistic picture of managerial decision making in business-to-business context (Forkmann et al., 2012). The study depicts four critical phases in INV growth. Recently, the assumptions of some earlier models have been challenged, especially the number of phases and linearity (Levie and Lichtenstein, 2010 and Phelps et al., 2007). We agree that the number of phases may vary in different contexts. However, our case analysis showed that in high-technology business-to-business INVs originating in small and open economies there were certain subsets of managerial and foreign growth problems that could be logically grouped in these four phases. We found, however, that development is not always linear as retrenchments may also occur. We found that in addition to survival crises, the INVs faced management and foreign growth problems that required solutions before they could progress to the next phase. In any phase they may either survive or fail. We contribute by developing a model that includes a more in-depth understanding of the dynamism related to the state and change aspects of growth and to the survival of INVs than that of earlier literature. In addition to depicting the growth phases and related dynamism of INVs, the study increases understanding of the factors that contribute to change in the growth and survival state of an INV, thus also contributing to the resource-based view, the dynamic capability perspective, and the literature on INVs related to the entrepreneurial orientation and opportunities. In analyzing growth and survival, we identified the crucial role of both discovered and created opportunities in driving growth (Alvarez & Barney, 2007) and the importance of learning for survival. (March, 1991). Opportunity creation and explorative learning were most important in the early phases while, opportunity discovery and exploitative learning became more important in latter phases. Moreover, we contribute to discussion on the role of resources and capabilities in solving growth problems and managing survival crises, thereby enabling transition to the next state (Sapienza et al., 2006). The article suggests that in order to achieve growth and reduce global growth-related investment and the risk of failure, it is necessary for INVs to leverage the resources of network actors (Cook and Emerson, 1978, Ford et al., 1998 and Gabrielsson and Kirpalani, 2004). This is particularly important in the business-to-business relationship (Forkmann et al., 2012). Although network capabilities were found to be important, they do not eliminate the need to develop substantial capabilities with regard to technology, customer understanding, and marketing. We could also find patterns when certain capabilities were especially important during growth. Technology capabilities were most important in the introduction phase, while marketing and networking capabilities became more important for advancing through the growth phases. Management capabilities were especially important to facilitate transfer between phases, but also when solving growth problems as well as when facing survival crises. Dynamic capabilities were important for being able to integrate and reconfigure the substantive capabilities to respond to the requirements at particular phases. We further contribute by clarifying the role of entrepreneurial orientation and its influence on growth and survival (Hughes and Morgan, 2007, Knight and Cavusgil, 2004 and Lisboa et al., 2011). While a strong entrepreneurial orientation is mainly useful to achieve growth in the INV creation phase; an overemphasis in successive phases may even jeopardize survival. Hence, firms need to turn from agility to somewhat more rigidity when advancing through the phases. Moreover, the research contributed to the understanding of INV firm behavior and decision-making (Cyert & March, 1963), namely with respect to effectuation theory (Read, Dew, Sarasvathy, Song and Wiltbank, 2009, Read, Song and Smit, 2009 and Sarasvathy, 2001), by providing new knowledge on the role of decision-making logic in moderating the relationship of the factors discussed above. Effectuation-based decision-logic increases the role of opportunity creation as an important antecedent for growth as well as the importance of explorative learning for long-term survival. This logic also means that the role of dynamic and networking capabilities in growth and survival become even more important because they are required for successful effectuation logic. Moreover, the effect of an entrepreneurial orientation is reinforced as this logic brings the entrepreneur's characteristics even more strongly into the decision-making process. This contributes to research that has called for a better understanding of decision-making in business-to-business contexts (Forkmann et al., 2012), INVs (Andersson, 2011), and of the moderating factors in for example the entrepreneurial orientation–performance relationship (Covin et al., 2006 and Rauch et al., 2009). The novel finding is that while the earlier management literature has identified a number of factors driving the growth and survival of firms, our findings show that it is crucial to take into account the decision-making logic of entrepreneurs as an important internal contingency factor that either mitigates or strengthens the influence of the anteceding factors. By integrating the earlier management literature and effectuation theory we can understand the joint effect these factors have on the growth and survival of INVs. The use of effectuation versus causation logic also varies during firm growth, and therefore improves our dynamic understanding of the development. This increased understanding also contributes to the earlier marketing literature based on contingency theory that has emphasized the importance of studying contingency factors (Gabrielsson et al., 2012 and Zeithaml et al., 1988). Marketing managers working in the business-to-business field can also learn from the results of this study. They need to assess their resources and capabilities and to pursue emerging opportunities and contingencies that will generate optimal growth, but also to take the risk of non-survival into account. Moreover, active development of networks may facilitate growth and increase the odds of survival. Entrepreneurs may also benefit from the use of effectuation logic in decision-making, especially in the early phases of development. This may help INVs suffering from the liabilities of smallness, newness, and foreignness to compete successfully with local incumbent firms. Effectuation logic can mitigate the need for the firm's own resources in growth and survival. Moreover, this logic brings to the forefront the importance of leveraging the entrepreneur's own qualities, the drive for opportunity creation, learning through trial and error, and the use of existing networks. Generalization based on case study research is often considered challenging. By acquiring a thorough knowledge of the phenomenon the possibilities for “naturalistic” generalization have been increased in this research (Stake, 2000). As readers recognize essential similarities to cases of interest to them, they can use the results in the context of their interest as applicable. By using a multiple case study research design, replication (Eisenhardt & Graebner, 2007), and explanation-building logic (Yin, 2009), generalization back to theory has been further increased. Moreover, the study results are expected to be most relevant for high-technology business-to-business INVs originating from SMOPEC countries. However, despite this conclusion, one should be cautious about generalization beyond the INVs studied. It is up to future research to prove whether generalization to a larger population is possible. The relationships between the state and change factors in our model were found to be complex and future studies could further explore the causative nature of the state and change factors and whether the configuration of resources and capabilities also mark a phase shift. It would be fruitful to conduct a quantitative study of the growth phases of INVs and examine how well the model describes the growth stages of these companies, the survival crises they face, the anteceding factors, and their decision-making. A comparison of INVs from different countries and industries could provide further information on the generalizability of our model.