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The aim of this paper is to highlight the importance of the firm's strategic objectives regarding the choice of countries for foreign expansion, complementing the existing literature on the internationalisation process. Through a multiple case study methodology, we conduct a comparative analysis of three Brazilian ventures that have internationalised in Italy, and three Italian firms that have internationalised in Brazil, seeking to investigate the firms' decisions on the selection of foreign markets. We consider jointly the objective aspects of distance, the overall perceptions of the decision-makers in relation to the differences between the domestic and (potential) host countries, and the firm's strategic objectives. This research contributes to International Business studies by revealing the role of firm-specific strategic objectives as determinants of foreign market selection, in addition to, or even on top of, the dimensions of objective distance and psychic distance.Paper type -Research paper.

Article (Accepted Version) http://sro.sussex.ac.uk Magnani, Giovanna, Zucchella, Antonella and Strange, Roger (2019) The dynamics of outsourcing relationships in global value chains: perspectives from MNEs and their suppliers.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore uncertainty-coping strategic actions in the internationalisation strategy of entrepreneurial ventures, encompassing born globals/international new ventures, enduring established internationalisers, old born globals, born-again globals and micro-multinationals. Design/methodology/approach The authors developed a qualitative exploratory study applying a grounded theory approach to ten entrepreneurial firms to investigate the strategies they adopted to cope with Knightian uncertainty in international markets. Findings The global niche strategy emerged as a successful path to deal with uncertainty in smaller firms’ internationalisation. The authors uncover the components of this strategy, namely the creation of markets, the focus on global clients and the control of technology. Originality/value The contribution of this paper consists in exploring how entrepreneurial firms cope with uncertainty through a global niche strategy and in outlining its main components. The authors develop a model of smaller entrepreneurial firms’ international strategising under this perspective. The research thus links together international marketing and strategy with (international) entrepreneurship studies.