Knowledge acquisition for the internationalization of the smaller firm: Content and sources

Abstract

Knowledge Acquisition for the Internationalization of the Smaller Firm: Content and SourcesInternationalization process research emphasizes accumulated experience and networks as sources of knowledge for internationalization. Our understanding, however, as to what this knowledge is in practice for smaller firms, the challenges they face in acquiring it, and how they address those challenges is limited. Integrating organizational learning concepts with our theoretical understanding of the small firm internationalization process, we develop a new framework for understanding knowledge acquisition processes, which are examined with a case study of ten Scottish internationalizing firms. We find smaller firms may not have relevant experience or useful networks, and rely on sources rarely recognised before. Firms used recruitment, government advisors and consultants to acquire indirect experience. Recruitment is a source of market and technological knowledge and government advisors and consultants a source of internationalization knowledge. Accessing internal information is important for firms that have internationalized. Our integrated theoretical framework identifies knowledge content and sources that are critical for internationalization, but that may be absent.

Supplier strategies to compensate for knowledge asymmetries in buyer-supplier relationships: implications for economic upgrading

“…Firms A and B had established a separate marketing division to manage such activities, while in Firm C they were mostly performed by the owner. The studied firms were using a number of the external and internal sources from the list of Fletcher and Harris (2012). The suppliers used these additional sources to compensate for their lack of access to buyers' tacit knowledge.…”

“…In this respect, Fletcher and Harris (2012) argue that small firms can acquire tacit and explicit knowledge required for internationalisation from both external and internal sources. They list a number of internal and external knowledge sources.…”

“…The upgrading initiatives included in Table 4 were a summary of the findings from Table 3. The sources and content of technological and marketing knowledge were analysed using Fletcher and Harris (2012).…”

“…Besides the information-oriented components, marketing knowledge also involves tacit knowledge of how to do pricing, product development, channel management, marketing communication, selling, planning and implementation. Drawing upon Huber (1991), Fletcher and Harris (2012) also presented a range of external (network partners, government sources, business associations and competitors) and internal (such as, formal and informal communication with buyers and employees, published organisational documents, experiences and mistakes) sources that can be used by export-oriented firms to acquire the tacit and explicit knowledge required for internationalisation. The use of Fletcher and Harris's (2012) dimensions in the framework allowed us to examine the use of external and internal sources for acquiring both the technological and marketing knowledge required, and to find out how those sources influenced the nature of the upgrading achieved by the studied firms.…”

“…Additional or alternative sources of knowledge (e.g. Fletcher and Harris, 2012) that may be available to the local firms, and their strategies for acquiring them, are frequently untapped. In addition, the knowledge-transfer channels studied so far mostly relate to MNE headquarters and their subsidiaries (Foss and Pedersen, 2002;Mudambi and Swift, 2011), foreign direct investment (FDI) and local linkage firms (Giroud, 2007;Giroud and Scott-Kennel, 2009), and MNEs and their strategic alliance partners (Ho and Wang, 2015).…”