The role of the entrepreneur in identifying international expansion as a strategic opportunity

Valle Santos-Álvarez and Teresa García-Merino

International Journal of Information Management, 2010, vol. 30, issue 6, 512-520

Abstract: This research explores business internationalisation as a process of recognising and exploiting business opportunities in an international context and uses Spain's natural stone industry as a case study. We differentiate internationalisation into two stages: opportunity identification and subsequent opportunity exploitation. We focus on the initial identification stage to determine the impact of entrepreneurs’ cognitive variables when gathering relevant information for internationalisation of the firm, highlighting the role of entrepreneurs’ alertness, the centre of interest, causal logic, and prior experience. We also examine the importance of the entrepreneur's environment, social networks, and institutional setting. In our empirical analysis, we find that although interested in internationalisation, entrepreneurs in the natural stone industry devote very little time and effort to gathering information. As a result, decisions related to internationalisation are restricted by uncertainty and a poor understanding of the appeal, barriers, and available support services.

Keywords: Internationalisation; Opportunity identification; Information gathering; Alertness; Situated cognition (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ininma:v:30:y:2010:i:6:p:512-520

DOI: 10.1016/j.ijinfomgt.2010.03.008

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