Critical Perspectives on Internationalization
- PDF / 75,292 Bytes
- 4 Pages / 595 x 794 pts Page_size
- 61 Downloads / 204 Views
& 2004 Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. All rights reserved 0047-2506 $25.00 www.jibs.net
BOOK REVIEW Johansen and Vahlne’s internationalization process model has been one of the most influential ideas developed in the Journal of International Business Studies in the 1970s. Many early citations emphasize the typical establishment chain described by the authors. Yet, the model of the underlying processes of knowledge accumulation provides insights in the dynamics of international business that can explain internationalization along different establishment chains, and allows incorporating, for example, the evolution of international business networks. In fact, Johansen and Vahlne (1977) anticipated some developments of the resource-based views more than a decade later. The internationalization process remains an important research paradigm in Nordic international business research, and is increasingly taken up by scholars studying FDI from emerging economies, such as Brazil. It is particularly relevant for scholars focusing on longitudinal aspects of early stages of international business by small- and medium-sized enterprise, and by firms from countries with little experience in operating outside their own borders. To commemorate the 25th anniversary of the paper, Virpi Havila, Mats Forsgren and Ha˚kan Ha˚kansson have edited a collection of articles discussing internationalization. Danny Van Den Bulcke comments on the selection. Klaus E Meyer JIBS Book Review Editor
Critical Perspectives on Internationalization Virpi Havila, Mats Forsgren and Ha˚kan Hakansson (eds) Amsterdam: Pergamon-Elsevier; 2002
Reviewed by: Daniel Van Den Bulcke University of Antwerp, Belgium
Journal of International Business Studies (2004) 35, 251–254. doi:10.1057/palgrave.jibs.8400083
This edited volume of almost 500 pages consists of 19 contributions presented at the ‘Marcus Wallenberg Symposium’ on ‘Critical Perspectives on Internationalization’ that took place in January 2002. That the symposium was hosted by Uppsala University was very appropriate, as research on the internationalization process (IP) of the firm is often cited as the Uppsala School or Scandinavian School or Nordic School. The book is dedicated to Jan Johanson, who together with Jan Erik Vahlne, wrote the frequently quoted 1977 JIBS article on this subject (Johanson and Vahlne, 1977). This paper was based on a more empirical background article published earlier (Johanson and Wiedersheim-Paul, 1975). While the authors of the so-called ‘establishment chain’ have over the years defended their views against previous criticisms (e.g., Johanson and Vahlne, 1990), they also wrote a chapter that has been included in the volume. The internationalization process clearly became one of the basic early tenets of international business studies. The number of citations in the Social Science Citation Index increased from only a few to 30 and more at the beginning of the new century and went strongly upward at the beginning of the 1990s. Many doctoral students have taken up the challenge to test
Data Loading...
