ABSTRACT

The Contingency and (Inter)Action Models discussed in Chapter 1 suggest that a firm's internationalization process cannot be fully understood outside the institutional context or environment within which its operations are embedded. The institutions that affect a firm's operation may be many and may differ markedly in terms of their objectives, modes of operation, levels of authority, forms of organization, as well as attitudes and habits of their staff. For these institutions to have an optimum impact on the behavior of firms, they must be perceived by the firms to be supportive. This is because it is the perception of managers that influences their behavior. As argued by Czinkota and Ricks (1994), problems that management can handle easily are not perceived to be significant, although they recur frequently, while less frequent problems may be perceived as burdensome, despite their occasional occurrence, simply because management has not found a good means of handling them. This chapter therefore focuses attention on perception rather than offering any objective assessment of the gravity of problems created or solved by public institutions during the course of export transaction.