ABSTRACT
According to the internationalisation process theory firms tend to invest and expand in countries with a short psychic distance to the home country. This paper discusses the usefulness of bringing this theory into business history by analysing the internationalisation of Norwegian firms before the 1980s. The empirical contribution of this paper is that it adds new knowledge to our understanding of the early internationalisation of Norwegians firms. The theoretical contribution is that the paper develops the discussion on the usefulness of bringing networks into the internationalisation process theory. Based on the Norwegian case, there seems to be a need for including personal networks as one dimension of the psychic distance concept, not only in the new economy but also in the old economy.
