ABSTRACT
Markets, hierarchies and networks are alternative mechanisms of resource allocation in the economy. The network perspective is particularly relevant to explain the internationalisation of firms lacking ownership advantage, capabilities and accumulated resources. Global rivalry is evolving from firm-versus-firm competition into supply chains and interconnected sets of firms competing against other interfirm networks and value chains. Firms from emerging markets are latecomers to the globalisation game, and lack the ownership, location and internalisation (OLI) advantages that were useful in explaining globalisation from developed to developing countries. The white goods industry has been used as an empirical field for the development of IB theory. Haier has compensated for its disadvantage by the internalisation of distribution in China the fastest growing white goods market in the world. The goal of qualitative study of the dynamics of the global value chain would be to investigate whether and how latecomers are able to accommodate to the established network in a mature industry.
