ABSTRACT
Internationalization, commonly understood to be the process of adapting firms’ operations to international environments (Calof and Beamish 1995: 116), is an issue of importance for firms; it often results in vital growth (Luostarinen 1980), useful learning outcomes (Zahra et al. 2000) and enhanced financial performance (Lu and Beamish 2001). Recent focus on the internationalization of the smaller firm has resulted in a growing overlap of interest between international business and entrepreneurship researchers (Coviello and Jones 2004; McDougall and Oviatt 2000; Oviatt and McDougall 2005b). While these scholars have made considerable progress in taking forward the internationalization literature, issues that have not been satisfactorily addressed as yet include its fragmentary nature and the need to take recent technological developments on board (Andersen 1993; Melin 1992; Singh and Kundu 2002).
