Revisiting interactions of entrepreneurial, marketing, and other orientations with internationalization strategies

This article builds, and extends, on the coverage of two theoretical concepts with significant impacts on entrepreneurial firms and their internationalization, both of which have already appeared in the journal. One discussed the concept of entrepreneurial orientation (EO) and the other discussed the life-long impact of a firm’s early entrepreneurial heritage, including the firm’s entrepreneurial, marketing, and strategic orientations with carryover effects through the early stages, if not throughout, the life cycle of a firm (Etemad 2015 and 2018, respectively). In response to environmental dynamism, both of these complex concepts will have to evolve overtime to have significant effects on entrepreneurial firms. Combined, they distinguish entrepreneurial internationalization (EI) from the traditional form of internationalization, and such distinctions are based on a combination of entrepreneurial orientation (Carlos and Pinho 2011; Covin and Slevin 1991; Etemad 2015; Lumpkin and Dess 1996; Miller 1983; DeClercq et al. 2005; Deligianni et al. 2015; Javalgi and Todd 2011), marketing orientation (Kohli and Jaworski 1990; Hong et al. 2013; Kirca et al. 2005; He and Wei 2011; Kohli et al. 1993; Rodriguez Cano et al. 2004; Sorensen 2009), and strategic orientation (Etemad 2018; Deutscher et al. 2016; Covin and Slevin 1989; Morgan and Strong 2003). Due to the conditions facing entrepreneurial firms in international markets, these orientations and their market manifestations are likely to be different from those of others. However, a comprehensive system of measurements for characterizing potential differences, mainly due to differences in their operational characteristics and their consequent outcomes in international markets, has remained relatively underexplored, and possibly unexplored. This is in part due to the absence of a comprehensive theory of entrepreneurial internationalization, and partly due to the implicit assumption that the prevailing system of measurement, designed for other forms of internationalization, would be adequate. In spite of growing interest in the field (e.g., Boso et al. 2012; Cadogan et al. 2016; Deutscher et al. 2016; Dimitratos et al. 2004, Hong et al. 2013; Montiel-Campos 2018; Hosseini et al. 2018; Montiel-Campos 2018; Pehrsson 2016; Sundqvist et al. 2012, amongst many others, including the increasing number of articles published in this journal), the need for coherent and internally consistent system of measurements, based on a comprehensive body of theory, still remains a challenge.

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