This study aims to answer whether and how returnee entrepreneurs’ international experience and returnee entrepreneurial firms’ international market knowledge influence these firms’ internationalization. Anchored in a framework combining an entrepreneurial and knowledge-based view, we develop a model and four hypotheses on the relations between returnee entrepreneurs’ international experience, international market knowledge, international market commitment, and level of internationalization of the returnee entrepreneurial firm. Empirical evidence of the proposed model is derived from a recent sample of Chinese returnee SMEs in knowledge-intensive and high-technology industries. The main finding is that returnee entrepreneurs’ international experience nurtures international market knowledge of returnee entrepreneurial firms, which in turn has a positive effect on these firms’ international market commitment and level of internationalization. In terms of theory, the study extends our understanding of returnee entrepreneurial firms by uncovering the role of returnee entrepreneurs’ international experience and returnee firms’ international market knowledge during their initial and early international expansion.

The global liberalisation of national regulated financial services' sectors has opened up a wave of international mergers and acquisitions processes. To succeed with such processes, a positive relationship needs to be developed between involved parties. But actors within and outside involved companies in international mergers and acquisitions may have conflicting interests, not least because of national resistance to changes in domestic financial sectors. In order to study the discourse among such actors, this paper presents a theoretical view based on business relationships, highlighting the concept of legitimacy. The aim is to analyse how different actors communicate in and through the media, in order to legitimise their own actions or to delegitimise the actions of their opponents in the relationship development process. The empirical investigation is a longitudinal study of an acquisition process between two insurance companies from Sweden and South Africa. A discourse analysis shows that the relationship development process is not only a matter of rational arguments. It is rather a struggle between actors drawing on discourses that change over time, as a means to affect perceptions of legitimate behaviours to reach the preferred outcome. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Based on the key assumptions that firms are opportunity seeking and that they gain critical knowledge operating in a network of relationships, this paper focuses on early expansion in foreign market networks. In particular, the paper examines the relation between experience and business-relationship value in a foreign market. While experience and experiential knowledge are central concepts in international business, little has been written about their effects on the value of business relationships. The paper formulates a set of interrelated hypotheses on the effects of international experience, experiential network knowledge and importance of customer and competitor knowledge on the value of business relationships in a foreign market. They are combined in a structural model, which is tested on a sample through LISREL. The main conclusion drawn from the study is that experiential network knowledge and knowledge about the importance of customers and competitors in the network influence the value of business relationships in a foreign market in different ways. © 2013 Elsevier Ltd.

Not much is known about the characteristics of “early internationalizers” in their later life and there is scant empirical literature – and an acute need for quantitative studies – about the features of Born Internationals (BIs) after their first years of operation. In this context, we aim to describe the later life of BIs and determine whether some of the critical aspects of internationalization are visible in their post-birth features. This study contributes to the literature on internationalization by providing quantitative evidence on key post-birth characteristics of BIs. Guided by five research hypotheses, it explores changes in the BIs’ profile and tests whether or not there are differences between newer BIs and older ones in a sample of SMEs. The results support the basic cumulative dynamics proposed by the incremental school in terms of international business experience, international commitment, and level of internationalization, which implies that these factors can to some extent be viewed as driving forces in the internationalization process of BIs.