مقاله انگلیسی رایگان در مورد بازخوردهای عملکرد سازمانی و گسترش بین المللی – الزویر 2018

ABSTRACT

Drawing on performance feedback theory to develop the Uppsala internationalization model, we argue that organizational performance relative to managerial aspirations influences firms’ foreign expansion propensity as well as the type of country location. Our statistical analysis of foreign entries by Japanese machinery firms between 1976 and 2002 finds that firms performing closer to aspirations were more likely to enter foreign countries than those that under- or out-performed. Underperforming firms were also more likely to enter countries with greater cultural and geographic proximity to those in which they had already invested. Our findings contribute to international business research by identifying organizational performance conditions under which firms tend to adopt an incremental approach to foreign expansion, or else a comparatively radical one of selecting more distant or unfamiliar countries.

Introduction

International expansion is often cited as a means by which firms can improve financial performance. Investments in new jurisdictions enable firms to achieve global economies of scale, access local endowments, technologies and markets, as well as exploit proprietary knowledge, all of which have the potential to yield greater profits and growth rates. Entering foreign countries, however, is a risky proposition as the welldocumented losses, and eventual exits of AES Corporation in Georgia, Tesco in Japan, and Wal-Mart in Germany, all of whom were successful in their home markets, illustrate (Christopherson, 2007; Sonne, 2012; Zaheer, 1995). A dominant theory of firm internationalization – the Uppsala model (Johanson & Vahlne, 1977, 1990, 2009) – argues that firms assess and respond to foreign entry opportunities and risks by drawing on prior organizational experience: prior international experience reduces uncertainty about market environments in a jurisdiction, increasing the attractiveness of investing further in existing foreign markets or of entering new countries similar to those in which the firm is already experienced (Eriksson, Johanson, Majkgard, & Sharma, 1997; Figueirade-Lemos, Johanson, & Vahlne, 2011). Empirical studies have provided support for the thesis that prior experience abroad positively stimulates re-investment as well as entry into similar countries (Barkema, Bell, & Pennings, 1996; Casillas & Moreno-Menendez, 2014; Chang, 1995; Jiang et al., forthcoming; Mitra & Golder, 2002). While the Uppsala model provides insights into how organizational experience can shape firms’ international expansion, it does not account for managerial cognitive mechanisms that may influence how risk-reward tradeoffs are evaluated in the context of foreign entry. Here, we build on the Uppsala model by adopting a cognitive approach to managerial decision-making (March & Shapira, 1987; Shapira, 1995), drawing specifically on performance feedback theory (Cyert & March, 1963; Greve, 2003b). Highlighted as one of the key domains of organization theory development in a recent review (Lounsbury & Beckman, 2015), performance feedback research proposes that managerial propensity to undertake organizational change and to assume new risks depends, in part, on organizational performance relative to managerial aspirations. An aspiration has been defined as “the smallest outcome that would be deemed satisfactory by the decision maker” (Schneider, 1992, p. 1053). In this view, divergence of actual performance from aspiration levels of performance affects managerial allocation of attention, the scope of search for alternative courses of action, learning behavior, and willingness to make risky change.