The internationalization process of emerging market multinationals (EMNCs) has been the focus of study of several studies on the recent decades. Importance was given as well to differentiate the patters of those from the multinationals coming from developed countries (MNCs). This study investigates specificities in the path of a Brazilian steel industry, Gerdau, into foreign production in developed countries, Canada and United States. By pointing out the different theories, the case of Gerdau can be better understood not only as an internationalization process, but as well as a company that could reach opportunities in a sector going through a problematic period by acquiring regional players, instead of using exports to reach those markets. Some authors states managerial capabilities being understood as second most important competitive advantage of Brazilian firms, loosing only to differentiated access of natural resources. In this study, we go through the understanding of how this capabilities played important role in a company outside of the natural resources business, supporting Gerdau's successful path.

Problem: Internationalization is a complex process, and Chinese firms have in recent years received a lot of attention on their expansion overseas, to Europe, which is a relatively new phenomenon. Research in this field of study is very limited and it does not have a long history even though it has received attention.Purpose: The purpose of this dissertation is to explore if the Chinese firms have followed the western internationalization theories when investing abroad. Focus is on the Chinese firms‘ investment into the European market. We explore the strategies that the Chinese firms have used and compare it with the existing internationalization models in order to find out how well they fit with the western theories.Methodology: In this dissertation a qualitative method is used, based on an interpretivistic philosophy with an inductive research approach. The research question is answered through semi-structured interviews with Chinese firms in different parts of Europe.Conclusions: After studying the Chinese firms‘ internationalization to the European market we can conclude that existing internationalization theories are not able to explain the expansion of the Chinese firms.

The overall aim of this research is to explore the business relationships among Russian and Polish firms. The research performed is based on the selected literature area of industrial relationships, relationship quality, negotiations, international environment. With exploratory purpose, the embedded single case study strategy is applied in this research. The empirical data is gathered through focus group discussion among five participants and seven interviews. The findings indicate that the nature of relationships among the Polish and the Russian companies is positive, fruitful and beneficial for both sides. Companies are mainly satisfied with cooperation and overall activities are managed at expected level. Problematic issues are solved successfully with the help of negotiations. The environmental factors which are identified as the main barriers and obstacles are the political climate, legal issues and infrastructure. As the Russian market and its law are complex and difficult, the Polish companies are aware of these factors and are trying to follow all demands given by the Russian companies. Finally, negotiations are provided as the measures to strengthen their relationships and to cope with all the factors, which can have negative impact, by mutual agreements and decisions. Based on our analysis and conclusions, the companies are recommended to ensure better code of business practices and to reveal more confidence among each other.

The purpose of this thesis is to study how two small and medium sized Swedish apparel firms internationalize their business activities.The international business activities are more frequent now than ever because cross border trade barriers are much less today. The companies internationalize their business operations for several reasons. High saturation in the local market, cheap supply line, hunting for resources and potential opportunities in the international market are the driving factors for internationalization. The small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) have no exception from such motives. Generally (SMEs) have fewer resources than big multinationals therefore internationalization is more difficult and challenging for (SMEs). The existing internationalization theories highlight several ways for internationalization. The internationalization process model depicts that companies extend their business activities from less to far psychic distance countries and gradually increase their commitment in the international market based on experiential knowledge i.e. knowledge learned by doing. The revised model argued that companies involve in internationalization by utilizing domestic or international network. The psychic distance concept argued that companies face two types psychic distance i.e. inter – country and inter – firm psychic distance. We developed our interaction process model for internationalization. According to the interaction process model when firms start interaction within network these have higher psychic distance level and lower trust and commitment because firms initially interact occasionally. With the passage of time as the interaction of firms within network gains some pace the psychic distance level started to reduce and trust and commitment builds upward. Finally a stag arrives when psychic distance level reached at least stage and inversely trust and commitment at higher level and this result into international opportunity. Thus firms by hunting international opportunity gets involve in internationalization. Inversely, international opportunity can also be developed at initial or middle stage and interaction process start at later stages. But in such situation psychic distance level is comparatively high and trust and commitment will be low because there is no or lesser interaction among firms. The internationalization in such a way will be more risky.

The trade today consist of global trade. Businesses are exercising cross-border activities and businesses tend to establish themselves in foreign markets. Many choices and factors affect a business choice of country to enter, and its choice of form of establishment in the new market. Therefore the thesis will examine the market entry strategy of the four Swedish businesses Lundalogik AB, Infobric AB, Funded-by-me AB, and PayEx AB in the information technology (IT) industry that have established their businesses in Norway. The authors believe that Norway is an interesting country to study as it is one of Sweden's most important ex-port markets and the IT-sector stands for approximately 13% of all Swedish exports towards the whole world. The purpose with the thesis is to explore and understand the market entry strategy used by the above mentioned four Swedish IT-businesses when entering the Norwegian market. With help of the purpose of the thesis the authors intend to answer what the underlying reasons for the four businesses were when entering the Norwegian market and its choice of form of establishment. As this is an explorative study the research method applied is an inductive approach with influences from the grounded theory. An inductive approach is when observations help to formulate a theory whereas the grounded theory is when a theory is discovered from social research. The reason why an inductive approach is better suited for the thesis is due to the flexibility in deciding which theory to choose after analyzing the primary data. After analyzing the four case studies it can be concluded that no pure internationalization strategy exists among the companies, instead a variety of customer follower and market seeker strategies are common. Moreover, the choice of form of establishment has many factors. Credibility, market knowledge, design of business and existing business relationships were the four most common factors identified by the authors affecting the case studies‟ choice of form of establishment.

Executive Summary Swedish companies have a relatively small domestic market that quickly becomes saturated. For those companies who are dependent on increased sales in order to survive or have the ambition to grow internationalization is the one option. Traditionally companies have ex- panded internationally by first exporting to countries with a short geographical as well as cultural distance. With increased experience the companies have entered markets farther and farther away, culturally as well as geographically. Eventually it might be possible to for example start production abroad. With today’s increasingly internationally competitive market it becomes more frequent that companies establish business in foreign countries at a more rapid pace. The choice was to study PMC Cylinders, a Swedish medium sized company that has been operating internationally for approximately thirty years. This company ́s internationaliza- tion processes have been analyzed in order to understand factors that might bridge these distances to other countries. These distances can be bridged by for instance existing customers, consultants, sister com- panies with complementary resources or employees with host country origin. Further the way of establishing foreign operations can contribute. With shorter distance there is no big issue. For example Norway was perceived almost like selling in Sweden. When the per- ceived distance is medium, here Germany serves as an example, it becomes more compli- cated. Existing British customer relationships made it possible to enter the German market. It was not enough to use an agent which was the case at an earlier failed attempt. Relation- ships with different actors and ways of entering foreign markets become even more impor- tant when this distance is long. Here China can serve as an example; the country is far away geographically as well as culturally. Together with a customer production was established in the Chinese market. This was also seen as an opportunity by a sister company to follow one of their customers. Thus the efforts of the companies were combined. PMC Cylinders also used employees with technical, cultural and language knowledge to bridge the distance. Thus there were a number of factors making the establishment in China possible. By the study of PMC Cylinders internationalization processes certain patterns were found. The outcome of these patterns is a structured model with a number of steps. This model implies that with increased geographical and or cultural distance the importance of connec- tions and ways of entering the market grows. The model is a decision tree which can be seen as an internationalization tool for PMC Cylinders.

This study strives to investigate why some small and medium enterprises (SMEs) from Northeast Italy internationalize at inception and some internationalize gradually. The main literature regarding both, Born Globals and Stage-Models, were reviewed. In face of a high degree of fragmentation in the Born Global literature the study was developed through an abductive logic of reasoning. This basically means that we started by clustering already accepted internal and external factors, working then, towards a unified explanation. A qualitative study was developed with four SMEs. The main results show that no factor can singularly drive a company to internationalize at inception. Instead, the interaction of internal and external factors determines how SMEs internationalize. The findings provide empirical insights on the internationalization behavior of SMEs and redress the apparent theoretical gap in this field.

Over the past two decades, the open-door of the market supply in China has had a massive impact on the automotive market. This development contributes to the globalization of the automobile industry that involved the integration of the Chinese domestic market into the international markets. Among many reasons, motivation to gain access to industrialized markets and to gain access to superior technology, management resources and knowledge are the most driving factors of the Chinese automotive industry for the internationalization and going abroad strategy of China´s automotive industry. This study investigated whether different external globalization drivers and internal organization factors have differential effects on various dimensions of China´s automakers firms’ global strategy. Most of the studies written about global strategies have implemented only either of the internal or the external drivers of the internationalization of the firms. The contribution of the paper introduces a more comprehensive model on the global expansion of a firm. This paper concludes that China´s automotive industry has some competitive advantages such as low cost, while, facing a number of challenges that hinder the internationalization of Chinese automobile companies. It also shows that multiple factors play an important role in firms' internationalization global strategy plan. It is thus essential that the interaction among independent variables is considered in the determination of global expansion strategy. This paper suggests that in comparative application of China´s economy of internationalization process to most of other industries in the emerging markets, they have similar development strategies and profiles due to the similar enterprise organizational mode and industrial environment. Therefore, most of the factors discussed in this paper can also apply to many industries in other emerging markets that are seeking for internationalization by creating a competitive global expansion strategy.

The television industry in Lithuania is analyzed in this thesis with a focus on the impact of commercialization on the public service broadcaster. The purpose of the research paper is to describe the impact of the changing market on the public service broadcaster of Lithuania using as theoretical framework the approach of the political economy of the media and communication and quantitative methods. One part of the thesis is the theoretical research, which is done by analyzing and systematically presenting books and articles that relate to the thesis’s topic. In the second part of the work, the theoretical framework is applied to the Lithuanian television market. In addition, an empirical study is conducted in order to apply the theoretical discussion and answer the main research question. The main results of the study suggest that the public service broadcaster of Lithuania managed to maintain its programmes’ diversity. However, the amount of entertainment, imported production and advertising has increased. Therefore, a certain concern about growing commercialization is reasonable. These changes correspond to the tendencies in the European television industry. However, Lithuanian viewers seem to prefer the more heavily commercialized programmes since the leader of the market is a commercial television station, whose market share is almost twice bigger than LTV’s. Thus, LTV is facing a dilemma between preserving quality and diversity and commercializing its programmes in order to increase its audience share (dilemma between quality and audience share).

This paper identifies subjects which are relevant for Swedish suppliers of tourism services beforeapproaching foreign markets. Most suppliers are micro, small or medium sized companies anduse intermediaries, such as tour operators, for internationalization. The research considers theopinion of British and German tour operators, which require some criteria beforehand in orderto simplify both the initialization and the development of cooperation. Destination marketingorganizations (DMOs) are hereby the go-betweens since they not only represent small-scalesuppliers on international markets, but also initiate first encounters between suppliers and touroperators. Suppliers need to provide DMOs with accurate information in order to ensure thebest possible representation. After initializing collaboration, business relationships are sought todevelop in order to facilitate long-term cooperation. Proper preparation forms therefore the basefor strengthening the competitiveness of Swedish tourism prior approaching internationalmarkets. The enhancement of distributing Swedish tourism services on foreign markets appearedto be a profitable way to enable further growth, which is strongly limited on the domestic market.Increasing the export share therefore secures and further facilitates tourism’s valuablecontributions to the Swedish economy.