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The purpose of this study is to investigate and describe the internationalization process of SMEs which choose strategic alliances as entry mode. Understanding the internationalization of small firms is important to enhance knowledge of how they develop their business activities in international markets. Moreover, a strategic alliance perspective gives a critical insight of firms’ strategy to challenge in global competition. The qualitative approach is chosen to carry out the research question and achieve the purpose of this study. A case study is therefore used to generate advanced knowledge and understanding. Anoto group AB, a small Swedish company is picked as a sample due to the criteria fitting. I collected both secondary and primary data through various sources. The findings reveal that internal factors and external factors strongly influence the small company’s strategy. The advantage and core values of using strategic alliances motivate the small firm to go abroad. Due to the limited resources and knowledge, the small firm could not go globally alone. Using a strategic alliance can enable the firm to gain resources, gain market power and leverage competencies. Therefore, the small company can accomplish the goal in short time and be successful in international markets through managing alliances.

Internationalization of higher education has become a priority for many universities. It provides them with educational models that can respond efficiently to current issues and challenges of globalization. International academic collaboration plays an important role in the creation of such models and prepares educational systems to act effectively in foreign environments. This study explores the Canadian-Ukrainian curriculum development partnership through the specifics of institutional culture, power and joint project management. Canadian and Ukrainian educators participated in semi-structured, open–ended interviews to reveal processes associated with their joint venture. The findings indicate that the project was largely influenced by Canadian and Ukrainian university conceptualization of internationalization and involved multiple cultural and professional perceptions of the partnership context and developments. Diversity of expectations, commitment, acceptance of differences practiced in this collaboration revealed the importance of academic dialogue among developed and developing countries and suggested possible standards for future international curriculum development joint ventures.

Working in a university setting, I have learned a great deal from the diverse experiences and knowledge that students bring. I have often wondered whether students learn as much from each other. In this study, I explore the interactions between domestic and international university students as an “internationalization at-home” (IaH) strategy that has the potential to impact most students on a given campus, as opposed to “mobility” focused strategies (where students travel abroad to study) that benefit only a minority of the student population. Guided by student involvement theories and using a qualitative, grounded theory approach to explore the experiences of domestic students at a Canadian university, I conducted six focus group discussions followed by 12 individual, in-depth interviews with two members from each focus group at the three University of Toronto campuses. The research findings revealed that the university embodies substantial structural cultural diversity, making the campus environment a fertile ground for cross-cultural interactions among students. As a result of studying in a richly diverse environment, the respondents were aware of the cultural complexities of campus life and demonstrated a global mindset, which is a prerequisite for internationalization. The study established that domestic students’ redefined the identity of international students to include domestic students with diverse international experience. Interactions between domestic iii and international students have positive, negative and neutral impacts with positive impacts outweighing the others. Respondents reported that they had gained more intercultural skills and knowledge than family and friends since joining the university because there are more opportunities for interaction at various learning sites inside than outside the university. However they pointed to the need for more university facilitated opportunities. The findings point to the need for the university to amplify its capacity to measure diversity and support cross-cultural interactions through policy driven, planned and sustained programmatic interventions. Findings justify the need to use domestic students with diverse international experiences as a resource to internationalize the campus as well as to establish multicultural policies and practices inline with increasing diversity on campus. Recommendations focus on the majority of the students who remain at-home.

Internationalization of higher education has become a priority for many universities. It provides them with educational models that can respond efficiently to current issues and challenges of globalization. International academic collaboration plays an important role in the creation of such models and prepares educational systems to act effectively in foreign environments. This study explores the Canadian-Ukrainian curriculum development partnership through the specifics of institutional culture, power and joint project management. Canadian and Ukrainian educators participated in semi-structured, open–ended interviews to reveal processes associated with their joint venture. The findings indicate that the project was largely influenced by Canadian and Ukrainian university conceptualization of internationalization and involved multiple cultural and professional perceptions of the partnership context and developments. Diversity of expectations, commitment, acceptance of differences practiced in this collaboration revealed the importance of academic dialogue among developed and developing countries and suggested possible standards for future international curriculum development joint ventures.

Working in a university setting, I have learned a great deal from the diverse experiences and knowledge that students bring. I have often wondered whether students learn as much from each other. In this study, I explore the interactions between domestic and international university students as an “internationalization at-home” (IaH) strategy that has the potential to impact most students on a given campus, as opposed to “mobility” focused strategies (where students travel abroad to study) that benefit only a minority of the student population. Guided by student involvement theories and using a qualitative, grounded theory approach to explore the experiences of domestic students at a Canadian university, I conducted six focus group discussions followed by 12 individual, in-depth interviews with two members from each focus group at the three University of Toronto campuses. The research findings revealed that the university embodies substantial structural cultural diversity, making the campus environment a fertile ground for cross-cultural interactions among students. As a result of studying in a richly diverse environment, the respondents were aware of the cultural complexities of campus life and demonstrated a global mindset, which is a prerequisite for internationalization. The study established that domestic students’ redefined the identity of international students to include domestic students with diverse international experience. Interactions between domestic iii and international students have positive, negative and neutral impacts with positive impacts outweighing the others. Respondents reported that they had gained more intercultural skills and knowledge than family and friends since joining the university because there are more opportunities for interaction at various learning sites inside than outside the university. However they pointed to the need for more university facilitated opportunities. The findings point to the need for the university to amplify its capacity to measure diversity and support cross-cultural interactions through policy driven, planned and sustained programmatic interventions. Findings justify the need to use domestic students with diverse international experiences as a resource to internationalize the campus as well as to establish multicultural policies and practices inline with increasing diversity on campus. Recommendations focus on the majority of the students who remain at-home.

Moderator variables are typically introduced when there is an unexpectedly weak or inconsistent relationship between a predictor and a criterion variable (Baron and Kenny, 1986). Holak, Parry and Song (1991) and Zhang, Li, Hitt, and Cui (2007) found an inconsistent relationship between R&D spending (a measure of innovation) and firm performance and so concluded that this relationship should be studied under different contextual factors. One such factor is the Degree of Internationalization (DOI) of a firm. Therefore, this paper evaluates the innovation-performance link in the presence of a moderator - the Degree of Internationalization (DOI). It proposes that DOI moderates the innovation-performance relationship. In addition, this research tests the hypothesis that DOI can affect either the form or the strength of the innovation-performance relationship. Only one previous study has evaluated the moderating effect of DOI on innovation-performance relationship, but this paper did not investigate the influence on the form of the relationship. The findings of this study are based on time series cross-sectional data of 102 large U.S. manufacturing firms from seven different industries. Data for each firm was obtained for eight years (2000-2007) from the Compustat database. Hypotheses were tested using the TSCSREG procedure with Fuller-Battese method implemented in SAS. The identification and the differentiation of the moderation effect into form and strength were carried out by using the typology from the work of Sharma, Durand and Gur-Arie (1981). The results show that DOI moderates the innovation-performance relationship positively and significantly. In addition, DOI affects the form (direct) and is a quasi moderator of the innovation-performance relationship. In terms of theory, there are two implications. First, that DOI is an important contingency factor when examining the innovation-performance relationship. Predicting the innovation-performance relationship without including DOI may lead to misleading conclusions. Second, when evaluating the relationship between R&D and firm performance, identifying whether DOI moderates the form or the strength of the relationship is needed in order to use a proper analytical technique. In terms of practice, the results sensitize managers to the need to focus not only on innovation activities, but also on their internationalization in order to appropriate the full benefits of their innovations.

Research in international business and strategy emphasizes the important role knowledge plays in foreign expansion, and multiple research perspectives have viewed a firm‘s knowledge as the key driver of competitive advantage. Thus, in today‘s business environment, the ability to learn and source knowledge across boundaries is important to both firm performance and strategic change. My dissertation examines the ―knowledge-seeking‖ motive for international expansion, which suggests that firms expand abroad to gain new technical capabilities and knowledge from diverse institutions, which allow firms to change in dynamic markets. I extend organizational learning, the resource-based view, and internationalization theory to examine empirically how internationalization influences strategic changes by affecting exploratory search. This research also challenges the standard assumptions about the positive benefits of exploration on change, suggesting that a curvilinear relationship exists. Further, I argue that innovation capabilities enhance the relationship between strategic change and firm performance. These questions are examined using longitudinal data on pharmaceutical firms. The findings from this analysis reveal that internationalization has a curvilinear relationship with exploratory search. In addition, speed of internationalization, rhythm of internationalization, and international experience moderate the relationship between internationalization and exploratory search. Exploratory search was found to have an inverted U-shaped relationship with strategic change, suggesting the high exploratory search may negatively affect the firm. The analysis also revealed innovation capabilities negatively moderated the relationship between strategic change and firm performance (ROA). This study provides important contributions to the fields of strategic management, international business, and organizational learning.

Under the context of globalization, the development of higher education is similar to that of international business in that the leading trends are economic development, expansion of business, and market orientation. These trends will result in countries with strong competitive advantages, and at the other hand, will also result in countries who must deal with facing these strong and dominant powers. Higher education systems under global competitiveness mostly follow the model and features that have been set according to the advantages of these Western developed countries. In addition to English being the predominant language, other indicators such as scientific research output, qualitative and quantitative academic indicators, or even the numbers of Nobel laureates produced, are all favorable to the international level of Western countries. Taiwan¡¦s higher education system has been endeavoring to ¡§internationalize¡¨ its university and college campuses, and has been doing so as an important indicator of the standard of the institution. Yet are Taiwan¡¦s higher education internationalization methodologies directly following the Western models, and if so, what are some limitations and conflicts that might arise. This paper aims to discuss whether these efforts by Taiwan¡¦s higher education institutions will be feasible in trying to produce a so-called internationalized campus and compatible competitiveness.

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