<p><p>Internationalization research has for a long time been dominated by a strong focus on how large firms from large and developed economies expand into other developed countries. Until recently, little attention has been devoted towards understanding that part of the internationalization process in which small and medium sized firms from small and open economies, attempt to establish themselves in undeveloped countries. This research gap is the point of departure for this thesis.</p><p> </p><p>By using a recently published conceptual framework by Laanti et al. (2009) the authors study how five groups of factors have shaped the internationalization process of a small Swedish electricity company in the midst of starting up business in Congo Kinshasa. In this in-depth single-case study, data was collected through semi-structured interviews with representatives of PPC Engineering AB. The study finds that the importance of different factors vary throughout the process, but in this case, when seen as a whole, <em>host country factors</em> and <em>company specific factors </em>play the most prominent roles. Furthermore, Laanti et al.’s (2009) conceptual framework is redesigned to explain the dynamic process of internationalization. However, more research is needed to determine the extent to which this framework can be generalized.</p></p>

Internationalization research has for a long time been dominated by a strong focus on how large firms from large and developed economies expand into other developed countries. Until recently, little attention has been devoted towards understanding that part of the internationalization process in which small and medium sized firms from small and open economies, attempt to establish themselves in undeveloped countries. This research gap is the point of departure for this thesis.   By using a recently published conceptual framework by Laanti et al. (2009) the authors study how five groups of factors have shaped the internationalization process of a small Swedish electricity company in the midst of starting up business in Congo Kinshasa. In this in-depth single-case study, data was collected through semi-structured interviews with representatives of PPC Engineering AB. The study finds that the importance of different factors vary throughout the process, but in this case, when seen as a whole, host country factors and company specific factors play the most prominent roles. Furthermore, Laanti et al.’s (2009) conceptual framework is redesigned to explain the dynamic process of internationalization. However, more research is needed to determine the extent to which this framework can be generalized.