The role of governments in the internationalization of the firm had early recognition in prominent seminal studies in international business, such as Hymer’s thesis or the Uppsala Model, though the interaction between multinationals and governments has attracted scarce attention. As such, the main stream of economics and management studies have focused on internationalization essentially as an issue of the firm, wherein the multinationals’ interaction with the environment is limited to a business-industrial scope of suppliers, clients, and competitors. In a different direction, this thesis includes the political setting and studies the beneficial side of governments in the internationalization process of the firm. With this purpose, the present dissertation proposes a conceptual framework based on Johanson and Vahlne’s (1977) internationalization process model, complemented with Williamson’s (1975) Transaction Costs Economics, and encompassed by conceptual insights from institutional studies related to international business. Specifically, the role of governments in the internationalization process is examined through the variances of the relation between knowledge and commitment at the micro, meso, and macro level. The structure of the thesis reflects the multilevel approach, integrating one conceptual and three empirical papers, each of which dealing with a particular level of analysis. Through the aggregation of each paper’s intrinsic contribution, the dissertation’s summary offers a wide view on the internationalization phenomena, adding the political elements to the industrial-business elements of the environment. Overall, internationalization is conceptualized as a process of interaction with the business environment, whereas the public nature of political elements induces the compromise of combining activities between firms and governments. Evidence gives the ground to conclude that internationalization is not a game played just between firms, or, even, between firms and markets, but also with and within governments.

The mobile payments industry has in recent years experienced large growth and rapid changes. Several different actors are trying to capture the market, to get enough users of their system to reach critical mass. This study investigates how a small Swedish mobile payments company have utilized its business network in their strive to reach critical mass, both in their domestic market and internationally.  The study intends to describe how the company has developed its network and which stages of the network development that have been the most important.  We utilize the ARA-model to analyze the business network and the Uppsala Model and born global theory to define how the company has internationalized.  Our main results indicate that our case company has the mindset of a born global but the particulars of the industry have forced it to internationalize following the Uppsala Model. The development of the business network have to a large part been dependent of the initial activities since this builds the credibility needed to work with large actors.  Moreover the business network is found to not only help the company, but to be essential for their plans on reaching critical mass.

In the last decades it has been argued whether psychic distances have lost their importance on the world markets. The access to information through the internet may have reduced them and made them more understandable, but it has also increased the overall world trades leading to more diversity and therefore to more different market segments that have to be considered. This contrary statements are investigated in this master thesis and further evaluates the current importance of psychic distances in relation to the perception of the managers towards it. Therefore it gives an insight into how psychic distances affect the management of a web- based companies called Compare AG. The progress of this work mirrors this discussion along with the development process of the company. It will show how it went from a unexperienced firm, which merely copied their concept to another market expecting it to work, to a company that adapts to the foreign markets and has specialists for every country to cope with any kind of market changes illustrating both opinions on how important psychic distances still are today especially for internet-operating companies.

The main goal of the diploma thesis is to determine the possibility of application of selected internationalization models in the conditions of Czech SMEs, to define limits of these models and eventually to draw up their modification. To meet that objective it was necessary to collect primary data from the Czech SMEs, which were acquired through the realisation of a questionnaire survey. Based on the results obtained by evaluating the primary data there are in the thesis defined differences between internationalization process of Czech SMEs in comparison with stage models of internationalization, namely with Uppsala model and models based on theory of innovations. At the end of the diploma thesis there are summarised the typical characteristics of the process of internationalization of Czech SMEs.

Nowadays, the improvement of factors, such as transportation, communication, and technological advancement, is allowing SMEs to move towards international markets faster than before. Combining those factors with knowledge gained inside firms, software SMEs are able to follow the trend of internationalizing their activities. Depending only on one side of knowledge to expand abroad, will probably inhibit SMEs to survive in the foreign atmosphere. Moreover, the insufficiency of market 5  knowledge and the lack of international experience prevent SMEs to meet the basic requirements to establish relationships outside the home country. The dependence only on the domination of internal knowledge and the uniqueness of the product, may provoke software firms for an excessive ambition to internationalize - which can lead to tangling the way to establish a network abroad.

Technical advances have made it possible for small enterprises to go international already at inception since the internet has made the internationalization process cost-effective. With the existence of the offline and online arena, the companies have to consider how they allocate their resources between these fields; not allocating resources to offline methods can save money, but could reduce adaptation to the new market which can lead to reduced firm performance. However, overspending on offline methods can be costly and could jeopardize the financial stability of the company. Although this is noted by previous research, little is still known about how companies balance the resources between online and offline presence. Especially when it comes to e-commerce companies and how the benefits of online and offline presence are balanced by this type of firms in their expansion into foreign markets. This is also what is meant to be explored in this paper. The data has been collected through semi-structured interviews with seven Swedish e-commerce companies that have internationalized their operations in an active way. The results show that online and offline benefits can be divided into four categories, namely local knowledge, local connection, promotion and services. These categories could in turn bring benefits to the company that are either substitutable, non-substitutable or complementary. The findings indicate that firms could balance their resources in online and offline presence in order to gain benefits that cannot be found in the counterparts of each presence. This could be of interest for entrepreneurs and managers that plan to engage in internationalization within e-commerce.

In the recent couple of years, African countries have conducted a free tradeagreement which will affect the whole African continent. Providing the largestfree trade agreement in history so far in terms of participating countries.AfCFTA provides new conditions and enhancement, aiming for Africa tobecome one single market and boosting intra-African trade. Countries such asKenya, has during recent years made changes and reforms which has enhancedits business environment for companies operating there. In addition, this thesisaims to investigate how the new free trade agreement is affecting KenyanSMEs in the manufacturing sector today, and how it will affect them in thefuture when the free trade agreement is fully implemented. To receive a deeperunderstanding about the subject, a qualitative method and an abductiveapproach have been conducted. Moreover, the theoretical framework derivesfrom internationalization theories commonly used and which benefits from theterms that the free trade agreement holds. The conceptual framework assumesthat international marketers experience different market prerequisites, thus theview of the internationalization process differs from one market to another.Therefore, our empirical findings derive from a multi-case study, whichinvestigate Kenyan manufacturing SMEs possibilities and difficulties tointernationalize on the African continent. The analysis presents the theoreticalframework and the empirical findings in the contrast and relation to each other.Finally, the conclusion chapter provides insights in opportunities anddifficulties still remaining for the AfCFTA to be fully implemented and forKenyan manufacturing SMEs to fully utilize the agreement. Also, limitationsand suggestions for future research is conducted in the chapter. The result ofthis research stipulates that there are still difficulties for Kenyanmanufacturing SMEs to utilize the agreement and that the agreement requirestime to provide a fully functional single market for Africa.

Background: Following the ongoing globalisation, family businesses have been inclined to grow their businesses outside of their home markets. While academic attention has been devoted to family business internationalisation, it has mainly taken a family-focused perspective. Existing international business theories emphasise foreign market networks as facilitators for internationalisation, leaving home market networks under-researched. Purpose: This paper explores family business internationalisation by adopting an international business lens. The revised Uppsala model is used as the main frame of reference to understand how network relationships in the home market facilitate family business internationalisation. Method: The study is based on a qualitative design with an exploratory purpose and a grounded theory methodology, following a realist ontology and constructionist epistemology. Six in-depth semi-structured interviews with four family businesses were conducted. The use of grounded analysis allowed us to find patterns and explanations to ultimately develop a theory grounded in our findings. Conclusion: The benefits resulting from home market network relationships facilitate family business internationalisation. Predominantly, the acquisition of knowledge is a necessary step to gain resources family businesses are missing to internationalise. The conceptualisation of our theoretical model with the revised Uppsala model suggests an elaboration of the latter to include network resources and capabilities.

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La presente investigación tiene el propósito de analizar los factores que influyen en las exportaciones de uva fresca de las Pymes en la Región Ica, como una alternativa que permita ayudar a las Pymes no exportadoras a buscar estos factores tanto internos como externos y que tienen variables que se relacionan y pueden ser fundamentales al momento de la internacionalización de una Pyme y así incrementar los volúmenes de exportación. La importancia de esta investigación radica en contribuir a que las Pymes puedan aumentar sus exportaciones e ingresos anuales, además, se tiene como finalidad de poder demostrar que existe potencial en los cuatro factores expuestos y que se desarrollan para tener un mayor alcance de cómo influyen en la exportación de las Pymes. Para el desarrollo de la investigación se realizó una encuesta con escala de Likert a una muestra de 50 Pymes exportadoras ubicadas en la Región Ica con la finalidad de tener mayor conocimiento y poder analizar los resultados mediante el método cuantitativo del coeficiente de Spearman. / This research is intended to analyze the factors influencing the exports of fresh grapes from SMEs (Small and Medium Business) in the Ica Region, as an alternative to help non-exporting SMEs to look for these internal and external factors and that have variables that are related and can be fundamental at the moment of the internationalization of a SME and thus increase the volumes of the export. The main aspects of this research lies in helping SMEs increase their exports and annual income. In addition, it objectives to demonstrate that there is potential in the four factors that are available to have a greater scope. The export of SMEs. The importance of this research lies in helping SMEs increase their exports and annual income, in addition, it aims to demonstrate that there is potential in the four factors that are available to have a greater scope in the export of SMEs. For the development of the research, a survey with a Likert scale was conducted to a sample of 50 exporting SMEs located in the Ica Region in order to have a greater knowledge and to analyze the results by means of the quantitative Spearman coefficient. / Tesis