Risk and Uncertainty in Internationalisation and International Entrepreneurship Studies

In this article we review how risk and uncertainty in the international expansion of the firm are treated in the internationalisation and international entrepreneurship literatures, including emerging research in both fields. We conclude that there is need for a more nuanced treatment of risk and of uncertainty in the international expansion of firms in their interactions with each other. We show that, despite the prevailing perspective in the literature, more uncertainties might be revealed and risk might increase with international experience, thereby inhibiting internationalisation, and in some cases inducing de-internationalisation. We introduce the dynamic concepts of uncertainty acclimatisation and risk accommodation as a better recognition of how uncertainty and risk might alter over time. Coevolution theory is drawn upon to conceptualise how the interaction and dynamics of perceptions of uncertainty and assessments of risk during the internationalisation process might be developed theoretically.