Internationalization as Patterns of Change Over Time: A Configurational Analysis

The purpose of this article is to show that internationalization can be studied and described as different dynamic patterns in relation to the international evolution of firms by following a process approach. The article adopts a process approach jointly with a configuration-oriented perspective, to evaluate the strategy as a group of decisions instead of isolated and unrelated variables. Besides, a dynamic approach is incorporated in this study. For achieving the objective, we have studied the changes occurring in some of the variables involved in the internationalization process along a 4-year period (2002–2006). By means of a cluster analysis of the dynamic variables, seven different groups were identified and their external validity studied. The results obtained allow us to pose that the internationalization process cannot be generalized. A complex index and the consideration of evolution over time is a must. Besides, these patterns have been associated to different international status or profiles and to demographic variables, and show the existence of certain relationships between the internationalization status at a certain moment (static perspective) and its latter evolution (dynamic perspective). One of the key implications is the importance of understanding the internationalization process as a complex and interrelated decision. The fingerprints in such process should not be considered as isolated facts but as a part of a greater position. Despite the use of a similar methodology in other studies, this article is original in the introduction of the time (speed) approach to the configurational analysis of the internationalization process.