Some critical notes on learning in the Uppsala internationalization process model

The lack of knowledge of foreign markets is critical for most theories about internationalization. In behavioural models dealing with the internationalization process, such as the Uppsala Model, knowledge and learning have a profound impact on how the firm is seen to approach foreign markets. In the light of recent work on learning in organisations, this paper addresses some issues related to how the process of learning is conceptualised in the Uppsala Model. It is argued that a more narrow interpretation of learning is applied by the model builders than the literature allows for, which limits the ability of the model to explain certain forms of internationalization behaviour. It is also claimed that perceiving a firm to be a loosely coupled organisation causes some problems in relation to the model’s possibility to predict internationalization behaviour. The consequences of the strong emphasis on individuals as the holders of market-specific knowledge is also discussed. The paper concludes with some remarks on the emergence of interesting research issues about internationalization behaviour if a broader concept of organisational learning is applied.