Strategic Orientations of Internationalizing Firms: A Comparative Analysis of Firms Operating in Technology Intensive and Common Goods Industries

The strategic orientations of global integration and local responsiveness (the I-R framework) continue to dominate analyses of internationalization strategies and identify the basic strategy typologies of multinational enterprise. Much effort has been devoted to verify the generic strategies established within the original I-R framework but few studies have investigated their implied performance effects. In conformity with the foundations of the I-R framework we characterize the strategic orientations by their implied corporate decision structures and strategy processes and analyze their performance associations in two distinct industrial environments. The evidence from this analysis contradicts predictions in the conventional I-R framework. We explain this conundrum from a resource-based perspective as firms operating in technology intensive environments outperform when they have access to diverse multinational resources whereas firms in common goods businesses gain economies from global product standards.