#4932. Into the unknown: The extent and boldness of firms international footprint

July 2026publication date
Proposal available till 02-06-2025
4 total number of authors per manuscript0 $

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Journal’s subject area:
Strategy and Management;
Business and International Management;
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Abstract:
Firms make footprints as they internationalize. Going beyond simple measures of firms internationalization, we conceptualize and measure the extent of a firms international footprint as the number of location-mode combinations it is active in, whereas the boldness of the footprint shows how widespread (across modes and locations) firms international activities are, compared to other firms with similar extent. Consistent with a microfoundations lens on global strategy, we find that boldness correlates with managerial risk-taking attributes, while the extent of internationalization strongly correlates with capabilities conducive to managing more complex operations. Traditional ways of measuring firms international footprints do not describe well what they do globally. We develop a more nuanced and sharper view of firms international footprints and a new way of thinking about the roles of complexity and risk-taking in internationalization; what we call the extent and the boldness of a footprint, respectively. The new measures are potentially particularly useful for analyzing the relationship between internationalization and performance, which is at the core of what strategy research may offer to managers and business decision-makers.
Keywords:
complexity; foreign operation modes; internationalization; microfoundations; risk-taking

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