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International Business, Entrepreneurship.

This case has been used previously in an international business strategy module on MA courses at Kozminski University, Poland.

The case details Audioteka’s (a Polish audiobook company) history between 2007 and 2013, from the perspective of Marcin, one of the co-founders. The company was founded in 2008 by Marcin Beme and Blazej Kukla and internationalized soon after. Marcin was an experienced entrepreneur, while Blazej was a sound engineer. Both sought to combine their complementary skills and experience to start a business aimed at selling audio recordings. The case is divided into Parts (A) and (B) and is designed to teach international entrepreneurship, lying at the intersection of international business and entrepreneurship. Part (A) is set in 2011 and tracks the company’s evolution from the conception of an idea to establishing a start-up and developing a product. Part (B) is set in 2013 and covers early foreign expansion between 2011 and 2013. The case is focused on the challenges that Marcin faces when developing Audioteka and expanding abroad. It allows students to understand the decision-making logic of an international new venture (INV), choices made and execution while internationalizing. Students will be able to explore how a company adapts its product; how it enters foreign markets; how it overcomes the liabilities of foreignness, smallness, newness and outsidership through establishing partnerships with big companies (telecoms, automakers); and how it appreciates the risks involved in this process.

This case is the basis for a class discussion rather than for illustrating either effective or ineffective handling of a managerial situation. From this case, MA students will learn how an entrepreneurial firm makes strategic decisions and becomes international. The first learning outcome is to evaluate the concepts of liability of origin, foreignness, outsidership, smallness and newness, and to explore ways of overcoming them. Second, the expected learning outcome is to assess differences between the Uppsala model of internationalization and born-global/INV phenomenon. Third, students, by examining particular foreign market-entry modes, are expected to evaluate their advantages and disadvantages. Finally, students are expected to understand the concept of “effectuation” and apply it to the decision-making process in early internationalization.

CSS 5: International Business.

We wanted to find out how infant multinationals originating from Poland enact opportunities in Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries.

We conducted a comparative case study of four Polish firms operating in SSA.

We found that when entering SSA, studied firms employed effectual decision-making logic. Thus, their internationalization was means-driven, serendipitous, partnership-oriented, based on the “affordable loss” principle and focused on shaping opportunities in SSA, rather than predicting, analyzing and planning any firm-specific assets or capabilities.

We illuminated the nature of the means employed in effectual internationalization and the role of partners (“effectual stakeholders”) in this process. Thus, we contribute to a deeper understanding of how infant multinationals navigate extreme uncertainty in the emerging SSA markets.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the emotional dynamics of the corporate acceleration process, using the systems psychodynamics perspective.

The study applies inductive multiple case study of embedded 10 cases of corporate acceleration, covering both incumbent and startup perspectives, occurring in the context of a corporate accelerator.

We find that (1) the process of corporate acceleration involves three phases, each of them is dominated by a different emotional state (hope, anxiety and acceptance), triggering different behavioral responses; (2) as a means to deal with negative emotions, entrepreneurs and corporate acceleration program's team members develop different mechanisms of dealing with contradictories in subsequent acceleration phases (defense and copying mechanisms), which are reflected in their behaviors. Coping mechanisms with goal reformulation (i.e. refocus from the officially declared “open innovation” goals toward mainly symbolic ones) is an effective strategy to manage negative emotions in third phase of the acceleration.

Our sample is limited to two relatively similar accelerators established by telecom companies, and therefore, our theoretical and practical conclusions cannot be generalized.

We supplement the studies of corporate accelerators that imply how to design them better and improve decision-making rules with recommendation that in order to improve their effectiveness in terms of learning and innovations, their managers need not only to learn how to manage structural and procedural differences but also how to overcome social defenses triggered by corporate–startups cooperation.

By documenting a multidimensional impact of acceleration process, and especially shedding light on psychodynamic aspects behind such liaisons, this paper contributes to richer understanding of corporate–startup relationships, typically examined through a rationalistic lens of strategy literature. The study contributes to interorganizational research and open innovation literature, by showing that corporate acceleration process is marked by phases based on the type of emotions intertwined with the nature and dynamism of its life cycle. It indicates how these emotions are managed depending on their type.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the social-cognitive antecedents of an entrepreneur’s internationalization intent and a firm’s behavior. Building on the insights of social-cognitive psychology, the author develops a conceptual model linking an entrepreneur’s positive orientation, self-efficacy beliefs, internationalization intent and actual behavior of the firm.

The author tests this model with a sample of 310 Polish firms (including 241 domestic and 69 international new ventures), drawing on data collected first in 2006 and then in 2007.

The author finds that self-efficacy mediates between positive orientation and internationalization intent, and that an entrepreneur’s internationalization intent predicts a firm’s behavior (i.e. foreign market entry). Moreover, firm age moderates the relationship between an entrepreneur’s positive orientation and internationalization propensity among new ventures.

Overall, the findings demonstrate that social-cognitive theory is useful in predicting new venture internationalization.

Based on the findings, the author recommends that managerial education in international management combines the development of “formal” skills and cross-cultural competencies with experiential and vicarious learning.

The study combines insights from psychology and international business, thus responding to numerous calls for a more interdisciplinary and cognition-oriented focus on the international behavior of firms.

The purpose of this paper is to shed light on the formal and informal governance mechanisms of state-owned enterprises operating in a post-transitional economy of Poland.

The study combines legal analysis of Polish regulations in force, review of literature on the Poland’s institutional legacy, and a statistical analysis, based on a data set of 204 management board members, 180 external supervisory board members, and 114 state officials supervising Polish SOEs in 2011.

Legally designed relationships among the management board, supervisory board, and the state treasury, represented by the minister and ministry officials, constitute the key formal governance mechanisms in Polish SOEs. They are, however, complemented by relationships between SOEs and their stakeholders and distorted by other informal phenomena, including informal noninstitutional behavior, mechanisms grounded in cognitive and normative institutions, and perception of the relationship structure by the actors themselves. As a result, key corporate governance actors differ in their perception of governance influences upon SOEs.

This study contributes to policymaking by helping authorities gain a better understanding of the governance challenges in SOEs.

This paper is one of the first and few empirical studies investigating the issue of formal and informal governance mechanisms in SOEs in post-transitional economies of CEE.

The case study presented here discusses the story of Marek, who left his job in a corporation in Poland and set up his dream hotel business in Zanzibar. The first part of his story offers an excellent basis for discussing the role of distance in international business and learning the CAGE model. In the second part, the entrepreneur had to face up to the global pandemic, and decide whether to give up on his dreams or cope with the difficulties. Students working with this case thus have an opportunity to put themselves in the shoes of a transnational entrepreneur embedded in two countries, and to learn how a person’s perspective on distance might change in times of crisis.

Crises are often studied in international business (IB) research as the external “context” for business strategies, but firms can also be active participants in the unfolding of crises. The study of crises in IB could benefit greatly from studying the role of multinational enterprises (MNEs) as active participants, rather than as mere passive actors, responding to exogenous events. History shows that IB crises typically unfold partially as exogenous processes, and partly as the result of MNE strategies. A multilevel and longitudinal approach to studying crises in IB is clearly necessary. This chapter considers the extent to which smaller events that preceded the present crisis – since 1989 – point to systemic problems in global governance. It also defines five overlapping lenses through which future IB studies can further create relevant insights on how to deal with crises: historic, macro, meso, micro and exogenous. The chapter finally serves as an introduction to the whole Progress in International Business Research volume by indicating the relevance of all parts and chapters that follow.