Internationalising from the European periphery: triggers, processes, and trajectories

With accession to the EU, internationalisation is increasingly relevant to the three Baltic states, thus, this paper explores the triggers, processes, and trajectories of internationalisation behaviour, and the relevance and explanatory power of extant theory. Case study evidence has pointed to the internationalisation-triggering effects of firm-specific and managerially-embedded knowledge assets, relational/network and other resources, and foreign investments. Small domestic markets and EU accession were identified as having had push and pull effects on behaviour, with the latter shifting Baltic firms' expansion away from former Soviet bloc countries toward Western European markets. The findings reinforce the importance of the resource-based approach to explaining internationalisation, and highlight its ability to accommodate the partial perspectives offered by alternative models. Managerial issues and future research questions raised by the findings are also discussed.