Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2026

DOI

10.1057/s41267-026-00857-8

Publication Title

Journal of International Business Studies

Volume

Advance online publication

Pages

12 pp.

Abstract

Zahra et al. (2024) argue that prior research has insufficient understanding of the entrepreneurial nature of internationalization. To address this, they integrate theories from management and international business to develop a firm-level typology that incorporates (1) the degree of radicalness of the firm’s entrepreneurial behavior and (2) the firm’s level of foreign market commitment. We advance these efforts by proposing that, to understand what makes an internationalizing firm entrepreneurial, researchers will also benefit from direct insights from entrepreneurship research. We retain Zahra et al.’s (2024) behavioral focus in our arguments but shift attention to the individuals that guide the firm’s pursuit of international opportunity, regardless of whether the firm is a new venture or an MNE. We also argue that, when compared to typologies, a process-based perspective is better suited to both differentiating firms and to understanding and explaining the dynamic nature of entrepreneurial internationalization behavior and outcomes.

Rights

© The Authors 2026

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. 

Data Availability

Article states: "We did not analyze or generate any datasets, because our work proceeds within a theoretical approach."

Original Publication Citation

Clark, D. R., Pidduck, R. J., & Coviello, N. E. (2026). What makes an internationalizing firm entrepreneurial? Journal of International Business Studies. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41267-026-00857-8

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