Internationalization strategies revisited: Main models and approaches

Abstract

The growing trend for globalisation changes the way companies organise themselves and their way of acting, and impels them to consider the development of their activities in the international trade. This paper revises the main contributions regarding the debate on the internationalisation of companies. Considering that internationalisation is part of the company’s growth strategy, existing literature on companies’ internationalisation approaches and models are reviewed in order to develop a theoretical framework. With this study, the authors provide a tool that allows the identification of the different models and approaches to internationalisation. The results indicate that companies have eight models available for their internationalisation process. Finally, based on a broad literature review, this paper presents a very useful research systematisation for future research studies.