Achieving high international market performance via simple vs complex configuration of international managerial network ties: A set theoretic approach across two countries

ABSTRACT

This study investigates the configuration of entrepreneurial capabilities, international managerial network ties and its performance effect among international ventures located in institutionally different contexts (Austria and Hungary). The study introduces and defines the concept of simple vs complex configuration of international managerial network ties and uses a set theoretic approach to assess the configuration of the above factors. The results of the fuzzy set analysis demonstrate that international ventures can fully capitalize on their entrepreneurial capabilities when they rely on a complex configuration of international managerial network ties. The findings also show that international ventures seek a balance between institutionally different contexts which may result in behaviors that are normally unacceptable by home country-related cultural and institutional norms. Finally, the results reveal that integrating exploration and exploitation strategies requires a complex configuration of international managerial network ties, which in turn leads to high IMP.

KEYWORDS:

• International network ties
• international customer orientation
• international entrepreneurial orientation
• international market performance
• fuzzy set methods
• asymmetric modeling

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article is available online at https://doi.org/10.1080/00472778.2022.2046014.

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

¹ The marker variable comprised the following items. (1) Our company has engaged in charitable and social philanthropic activity extensively. (2) Our company has invested in charitable and social philanthropic activity a great deal. (3) Charitable and social philanthropic activity was a major part of our business activity. (4) Our company has been actively implementing charitable and social philanthropic activities.

² This behavior can be explained partly by the institutional context of the countries where ventures export their products to. Notably, Austrian ventures' export goes to Eastern Europe (10.0%), mainland China (2%), other Asian countries (2.2%), South and Central America (1.7%), the Middle East (1.7%), and Africa (1.7%) (in total 19.1% to developing economies; this equals 17.1% for Hungarian ventures) which suffer from market imperfections and institutional constraints (for further details refer to Appendix 3).

Additional information

Funding

This work was funded by the TÁMOP research fund [grant number 4.2.1C-14/1/KONV-2015-0011-000006 23/2015]; a research program of the Hungarian government. Intellectual property for the measuring instrument and the scales on the instrument resides with the E21 project team members: Dr John Cadogan, Dr João Oliveira, Dr Vicky Story, Dr Ian Hodgkinson (Loughborough University, UK); Dr Lenia Tsougkou (University of Strathclyde, Scotland); Dr Nathanial Boso (KNUST School of Business, Ghana).