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Abstract
Decisions pertaining to the coordination and control of subsidiaries made by emerging international construction firms are crucial for the success of their internationalization process. The case study approach, based on four emerging international construction firms with headquarters in Portugal, is used to analyse the coordination and control processes adopted by these construction firms at an early internationalization stage. The proposition of the study was that these types of firms learn more from their experiences than from the existing theory in the literature. The results show a clear pattern of replication of home norms and practices, suggesting that at an early stage they neglect the theory of international business, the host countries' specificities and the consequent adaptation needs. The case studies show that all the headquarters initiated the control of their international activities through home‐based bureaucratic systems, but have realized that they need more cultural and social control, as recommended by Bartlett and Ghoshal (Citation1989, Citation1992).