Internationalization trajectories - a crosscountry comparison: Are large Chinese and Indian companies different?

This paper explores whether the internationalization trajectories – patterns over time in the level, pace, variability and temporal concentration of international expansion – of large firms from China and India are fundamentally different from those of developed country firms. A longitudinal cross-country comparative study of 256 large firms for the 1990-2004 period shows that, although internationalization trajectories of large and leading Chinese and Indian firms are indeed different, there are also considerable similarities between established developed country firms and the new firms from emerging markets, not in the least because they often interact within the same sector

Key words: Internationalization trajectories, Transnationality Index (TNI), longitudinal research, crosscountry comparison

JEL codes: F21, F23, M19

UNU-MERIT Working Papers ISSN 1871-9872