Relationship between Internationalization and Performance: a three-dimensional literature review

Résumé En

The relationship between internationalization and firm performance (RBIP) is one of the major and unresolved debates in the international business literature. After the pioneer work of Vernon (1971) demonstrating a linear and positive relationship, increasingly important body of research has also proposed seven alternative models such as negative, U standard, U inverted, and Sinusoidal. In this research based on the three-dimensional contextualist framework of Pettigrew, we contribute to this debate by seeking to explain why the empirical literature on RBIP remains fragmented, inconclusive, and mixed. The result of our literature review suggests that this extremely developed and confused state of research on the RBIP could be explained by the fact that: different researchers focus on various dimensions of internationalization which are the content, the context, and the process, and no research has so far studied possible interactive and simultaneous impact of these three dimensions of internationalization on performance. Our research also suggests that in order to better understand the nature of RBIP in its entirety, it is necessary and important to move from uni- and bidimensional approaches to a three-dimensional approach that takes into account the performance impact of possible combinations of the three dimensions of internationalization. Otherwise, research may continue to produce partial and fragmented observations on the RBIP, and therefore remains a puzzle.