| Despite the increasing importance of services, the internationalization process of service companies has yet to be fully explored. Complying with this call for research, this dissertation aims at improving insight in the process of going and being international of service providers. The study is divided into a theoretical and empirical part.; The theoretical part starts with a thorough literature review on services and internationalization that shows that future research needs to acknowledge service heterogeneity on the one hand, and it needs to rely on a strong theoretical framework on the other. Therefore, eight service classifications are scrutinized. Unfortunately, the classifications are found inappropriate leading to the introduction of a new one. Furthermore, the Uppsala internationalization process model is selected as the core model to study internationalization. In order to respond to its two main criticisms, i.e. a lack of dynamism in the model and its conceptualization of internationalization as a predetermined process, concepts from the Resource Based View, the Organizational Learning literature and the Industrial Network Theory are adopted to enrich the original Uppsala Logic.; The empirical part starts with a discussion of the methodological approach. More specifically, a comparative case study is used to unravel the internationalization of nine logistic services companies. By means of reconstructed chronologies, a better insight is offered in key internationalization issues in the sector of logistics. Next, episodes of progression in the internationalization process are examined. This leads to the construction of a dynamic mid-range theory in which it is argued that progression in internationalization occurs according to one of six ideal-typical scenarios. The mid-range theory improves upon the Uppsala model because it refines the underlying constructs and emphasizes the relations between them. As such, the new theory is able to explain both change and preservation in internationalization. |
