Role of resource investment management and strategic resource deployment capabilities in internationalization-performance relationship

The performance implications of internationalization have been a matter of debate in management literature for decades. Similar to developed market multinational enterprises (DMNEs), scholars found that emerging-market internationalizing firms (EMIFs) have initial costs and subsequent benefits of internationalization such that internationalization-performance (I-P) relationship is U-shaped. Emergingness of EMIFs gives us the opportunity to theorize how these internationalizing firms develop novel capabilities relevant to their state of evolution and resource conditions. Relying on resource management theory, we propose two capabilities – management of R&D investments (RIM) to balance between market and resource seeking motivations and re-deployment of strategic resources (SRD) to catch-up with the competitors. We use 20 years data from 837 Indian firms to empirically test whether the proposed capabilities steepen the I-P relationship and shift the turning point of the U-shaped curve to left. We find empirical support for our hypotheses, and thereby contribute to the literature on resource management in EMIFs and empirical analysis of non-linear relationship.