A literature review on CEE firms’ internationalization: success measurement, achievement and outcomes

Purpose This paper aims to give an overview of the literature on Central and Eastern European (CEE) firms’ successful internationalization: different authors’ understanding of success, and, thereafter, these firms’ internationalization processes, external factors, internal motivators and actions that affect successful internationalizers’ initial and subsequent foreign activities, and, finally, internationalization outcomes. Design/methodology/approach This is a systematic-narrative hybrid literature review paper that focuses on CEE firms’ successful internationalization. Findings This paper concludes that CEE firms’ “success” is understood and measured differently, successful internationalizers can experience various internationalization paths, they are affected by a large number of external impact factors, internal motivators or actions and their internationalization outcomes vary considerably. Thus, there is no “ideal” type of successful internationalization: as different CEE firms can be called “successful”, they also follow different trajectories to achieve success. Originality/value To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first literature review paper that gives an overview on how success has been defined in studies about CEE firms’ internationalization, if some types of internationalizers have been considered more successful and if there are any important CEE-specific contextual factors or not.