Empirical Research on Foreign Entry Mode: Assessing Core Tenets of Four Theoretical Frameworks

Despite great empirical interest, reviews of research on firms’ international entry mode choice remain a rare sight with even the most frequently applied theoretical perspectives receiving little notice. An additional concern is that existing reviews do not completely agree on the significance of core theoretical constructs. In this article, I systematically analyze transparently selected samples from the empirical research on four theoretical perspectives and provide an assessment of the level of empirical support as well as the degree of paradigm consistency. I find great variation in the empirical support depending on which core construct or measure researchers apply. The findings suggest that entry mode researchers tend to operationalize core constructs in a very liberal manner. In addition, I find that the most commonly applied measures have been used by researchers in different theoretical perspectives in some cases resulting in noticeably different empirical support. The study contributes to the small number of reviews focusing on international entry mode choice by discussing tendencies in the operationalization of core constructs and consequences for empirical results.