Knowledge sufficiency: when institutional distance is insufficient

Purpose – For firms entering a foreign market for the first time, institutional distance can be thought of as being insufficient in the sense that knowledge gap issues associated with large distances are not easily resolved. The purpose of this paper is to explore the concept of knowledge sufficiency and the implications that this concept holds for assuaging these issues. Design/methodology/approach – The concept of knowledge sufficiency is developed into a practical framework. The framework is comprised of the knowledge that firms accumulate about potential host countries. This accumulated knowledge is disaggregated into components that provide the basic structure of the knowledge sufficiency framework and facilitate a systematic assessment of accumulated knowledge. Findings – Accumulated knowledge about foreign market risk factors that exist in potential host countries is disaggregated into three components. The breadth of knowledge component is designed to help answer the question: what do firms know about foreign market risk factors in potential host countries? The depth of knowledge component is designed to help answer the question: how much do firms know about foreign market risk factors in potential host countries. The quality of knowledge component is designed to answer the question: are firms confident in what they know about foreign market risk factors in potential host countries? Research limitations/implications – There is a tendency for strategic decision makers in firms to feel that they have “deep” knowledge of foreign market risk factors when they may actually have only “surface” knowledge of these factors. The result is likely to be an unwarranted lowering of the risk they perceive to exist in potential host countries. Consequently, the host country selected for entry may not be optimal and the mode of entry may be inappropriate. The issue to be resolved is how to ascertain how much knowledge firms actually possess about these foreign market risk factors. Practical implications – Selecting the “right” foreign market and entering that market in the “right” way is unquestionably one of the most important topics in the international literature and has been extensively studied. However, there is no central repository of finding from these studies that will help firms going international for the first time to systematically assess whether their choice of market and entry mode is optimal. Utilization of the knowledge sufficiency framework will significantly improve firms’ chances of entering the “right” foreign markets in the “right” way, which holds practical implications for their initial and long-term performance in these markets. Originality/value – For firms entering a foreign market for the first time, answers to two questions are essential: what foreign market should we enter? How should we enter that foreign market? The extant literature does not provide a framework that allows firms to systematically search for answers to these questions such that, when satisfactorily found, will boost confidence that answers to these two questions are optimized. In addition to filling an important gap in the extant literature, the framework's usefulness as an aid for making internationalization decisions also makes an important contribution to practice.