Complementing the Uppsala model? A commentary on Treviño and Doh’s paper “Internationalization of the firm: A discourse-based view”

Abstract

Since the Uppsala process model was launched 1977, we have seen an extensive amount of research on the internationalization of firms, with the model as a point of departure. Here, we analyze an interesting article published in JIBS by Trevino and Doh, who apply a discourse-based view on the internationalization of the firm. We place their work in the context of the research conducted after the Uppsala model was developed with special reference to the generalizing and singularizing purposes of some typical contributions. We raise issues concerning to what extent the Trevino–Doh article is actually modeling firms’ internationalization process, how a discourse-based approach differs from other studies on a firm’s strategic behavior, and if the cases used by the authors actually contribute to our understanding of the discourse-based methodology.