Coordinating the international retailing firm: Exploratory models and evaluations of structural, systemic, and cultural options

Abstract

A comparison of international retailing and management literature shows that there is a shortage of analyses dealing with the coordination of international retail firms. At the same time, coordination is a key success factor, especially not ony for an international firm's internal efficiency, but also for its effectiveness. As one of the first studies to deal systematically with coordination of international retail firms, the main aim of this paper is to systemise on a theoretical/conceptual basis the structural, systemic, and cultural instruments that retail firms use to coordinate their international activities. Isolated models are followed by a holistic empirical analysis, which takes strategy and success into consideration, as well as describing strategy–structure–systems–culture relations and integrative gestalts of international retail firms. The explorative and mostly descriptive results based on 60 European retailers allow only some tentative conclusions, but the authors also hope that the study will open up a new perspective in international retailing research.