Creating Competitive Advantage by Going Abroad: A Case Study of Tata Steel

Abstract

Through different types of mergers and acquisitions, what started off as a motive for Tata Steel to increase their market expansion had led to diversifying their investments, gaining experiences and new knowledge sets through market and technology learning about different business environments. While the existing studies most simply look at fragmented cases of what advantages Tata Steel had in comparison with other steel firms to go abroad, this paper demonstrates that Tata Steel’s competitive advantages were not innate, but rather created through continuous learning, collaboration, and outward investments based on the Imbalance Theory. Thus, hadn’t been Tata Steel’s motive to learn market and technology in different business settings after market expansion, it would have not become the top global steel player today.