Dimensions of Internationalization in Apparel and Clothing Industry

Abstract

The validation of a theory in international business depends to a large extent on the robustness of the instruments measuring degree and maturity of internationalization. These instruments have remained ambiguous and speculative over a long period of time due to the inability to even out the distorting influences of measurement error and the near impossibility of establishing universal appeal towards construct and content validity The absence of a comprehensive approach to establish the validity of measurements resulted in empirical investigations of international business being inconclusive with plethora of untested or partially tested propositions and philosophies. The acuteness of this problem was particularly important to developing countries and emerging markets, where cross-cultural issues in management behaviour, orientation and structure towards international business rendered using commonly available research instruments in developed world impossible to use in the local context. In view of this, it was ordained that certain dimensions of internationalization had to be identified in sectors of export prominence in emerging economies such as India and Brazil that could measure the degree of internationalization in these countries from a qualitative perspective like level or maturity, rather than traditional method of quantum or volume of total exports. This narrowed down the search to the apparel and clothing sector as the industry of export prominence for emerging markets, and such companies had been in the process of internationalization for more than three decades, allowing scope for the proposed study. The dimensions of internationalization were carefully selected from detailed literature review and were five in number. There were three items under each dimension, which were rank-ordered just like a level of preference in a nominal scale. Here the preference was actually a level of operation for the Indian firm that in summary would reflect the level of internationalization for the firm. The study was conducted for 200 exporting firms in the Indian apparel and clothing industry. The composite measure was then tested for reliability and validity using measures of internal consistency and face-validity constructs. The conclusive results were then proposed in the form of research instrument that can measure the degree of internationalization for emerging market firms.