Local expansion processes of Dutch Firms in Central and Eastern Europe

Recently, the evolutionary approach to internationalization is challenged by authors who claim that a gradual entry into new markets is not used anymore in the current globalized marketplace. In this paper, the expansion processes of Dutch firms and their local subsidiaries in Central and Eastern Europe are investigated in order to test the evolutionary approach and to explore several dimensions along which expansions evolve. Results of both case studies and survey material show, that firms still expand stepwise, but in more differentiated patterns than predicted by the original model.