Small Firm Internationalisation and International Entrepreneurship

Small Firm Internationalisation and

International Entrepreneurship

Editors:

Emin Akçaoğlu & Rainer Wehner

Small Firm Internationalisation and

International Entrepreneurship

Editors:

Emin Akçaoğlu & Rainer Wehner

Würzburg International Business Forum

International Business Conference 2020

Conference Proceedings

Conference Proceedings

Würzburg International Business Forum

International Business Conference 2020

(WIBF@Beykent)

Small Firm Internationalisation and

International Entrepreneurship

Istanbul, 24 - 25 September 2020

Editors:

Emin Akçaoğlu & Rainer Wehner

Würzburg International Business Forum (2020)

The 3

_{International Business Conference Proceedings:}

Small Firm Internationalisation and International Entrepreneurship

Istanbul, Turkey. 122 pp (including the cover pages).

Editors: Emin Akçaoğlu & Rainer Wehner

Conference web site design: Dominik Winkler

Conference logo design: Magdelena Ulsamer

Creative Director: Sema Özevin (Book cover design)

Transcriptions: Barış Batuhan Geçit & Korhan Kaptanoğlu

Würzburg International Business Forum’s website:

http://wibf.fhws.de/

© 2020 Beykent University

For the electronic copy: Reproduction of this electronic publication for

non-commercial purposes is authorized provided that the source is fully acknowledged.

For the printed copy: All print publication rights of this book are reserved. It cannot

be reproduced, published or distributed fully or partly in print without the permission

of the publisher; except for short quotations for promotional purposes, provided

that the source is fully acknowledged.

The views expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect those of Beykent

University or the University of the Applied Sciences Würzburg-Schweinfurt (FHWS).

Beykent University Publications

Publication No.: 151

e-ISBN: 978-975-6319-52-9

ISBN: 978-975-6319-53-6

Beykent University

Ayazağa, Hadım Koruyolu Cd. No:19

34398 Sarıyer, Istanbul, Turkey

Contents

Keynote Speakers

International Advisory Board

Organisation Committee

Foreword

1

Opening Speeches (Transcription)

5

Rainer Wehner

Ali Murat Ferman

Robert Grebner

Markus Besenbeck

Erdogan Taşkın

Emin Akçaoğlu

Keynote Speeches (Transcription)

Bargaining Power, Political Institutions, and Legitimacy Perspectives in the

Multinational-Government Relationship: Lessons and Research

Opportunities for SMEs

Alfredo Jiménez

13

A Living Business Model – Your Digital Twin

Kim Warren

17

Proceedings of Plenary Session I

Sharing economy: Users’ motivations from the sustainable development

perspective

Olga Saginova, Zhanna Musatova & Yuri Saginov

25

Entrepreneurial Culture in India: A Comparison with the BRICS Economies

How Growth Intention Relate with Political Skill for Female Entrepreneurs in

Turkey? An Implementation of Moderator Analysis

Tutku Tuncalı Yaman & Gülgönül Bozoğlu Batı

35

The Effect of Digitalization on Food Purchasing Preferences: A Study on the

Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic

Gökçe Öztürk & Burak Öçlü

43

Proceedings of Plenary Session II

International Trade and Export Credit Insurance

Banu Erkök

49

International New Ventures as Integrators

Erik S. Rasmussen

55

Too Much Culturally Aware? When Intercultural Reconciliation Fails in

Business: The Case of IKEA in Saudi Arabia

Jérôme Dumetz, Valentina Zanolini & Caitlin Morgan

63

Deep Impact Lean Startups: Founders for Future start with deep impact!

Harald Bolsinger & Bernd Hanheiser

69

Paper Presentation & Panel Meeting on Small Firm Internationalisation

(Session in Turkish)

Uluslararası Pazarlama Uygulamalarında Gerekli Beceri Düzeyleri

Erdoğan Taşkın

83

Panel Meeting (Transcription)

91

C. Coşkun Küçüközmen

Seçil Kaynak

Gürhan Güven

Mutlu Can Günel

Erçin Şahin

Erdoğan Taşkın

Emin Akçaoğlu

Würzburg International Business Forum

International Business Conference 2020

Keynote Speakers

Alfredo Jiménez, KEDGE Business School, France

Kim Warren, Strategy Dynamics Ltd, UK

International Advisory Board

Ilan Alon, Adger University, Norway

Diederich Bakker, Hanze University of Applied Sciences, Groningen,

The Netherlands

Seçil Bayraktar, Toulouse Business School, France

Harald J. Bolsinger, University of Applied Sciences

Würzburg-Schweinfurt, Germany

Lourdes Casanova, Cornell University, US

Hugh Dang, Ottawa United Learning Academy, Canada

Alfredo Jiménez, KEDGE Business School, France

Turgut Özkan, Doğuş University, Turkey

Olga Saginova, Plekhanov Russian University of Economics, Russia

Włodzimierz Sroka, WSB University, Poland

Erdoğan Taşkın, Beykent University, Turkey

Wlamir Xavier, Biola University, US

Würzburg International Business Forum

Permanent Organisation Committee

Rainer Wehner, Head of Organisation Committee, University of Applied

Sciences Würzburg-Schweinfurt, Germany

Emin Akçaoğlu, Beykent University, Turkey

Dominik Winkler, University of Applied Sciences Würzburg-Schweinfurt,

Germany

Markus Engert, University of Applied Sciences Würzburg-Schweinfurt,

Germany

Würzburg International Business Forum

International Business Conference 2020

WIBF@Beykent Organisation Committee

Rainer Wehner, University of Applied Sciences Würzburg-Schweinfurt,

Germany

Emin Akçaoğlu, Beykent University, Turkey

Bekir Aşık, Beykent University, Turkey

Markus Engert, University of Applied Sciences Würzburg-Schweinfurt,

Germany

Mine Fındıklı, Beykent University, Turkey

Barış Batuhan Geçit, Beykent University, Turkey

Turgut Özkan, Doğuş University, Turkey

Selahattin Sarı, Beykent University, Turkey

Dominik Winkler, University of Applied Sciences Würzburg-Schweinfurt,

Conference Scientific Council

Emin Akçaoğlu, Beykent University, Turkey

Vedat Akman, Beykent University, Turkey

Ilan Alon, University of Agder, Norway

Erkut Altındağ, Beykent University, Turkey

Bekir Aşık, Beykent University, Turkey

Diederich Bakker, Hanze University of Applied Sciences, Germany

Seçil Bayraktar, Toulouse Business School, France

Yüksel Bayraktar, Istanbul University, Turkey

Stephanie Baumgarten, University of Applied Sciences

Würzburg-Schweinfurt, Germany

Axel Bialek, University of Applied Sciences Würzburg-Schweinfurt,

Germany

Semra Birgün, Fenerbahçe University, Turkey

Harald Bolsinger, University of Applied Sciences Würzburg-Schweinfurt,

Germany

Ahmet Alkan Çelik, Beykent University, Turkey

Faik Çelik, Kocaeli University, Turkey

Ethem Soner Çelikkol, Beykent University, Turkey

Hakkı Çiftçi, Çukurova University, Turkey

Hugh Dang, Ottawa United Learning Academy, Canada

Mustafa Kemal Değer, Professor, Karadeniz Technical University, Turkey

Ertuğrul Deliktaş, Kâtip Çelebi University, Turkey

Recep Baki Deniz, Beykent University, Turkey

Selçuk Emsen, Atatürk University, Turkey

Oya Erdil, Gebze Teknoloji University, Turkey

Cengiz Erol, Yaşar University, Turkey

Özgür Ömer Ersin, Beykent University, Turkey

Mine Afacan Fındıklı, Beykent University, Turkey

Emine Ayşen Gencer, Beykent University, Turkey

Cevat Gerni, Beykent University, Turkey

Ayşe Günsel, Kocaeli University, Turkey

Yıldız Y.Güzey, Beykent University, Turkey

Gülay Selvi Hanişoğlu, Beykent University, Turkey

Salih Zeki İmamoğlu, Gebze Teknoloji University, Turkey

Hüseyin İnce, Gebze Teknoloji University, Turkey

Alfredo Jiménez, KEDGE Business School, France

Ömer Kalav, Beykent University, Turkey

Muhittin Kaplan, Istanbul University, Turkey

Kerem Karabulut, Atatürk University, Turkey

Mehmet Baha Karan, Hacettepe University, Turkey

Çiğdem Kaya, Arel University, Turkey

Halim Kazan, Istanbul University, Turkey

Celal Kepekçi, Beykent University, Turkey

Halit Keskin, Yıldız Technical University, Turkey

Manfred Kiesel, University of Applied Sciences Würzburg-Schweinfurt,

Germany

Yunus Kishalı, Beykent University, Turkey

Cevdet Kızıl, Medeniyet University, Turkey

Derman Küçükaltan, Izmir Kavram Vocational School, Turkey

Cumhur Coşkun Küçüközmen, Izmir University of Economics, Turkey

Nihat Küçüksavaş, Beykent University, Turkey

Volkan Öngel, Beykent University

Pınar Şenışık Özdabak, Doğuş University

Turgut Özkan, Doğus University, Turkey

Musa Pınar, Valparasio University, US

Ali Pişkin, Doğuş University, Turkey

Jaya Prakash Pradhan, Central University of Gujarat, India

Cem Saatcioğlu, Istanbul University, Turkey

Olga Saginova, Plekhanov Russian University of Economics, Russia

Özlem Sanrı, Doğuş University, Turkey

Selahattin Sarı, Beykent University, Turkey

Halil Sarıaslan, Başkent University, Turkey

Ahmet Güner Sayar, Beykent University, Turkey

Sefer Şener, Istanbul University, Turkey

Bahattin Sinsoysal, Doğuş University, Turkey

Włodzimierz Sroka, WSB University in Dąbrowa Górnicza, Poland

Mustafa Sundu, Beykent University, Turkey

Türker Susmuş, Ege University, Turkey

Erdoğan Taşkın, Beykent University, Turkey

Erkan Taşkıran, Düzce University, Turkey

Ahmet Ulusoy, Beykent University, Turkey

Veysel Ulusoy, Yeditepe University, Turkey

Kamil Uslu, Izmir Kavram Vocational School, Turkey

Ayfer Ustabaş, Beykent University, Turkey

Ülkü Uzunçarşılı, Beykent University, Turkey

Rainer Wehner, University of Applied Sciences Würzburg-Schweinfurt,

Germany

Ahmet Yüksel, Beykent University, Turkey

Cemal Yükselen, Beykent University, Turkey

Wlamir Xavier, Biola University, US

1

Foreword

Entrepreneurship,

innovation

and

internationalisation

are

substantially

interrelated.

In

an

increasingly

competitive world economy these are

getting more importance. In 2000 at its

Lizbon meeting, the European Council set

the objective of making the European

Union “the most competitive and

dynamic knowledge-based economy in

the world”. Entrepreneurship, innovation

and internationalisation are essential

ingredients of achieving such objectives

as they are now three of the most

important factors for growth and job

creation in open market economies.

With the beginning of the internet era,

entrepreneurship in international scale

has become easier. Many start-ups now

aim the international market from their

inception. In other words, the number of

so called born globals is increasing very

quickly.

Therefore,

international

entrepreneurship has also become a

significant concept in the business

literature. Currently, many countries and

international organisations focus on

international entrepreneurship for job

creation and economic growth. This is

particularly important these days as the

effects of the global economic crisis still

have been present.

Small companies (or small and medium

sized enterprises [SMEs] in general) are

entrepreneurial in their nature. SMEs are

not always growth oriented individually.

Many small business owners do not aim to

grow the company size at all. But since

the number of SMEs in any economy is

overwhelming,

they

contribute

substantially to GNPs and also to

employment. Many of these firms are

family owned. Corporate governance

issues have interesting aspects in family

owned-firms. The unification of ownership

and management enables the top

management to make opportunistic

investments by relying on intuition.

Therefore, such firms are more flexible in

comparison with shareholders-owned

and managerially-controlled firms to

adapt to changing environments, to

enter new markets or, to introduce new

products. Perhaps because of this

attribute, family firms do tend perform

better in adverse economic conditions.

SMEs are also very important in many

countries (as well as in Germany where

they play a critical role in forming a

middle class society so called Mittelstand

that is also the backbone of the German

economy). On the other hand, it seems

that SMEs in general (and also many

German SMEs are reluctant to invest in

foreign

countries

though

export

orientation historically has been the

case). There may me various factual and

psychological

reasons

behind

this

approach.

However,

increasing

economic integration among nations

forces companies to be involved in

international business much more than

earlier. In this line, foreign direct

investment (FDI) has also become as

2

important as export business. In fact, FDI is

currently has a pivotal role for

international trade flows. At present two

third of the world trade volume is under

the control of multinational companies.

Interestingly, multinational companies are

not generally large or big companies as is

supposed by many. They are rather

smaller companies involved in FDI and

other foreign operation modes such as

international

franchising,

contract

manufacturing, licencing etc.. Together

with those internationalisation tendencies

SME´s

cannot

resist

against

the

progressive movement of digitalisation or

Industry 4.0. For this reason and because

of the fact that many small-sized

multinationals are also family owned

corporations,

it

seems

that

internationalisation is now not an option

but a must for nearly all companies; small

or big.

So far, the internationalisation of SMEs and

family-owned small firms and also small

multinationals

have

been

studied

relatively lesser than the potential. In this

respect, the WIBF’s 3rd International

Business Conference aims to focus on

international entrepreneurship and small

firm internationalisation, and also on

activities small multinational companies.

The conference has already established

itself as a global forum aiming at assessing

the impact of, and generating discussion

regarding, these recent developments in

order to reach a deeper understanding of

the evident opportunities, risks, and

outcomes. The main themes of the

conference are social and economic

outcomes of foreign investments by small

multinational

enterprises;

internationalisation of small firms and

international entrepreneurship; how these

outcomes are influenced by home

countries and international organizations,

through

legislation,

other

legal

arrangements, policies, and unofficial

mechanisms. The conference also aims to

identify the similarities and differences

between small multinational enterprises

from emerging and developed countries,

and to analyse the effects of these on

employment, growth and development

issues in home and host countries. The

Conference explores both theoretical

issues in the field and practical issues in

formulating policy and strategy and it will

pay attention to the issue of employment

and growth.

Emin Akçaoğlu & Rainer Wehner

Editors

3

Opening

Speeches

5

Opening Speeches of the Würzburg International Business

Forum’s 3

rd

_{International Business Conference}

(WIBF@Beykent)

Rainer Wehner, Head of WIBF Organisation Committee & University of Applied Sciences

Würzburg-Schweinfurt, Germany

Ali Murat Ferman, Rector of Beykent University, Istanbul, Turkey

Robert Grebner, President of University of Applied Sciences Würzburg-Schweinfurt, Germany

Markus Besenbeck, Deputy Dean of Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, University

of Applied Sciences Würzburg-Schweinfurt, Germany

Erdoğan Taşkın, Head of Department of International Trade and Finance, Beykent University,

Istanbul, Turkey

Emin Akçaoğlu, WIBF Organisation Committee & Beykent University, Istanbul, Turkey

Rainer Wehner:

Good morning everyone. We have currently forty-one participants. In fact, I never expected so many people here for the opening session. But it's nine o'clock and we can start functionally.

Good morning everybody. And Dear Guests, I'm proud and glad to open the 3rd International Business Conference together with you, my dear friends in Istanbul. As you know, most of you might know that the conference was planned in Istanbul in May this year. But unfortunately, a virus called Covid-19 crossed our plans and we had to think about something new.

If we talk about who ‘we’ are, I'm talking about my dearest colleague Emin Akçaoğlu from Beykent University. Without him, this conference would never take place. So thank you Emin for everything you did. So and at the end of the day, we decided to have a hybrid conference. But as you know, even that was not easy as we are not able to travel or to face 14 days in quarantine in Turkey or when we return back to Germany. We did not want to cancel it, and therefore decided to do an online conference. This is our first online conference. So special thanks to all those who joined, especially to those who joined the Wurzburg International Business Conferences for the second and even the third time, like Olga Saginova. Welcome Olga. And Jérôme Dumetz. Jérôme? You will show up anyway.

So now let me welcome our honored guests and Professor Ali Murat Ferman, the Rector of Beykent University. Thank you for hosting this conference. Unfortunately, we miss the Turkish delight beside the conference. And also another big welcome to the President of the University of Applied Sciences

Würzburg-Schweinfurt (FHWS). Thank you Robert. Professor Robert Grebner, thank you that you made it happen. Because Robert has soon another appointment in Nürnberg and has not a lot of time to be with us. Then, the Vice Dean of the Faculty of Economics and Business Administration of FHWS, Professor Markus Besenbeck. Marcus, welcome. And then the Head of the Department of Trade and International Finance of Beykent University, Professor Erdoğan Taşkın. Welcome, Professor Taşkın. And now, let me say welcome to our fellow keynoters. Welcome Dr. Alfredo Jimenez from Kedge Business School in France. And welcome Dr. Kim Warren, a strategy professional and teacher.

So then let me welcome my dear colleague Emin, who is one of the main organizers of this conference. And there are two other colleagues that I have to mention: Marcus Engert and Dominique Winkler. They have helped us a lot to manage all the technical and organizational tasks. I also welcome my students who showed up early because I made a mistake. Thank you very much for showing up and being patient. So then I want to hand over the word to Professor Ali Murat Ferman, the Rector of Beykent University, for some welcome words. Thank you very much.

Ali Murat Ferman:

Thank you Dear Sir. Greetings from Istanbul. As you have mentioned, it was our original intention to welcome you and to present you with the Turkish hospitality right here in Istanbul. Regarding the Turkish delights: I will arrange that you will be receiving some boxes of them. But, of course, we count this as a missed chance to welcome you once again in Istanbul. And we hope to honor our words in the coming days when and once this Covid-19 syndrom will be perished

6

away from lives and minds. So you have your reservations already kept and ready for the near future. Please be sure of that and maybe we will make it accordingly so that we will have some academic activities and then some rest time later on. As you know, that is one of the perks of academic life. Once again, I welcome everybody on board, and I would like to also extend my sincere regards to my dear colleague, Professor Grebner, who was a very kind host during our visit to Würzburg. So once again, thanks for coming and joining us in this Wurzburg International Business Forum.

This year's theme is quite popular, critical and strategical. Small to medium-sized companies or organizations, as we know, are the backbone of the German industry. They constitute also an important role from the viewpoint of employment, from the GNP, from services, from industrial sectors in each and every part. This is also true for the Turkish economy similar to the German case. And of course, under the stress of this Covid-19’s extraordinary so-called economic struggle, we are all to find out more merits and strategical importance of small to medium-sized enterprises. In these hard times, we also find some opportunities. And if you made ample time, if you may to investigate the critical positioning of corporations, scale, size or scale related matters, distribution of scarce sources, so on and so forth. Therefore, with the participation and contribution of academics from 10 different countries, I trust that we will contribute to some delicate and strategic matters and topics in this manner.

Of course, although this is done or conducted in the new digital fashion or digi-fashion, therefore lacking the human interaction and human warmth, if you may, we will try to create so-called scientific synergy through the digital lines and through the delicate infrastructure of so-called the Internet. I might say that now we are also talking to a lot of about infrastructure issues. A couple of words and then, of course, I would like to relate the work to my dear colleague, Professor Grebner.

We are facing a crisis. That's for sure. But this is not one of the so-called ordinary or well studied crises that we had experienced before. This is a very peculiar crisis, if you may, is different than the so-called 1929 Great Depression. It has some resemblance to the 2008’s, a more recent financial crisis. You might find some similarities even if you go back to the Holland's so-called crisis stemming from tulips, so on and so forth. But I believe that this is a one peculiar and quite significant one.

We are still in the midst of the storm. So we do not know what kind of future is there waiting for us. It is unfortunate that in times for a dire need for much more certainty and planning, we seem to have lost some of the basic parameters and criteria that will help us in economic planning, business strategy, formation, so on and so forth.

So therefore, what are we going to do? Of course we pray. Of course we hope for the best and we never lose our, as they say, good will. And always we tend to be on the

positive side. But of course, cautious optimism, I think must be the key word during those hard times. Cautious optimism. We have to be optimistic because economics at the end of the day is based on expectations management. We cannot do anything positive by being negative all the way around. So cautious optimism should be the motto.

Regarding the future, I suggest that there will be a key word which will be much more pronounced by us. Of course, we will not dump so-called our ever popular team of sustainability. Sustainability becomes much more important, critical in those hard times. But what we need to do is we need to go back to the term of being reasonable. Much more humble if you may. In our personal lives, in our personal consumption models, in our companies or regarding our companies’ growth plans, in our countries’ great attempts of economic growth and prosperity, this and that. So I think we should be going back. I'm not suggesting that we should go back to small is beautiful era, but I think we have to go back to think more and discuss more the terms of reasonable, optimum size, being optimum.

You know, this does not just correspond to getting away from some of our luxuries or compromising on our quality of life, rather than that we have to redefine many things under the guidance of this new term, reasonable. Time points to that conditions and force that and now it is up to us to do whatever is needed.

Now, before I am lost in the philosophical mindstorm once again, I wish successful and productive meetings to be held today and tomorrow. As always, we are here and ready and eager to extend our capacity, capabilities and all our resources to help in this and for the coming international organizations.

I hope you best of luck and success, especially with the infrastructure. A couple of days ago we have managed to consume the Eurasian Economics Conference which was the 13th one. We didn't have except or experience a lot of technical problems. I hope that this time there will be zero technical problems and 100 percent digital availability.

Thanks again and I salute everyone. I was trying to say something in German, but because of my respect to this glorified language, I think I will stick up to English, which is the most practical and international communication tool. Once again, thank you and I hope the best of success.

Robert Grebner:

Yeah, thank you Rector and good friend Ali Murat Ferman. It is an honor for me to be a member of your conference and this conference is very important for all of us even and especially in these times. What a good luck that we can share experience and knowledge in these times where we are not able to travel and it's a bad luck for me not being able to travel to Turkey.

So I'm very happy to see a lot of friends here. The first time in the pandemic times I see Emin and Rainer. And there

7

are some pictures that I cannot see. And I am very happy also to see you, Rector Ali Murat Ferman. I share and I like your thoughts about reasonability that is very important for everything we are doing. And reasonability is also a very important topic regarding artificial intelligence. A little bit on the subject where I am trying to do research. A little bit beside my presidentship. But presidentship, you all know it is not forever. So I have to prepare a little bit for the time after my presidentship.

But thank you again for being part of your conference. And let me only say a few words about the small firms or small companies’ importance: All of you know that small companies are very important for the German economy. And all of you know that the internationalisation of companies is also very important. Ofcourse even the internationalisation of universities is one of the most important issues we have in these times. So I am very happy to have a partner university in Turkey, Beykent University and, to know the Rector of that university.

And I promise, Rector, I will visit you as soon as possible to talk about more cooperation and collaboration between our two universities. And I also like the sweet food of your country.

Ali Murat Ferman:

Yes, thank you very much Sir. I must say that the cards that you have kindly provided is very much appreciated by our family members. My youngest son now thinks of pursuing a degree in the coming years in that field. So, see, internationalisation does work from our side. Regarding the sweets or artificial intelligence, or other things like. Let us keep up the good work together. You are more than welcome any time in Turkey in different seasons. You know, winter time or summer time. Because they are all different.

Robert Grebner:

Yes, we have to we have to get the experience of different seasons in our two countries, I guess. OK! So thank you. And also a very warm welcome to the members and to the speakers and the keynote speakers of this conference. As I said, it's important for our two economies to have a deeper contact in collaboration and internationalisation.

And I also see the Deputy Dean of our Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Markus. Let me say hello to you, even if we very seldom meet in Würzburg. Now we say thanks to the digital era here in this video conference. Yeah, I wish all the members and the speakers here two good and fruitful days, good knowledge transfers, good experience exchanges.

And as I mentioned, I have to drive now physically to Nürnberg for a physical meeting. That is very seldom in these days. But I really enjoy physical meetings and I will also enjoy such meetings in Turkey of course. I hope we can make

it very soon when the crisis is over. So good day, good luck and all the best. And stay healthy. Thank you.

Rainer Wehner:

Thank you Robert and Rector Ferman and I want to hand over the word to the Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Economics and Business Administration at the University of Applied Sciences Würzburg-Schweinfurt Markus Besenbeck.

Markus Besenbeck:

Thank you, Rainer. It's an honor to welcome you to the 3rd International Wurzburg Business Forum at Beykent University, where scientists and students from many different countries come together to share scientific research, discuss international topics, and do this from the perspective of small and medium sized enterprises.

We have heard that they are very important for both of our economies. So it's a perfect approach to strengthen this relationship coming from this perspective and dealing with the challenges and the insights that SMEs are facing in this current situation. The internationalisation has faced really tough challenges in the last months, and establishing and maintaining personal contacts are really the essence of international and intercultural collaboration. So it remains to be difficult traveling during this tough times. It is still a great thing that we are having this conference together, even if it's online, which is working quite well, I think.

And from the Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, it's a pleasure to welcome you to this conference because we really strongly believe that internationalisation is a key driver. And also research, as well as education for younger generations face the challenges of global dynamics. So we have a very strong history in this part and also a very strong vision for the future.

And as a quite unique USP we introduced our Bachelor of International Management Programme a few years ago, which is really a successful product and program that we are offering. There are many many applicants from Germany as well as other countries from all over the world. And we have more and more integrated programs in the X model and twin programs because we believe that this international content and discussions are also a very strong part in education of our German programs. Our International Business MBA is a well-established program running for many years where professionals come together to discuss the challenges of an increasingly global environment. And all these are ensured by a partner network. More than 100 universities worldwide that we are collaborating. Our faculty and they are really the main contributors to our internationalisation strategy because they are bringing the international component to our academic life, to our research life.

8

University for their long, intensive and loyal collaboration and also friendship. I think this was very clear from the opening words that that is really intense friendship and people are warmly inviting each other to visit. Unfortunately, I have not been able to do so, and this might last for a certain time until we overcome all the effects and restrictions from our current crisis. But if the time is coming, I'm really happy to do so and also to visit you in person. So this is only possible with a very supportive and proactive team and environment.

So also from my side, I would like to thank the organizing committee that is officially named by Rainer and Emin, as well as Dominic and Marcus for making this possible to share our views and thoughts and research results at this conference. So finally, I would like to wish everybody; contributors as well as participants, a great day today with interesting insights, fruitful discussions and have a great time. Thank you.

Rainer Wehner:

Thank you very much Markus. Now I want to hand over the word to the Head of the Department of Trade and Finance, Prof. Dr. Erdoğan Taşkın. Thank you.

Erdoğan Taşkın:

Good morning Sir, dear Rector and the participants. Small firm internationalisation conference at Beykent University will be the third conference of the Würzburg International Business Forum that regularly organized by the University of Applied Sciences Würzburg-Schweinfurt. We are happy to see you virtually today. But we would have been happier if we could be together with you here in Istanbul on this sunny day.

International trade creates such a relationship that more imporant than military or political relationships between Germany and Turkey. These two countries have had always good connections historically. And international trade has also played a role in this process. Having said that, this is always very important.

In addition, I would like to remind you of the significant contributions of some German professors to the Turkish academia at the beginning of the establishments of Istanbul University and Ankara University. Especially for the School of Economics and the School of Business at Istanbul University. This provided an understanding about the German education, and we had also received a lot of books from Germany at these universities.

So this conference is very important collaboration between Beykent University and the University of Applied Sciences Würzburg-Schweinfurt.

I will also present a paper at the conference and, my paper will be related to international marketing. Especially on different kinds of skills regarding human resources

employed at export and import departments of companies. I would like to address the organization committee now. Professor Emin Akcaoglu, thank you very much sir. Thank you very much dear Rector and all of the professors and faculty members from many countries.

Rainer Wehner:

Thank you very much Mr. Taşkın. And in fact I never thought that we could make it in half an hour. But we did. So we all seem to be old friends of a short introduction ceremony now.

Emin, you got the last five minutes.

Emin Akçaoğlu:

Five minutes is too long for me. I don't have that much to say. But I would like to thank you first of all, to collaborate on his initiation at the beginning of 2017. And, since then, we have been organizing these conferences. This is the third one. I also would like to thank Robert very much, because he supported us a lot at the initial stage. I want to name all colleagues in Wurzburg for their support for the establishment of the Wurzburg International Business Forum. And I also would like to thank Professor Ferman at Beykent University, Professor Selahattin Sarı, Erdogan Taşkın and all the organization committee members and the keynote speakers of today's conference, as well as all the other members of the organization committee in Turkey, as well as in Germany. I hope that we'll have a successful conference and then we can carry on in the coming years in Istanbul, in Wurzburg or elsewhere. Thank you.

Rainer Wehner:

Thank you very much, Emin for your kind words. Also from my side, I would like to extend my thanks to the whole organization committee who make this happen, and to the colleagues in Turkey, to both of the Rectors who supported us and to all the colleagues who are behind us. And it seems that it has worked not so bad. I never expected that.

Emin Akçaoğlu:

By the way, right here, if you allow me to say just one single sentence Rainer, I also would like to thank Dominik Winkler particularly a lot for being so kind, so skillful, so creative to design the website of the conference. The conference website is something that attracts people. I think that it has got a great portion in the success of the Wurzburg International Business Forum’s International Business Conferences. Thank you Dominik.

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Rainer Wehner:

I cannot say more and want to carry on in the agenda, so we are nearly punctual at half past ten in Germany and half past eleven in Turkey.

So now I want to hand over the word to our first keynote speaker, Alfredo Jimenez. Alfredo is an associate professor at Kedge Business School in Bordeaux, France.

His speech’s title is ‘Bargaining Power, Political Institutions and Legitimacy Perspective in the Multinational

Government Relationship: Lessons and Research Opportunities for SMEs’.

Welcome, Alfredo. And it's your turn now. Thank you. After Alfredo’s speech, we will listen to Dr. Kim Warren. He is a strategy writer, owner and director of Strategy Dynamics Ltd. His speech’s title is ‘A Living Business Model: Your Digital Twin’.

So thank you both for joining us and good luck for your presentations.

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Keynote

Speeches

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Keynote Speech – I:

Bargaining Power, Political Institutions, and Legitimacy

Perspectives in the Multinational-Government Relationship:

Lessons and Research Opportunities for SMEs

Alfredo Jimenez, Kedge Business School, Bordeaux, France

Political risk can be defined as the probability of a government using its monopoly over legal coercion to refrain from fulfilling existing agreements with firms, in order to affect the redistribution of rents between the public and private sector. Either through direct measures such as nationalizations or expropriations, or more indirect ones such as forced renegotiations of previously agreed conditions, political risk can have a tremendous impact on foreign direct investments. Yet, some recent literature suggests that political risk not only constitutes a threat for Multinational Enterprises but can also be a source of opportunities. Over time, scholars have employed different frameworks to study this concept. In this presentation we will review the three main perspectives, namely the bargaining power approach, the political institutions approach, and the legitimacy approach. After reviewing their main postulates and criticisms, potential areas for complementarities and research opportunities will be discussed, with particular emphasis on the implications for SMEs.

Can you hear me? Well, yeah, yes, OK, well, first of all, it's my pleasure to be part of this conference and of course, following the trend of the speakers before me, I would like to start by saying thank you very much to both institutions who are organizing and hosting this event, especially Prof. Dr. Ferman and Prof. Dr. Robert Grebner. I can tell you, I hope I pronounced the well, sorry, but if I didn't especially thank you, too Emin, because we are quite close. We have been working together on several projects lately. And he was so kind to invite me to participate in this speech. It's unfortunate that we cannot meet face to face, of course, this Turkish delights would have been a great addition. I'm glad to say that I know well Turkish cuisine because I'm actually in Turkey now because of my personal connections to Turkey. And, I come here every year. But I highly encourage all of you to visit this wonderful country and definitely try the cuisine. I want to extend to much more this introduction, because I only have 20 minutes and I have prepared a

presentation just to say that really congratulations to the institutions because it would have been easy to just cancel the event, postponed. And instead you decided to move forward and to organize it online, which is not easy and requires effort. So I think this is something that all the participants we should appreciate. I will start my presentation. I'll try to share my screen so you can see the short slide. Well I prepare the presentation which reveals about the around the topic of political risk and the applications to internationalisation because, well, on the one hand, political risk is my area of specialization. And since the topic of the conference is internationalisation of small and medium enterprises, I try to integrate the literature on political risk and some lessons on potential research opportunities for those scholars. Some of you probably who are interested on the internationalisation of SMEs. But the title one was mentioned before, bargaining power of political institutions and legitimacy perspective in the multinational government, relationship lessons and research opportunities for. Very briefly, why do I talk about this? Well, I have a personal interest on the topic of political risk, academic interest. I was doing my PhD and of course, as every young, fresh PhD student knows, the beginnings are not easy. What to do? Which topic to take? Is this going to be interesting? Will I be able to publish and get tenure somewhere if I pursue this path? Well, when I was on that stage, it happened that there were a few harmful events for some Spanish multinationals at the time. I'm originally Spanish. I did my PhD in Spain and more or less around the time, there were a few important events in which the Spanish multinationals were expropriated by governments in Latin America and in particular, the government of Argentina then expropriated the YPF from Brazil, the president of Argentina at the time, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner. And something similar happened regard Spain with their local subsidiary in Bolivia, which was also expropriated by the president, Evo Morales. And while these events kind of increased my interest on them, why political risk happens, how multinationals can

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protect themselves or what's going on in this relationship between governments and multinationals. It's, I think, almost evident that the relationship between the government and multinational, this is critical for companies doing foreign direct investment and this political risk is very important because it can materialize in some serious and harmful incidents, both direct or indirect. Direct, for example, expectations are nationalisations, but also more subtly, indirectly, when governments for some renegotiations of agreed conditions because they want different terms made. They want to increase the taxes. They want to impose new rules trying to appropriate some of the economic rents that the companies produce. So I will present a little bit the evolution, how the international business literature has analyzed the relationship of governments and multinationals from the political perspective to how these approaches complement each other, open up new research possibilities, and we will eventually land on how Assamese can also be integrated in this stuff. But the three theoretical approaches that the I.B. literature has relied upon are the bargaining power approach, the political institutions approach and the legitimacy approach. The first one is the bargaining power approach, the bargaining power approach was the first of the theoretical lenses that was used to study political risk, and it was used in the studies in the 70s and 80s, most of the time, to analyze how big companies, many times in the oil industry were expropriated by some governments. And this approach relies on the concept of bargaining power, this constant and dynamic relationship between the multinational and the government. In the beginning, the company has very high bargaining power when negotiating, then two conditions with the company can decide to enter or not to enter, to go to a different country, to negotiate with multiple governments to see which one provides better conditions. And this is because the company is very mobile, it doesn't have sunk costs, the company can decide to enter or not to enter into more and less, bring this technology and bring the technology. However, once the company has made an investment, the bargaining power is transferred progressively worse by the government. Now, the company has made some deals, has recruited some people, has transferred some technology, has some contracts already signed. Leaving the country is not free. There will be costs and therefore the government knows this and the government starts having more bargaining power to alter the rules of the game. But this happens, of course, only once the investment has taken place. This bargaining power goes more and more towards the government. The more the advantages of the company are obsolete, the more the local companies learn and imitate, the less the company has an edge and advantage or is perceived to provide fewer advantages to the government. The more the government has some incentive to try to appropriate some of the rents that the company. Unless the conclusion is, unless the company regains some bargaining power, maybe through investments, through

innovation, there may be a point in which the government might intervene unilaterally to try to prohibit. What were the criticisms of this approach and why the other approach came after? Well, the first criticism is in this approach, the multinational government relationship is considered a zero sum game. There is no room for mutual gain. It was useful, as I said, to explain the expropriations in sectors with very high sunk cost, such as the oil and the mining. But what about all the sectors that after some decades afterwards, they were also expropriated? Over all the power to intervene is not a sufficient condition. It's just a necessary one. Governments don't always intervene, even if they can. And even when they can, there is a huge discussion about which companies are private. Some cases, as we will explain later, such as Google in China, suggest that this approach, building on bargaining power has maybe lost a bit of explanatory power and needs a bit of complementary views. The second approach is the political institutions approach. Here, many studies, many scholars, and you will see some of my studies here as well. This approach builds on the analysis of institutions and constraints that the political system imposes on the government to limit that discretion. And most of the studies have tried to predict which countries or which profile of the countries show higher level of risk and which one therefore would be better for the multinationals to invest. In general, the majority of the studies show that the safer the environment. This is very logical, very intuitive. The safer the environment, the higher probability of investment is there because the government has lower discretion over corruption, more economic freedom, higher protection of property rights. There are many indicators, many industries that have been used to measure the level of safeness of the country. However, there is also another stream building on a more proactive strategy in which companies build on their political capabilities to obtain advantages, and this perspective sometimes companies go where there is more risk rather than less risk. And this is because sometimes companies normally at home or in other investments, they have learned and they have developed how to deal with governments that accumulate a lot of power. They have learned how to use political contributions, how to disseminate information on the media, how to negotiate, how to lobby, and sometimes even how to corrupt, which of course, is not ethical. But what happens? This approach, although useful to analyze the profile of the countries that are the destination of the investments also has some criticism. And again, it's similar one to the previous approach. Once again, the possibility of intervention does not imply that the government will necessarily intervene. Its approach is useful in which patients have higher levels of risk, lower level of risk, but not why some action taken against one particular company and not others with similar characteristics. So these two approaches have been useful and they are still useful. But there is a missing piece which can be summarized and governments can intervene. But why do they want to

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intervene? And here is where the latest of the approaches basically developed in the last 10 years has came recently is the legitimacy approach, and here the emphasis is placed on the congruence between the multinationals activities and the goals of the government goals in a broad sense of economic, political, social, etc.. If the government proceeds from grants, then the multinational will be legitimized. It will be perceived as an agent that creates value for the society and therefore there will be no motivations to intervene even if the government can intervene. Intervention will be detrimental. The company will leave, will not bring any more knowledge transfer and will not create the jobs. It will not pay taxes at all, for that matter, for the government, because the government will be perceived as the country. It will be harder to get more investments in the future. But if the government does not receive anything, there will be a high motivation to intervene and modify this, even if that's contrary in the short term but the interests of the country. As we will see in the case that comes in the next slide, the intervention is motivated by the lack of legitimacy, although, of course, how much bargaining power the company has and what level of political, institutional, discretional, etc.. There are still important the moderate options available to the government, but the final trigger will be the lack of legitimacy. The case study is the case of Google in China, which is very well developed in the article of Stevens and colleagues in 2015, Google, as we all know, it's a technological company and therefore has very low sunk costs that they don't have huge machinery like oil or mining company. It has a higher bargaining power. It had an increase in market share since the beginning. And it's a valuable source of innovation and technology for the country. A very bad reputation for a country, Google believes. It's true that China is a country where there are little restrictions to the government discretionality. But similar to other non intervene firms, invest in there. So why was Google intervened, expropriated and forced to leave China? It was basically due to the lack of legitimacy that the Chinese government received due to some disagreements about censorship. China tried to prevent the access of information about certain events of the Chinese population, and Google didn't want to concede. It's, of course, a very sensitive sector of this information sector in China, as we know, is very much politicised. Perhaps also the American origin of the company also played the role. And basically, that was the source of the problem, and it's a very interesting case, I encourage all of you to read the article if you want a more detailed explanation. Sometimes the legitimacy might decrease also for the response. This is the case when the companies associated for within, but then there is a new regime after some political changes. There are some others, for example, showing this in Chile after the Pinochet dictatorship ended or more recently, this study by Daniel Hill showing the same for the Arab Spring. Legitimacy, therefore, is critical for multinationals, but not only with the government, but with all the stakeholders,

shareholders, workers, suppliers, clients, society is very important to communicate how the company is contributing to the society. Not only is not only important to contribute, it's important to communicate that you are. This happens even with the stakeholders in other countries and here I simply mentioned the case of IKEA. IKEA, as we all know, is a company in the furniture sector and IKEA tends to standardize the catalogue of IKEA is more or less the same in all the countries. Small changes, I think in Japan, the furniture there is smaller, but basically they standardize the catalog. And when they entered Saudi Arabia, they standardize the catalog, but they removed with Photoshop women from some pictures. And because, of course, they thought, OK, we are entering Saudi Arabia, we should adopt adaptation to the country's importance and this is an acceptable practice in the country. It was maybe unacceptable practice in the country, but this was very much against what their home country or their home society aims for, and they face huge pressures from clients, media and even city politicians until the company apologized. I will show you in the next slide that the two folks nowadays, we live in a world in which the typical excuses that we don't do, but it's because of our suppliers is often not enough, not legitimize. Companies definitely face risk. Of course, some of them will continue their operations if they see no negative repercussions from they hold. And this is the two photos of the catalog of IKEA, the left one is the one that was released in Saudi Arabia and the right one is the one that was released in Europe, I guess, because it was the currency in euros, as you can see, the same photo, just that they removed the moment, not because she's naked or anything, but they considered that in Saudi Arabia that was the way to go. But at heart, their legitimacy in their home country, because we know IKEA, this company logo of IKEA even has the colors of Sweden. The importance of Sweden as a stakeholder for IKEA is very large and they overlooked. So finally, how do we land on small and medium enterprises, which is the topic of interest? Well, political risk literature has mainly focused on large multinationals, largely ignoring small and medium enterprises, which, of course, can be multinationals as well, and also family owned firms that I think there is a huge gap in the literature. If you read most of the references that I put in the slides and in general in the Irish literature, you will see that the huge majority have focused on on large multinationals. Of course, large multinationals appear on media. We all know about IKEA, we all know about Google, but there are many small and medium enterprises. They represent a huge percentage of economies and they have been mostly overlooked in the political literature. I think there are huge possibilities for collaboration, especially if we can get collaboration with managers. I suspect the majority of studies we and I'm guilty here as well, we focus on large multinationals because it's easier to collect data. There are all these huge databases where we can draw to collect data for our quantitative studies and maybe it's harder to get data from

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small and medium enterprises. Here may be more collaborations with managers, interview servers. Could provide data-collection opportunities very, very useful to gain insights and applicable. And I think the three perspectives apply, on the one hand, small and medium enterprises might have lower bargaining power, lower possibilities to develop political capabilities, to contribute to political campaigns, to recruit former politicians to use ground corruption. Probably they have fewer opportunities to do this, and therefore, they need to get protection from political risk in other ways, perhaps through collective actions. And therefore, the relevance of connections with local authorities. Gaining legitimacy, I suspect, will be particularly important how small and medium enterprises different from large multinationals in their relationship with governments, I think is a great research opportunity that I encourage all of you to pursue. If you are interested in this topic, one particular example would be interesting. Sorry to cite myself, but it's a paper that I wrote with two Italian colleagues who are specialized on family firms. We didn't focus on SMEs in particular. It was more on family owned firms. But there is a huge correlation between the family owned firms and small enterprises, we highlighted the importance of social capital as a way in which firms can establish long lasting connections with politicians for long term goals. In general, some of the firms have longer management tenure than the managers tend to stay for many years. And even after they are there many times, their sons or daughters come after. So local authorities tend to rely on them longer because they know they are going to be here for long. They tend to develop what is called a responsible corporate citizen. Many times these companies don't have the name of the family as the name of the company, and therefore they care very much about the reputation. I may be easier for them to share knowledge and contacts with other monitors because it's basically the family, everything stays in the family, whereas professional managers sometimes are more reluctant to have the connections to introduce to the politicians that I know introduce the next manager because who knows that he wants my position or something. So in general, social capital we found is a huge tool for family firms to develop these connections with politicians. And these connections with politicians, of course, provide opportunities and advantages when we invest in abroad. So, well, thank you very much for your attention. I hope you find

it interesting if anybody is all interested and wants to dig deeper and you can, of course, contact me if for any reason you have something on this topic, I would definitely invite you to consider a special issue that we are running out of the European Journal of International Management. We are four special issue editors and I think we are not all here or at least three of us here. Dr. Rainer and myself, the deadline is very soon. It is the end of the month. But maybe we could provide a few extra days if somebody needs. It is a special issue of the European Journal of International Management. Its focus will be on political risk. And we would definitely love having something about how political risk affects small and medium enterprises. If anybody has any comment, any question now or even later, you have there my email, I would be very glad to talk about.

Speaker’s Biography:

Dr. Alfredo Jiménez has a Master’s degree in Business Economics Research and a PhD in Business Management. He is currently Associate Professor at Kedge Business School in Bordeaux. Previously he was Associate Professor at the University of Burgos in Spain. His research interests are focused on the process and determinants of success in the internationalization strategy of firms. His current lines of research include the impact of institutional variables, political risk, cultural and psychic distance and corruption on foreign direct investments and entrepreneurship. He is also working on a research line devoted to virtual team and multi-cultural team management and dynamics. He has published several papers in international journals including the Journal of International Business Studies, Journal of World Business, Business and Society, International Business Review, Journal of Business Research Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Journal of International Management, Management International Review, and European Journal of International Management. He has also been a visiting scholar in different institutions in Norway, Germany, Australia, Singapore, Italy, Ecuador and Mexico, as well as participating in the X-Culture Project as a member of its Advisory Board and instructor. He is project reviewer for the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness and for the Government of Ecuador and Poland.

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Keynote Speech – II:

A Living Business Model – Your Digital Twin

Kim Warren, Strategy Writer, Owner/Director, Strategy Dynamics Ltd., United Kingdom

Strategy-making and management has long been limited by a limited understanding of how an enterprise actually functions as a working system. Improved method and tools have now solved this problem, so it is now quite practical to build a working, quantified model of any enterprise or any important function or issue. Such a Living Business Model can be used as a "digital twin" to bench-test any new plan or initiative, and continually manage the enterprise.

Thank you, Rainer, and thank you everybody for introducing me to this community and this opportunity to talk to you.

I should say that the slides for this presentation are available at the link on the screen here http://sdl.re/WurzburgLivingBusinessModels. If you watch the video afterwards, you should be able to these slides or perhaps the slides will be posted on the conference site as well. I should also add that there are many, many more slides in that deck than I will get through this morning, because there's quite a lot of background explanation behind what I'm going to talk to you about.

And so in very fundamental terms - if you put yourself in the position of any strategic leader, the important questions that we need to answer, first of all, for any organization, whatever performance measure we're looking at, we want to know why did we come to the situation that we've got to today? And answering that question is important because it tells us how the enterprise system actually works and there are things in our history that will be determining what will happen going out into the future.

The second question is, where will we go if we go on as we currently are?

And of course, the fundamental question we want to answer is how to make performance improvements into the future on whatever measure it is you're focused on.

And the way to get into this is to talk to you about a case study of a real SME company called OPUN: https://opun.co.uk/. What they do is they support households who are having big improvements made to their homes. So having a roof extension or a kitchen improvement or anything, that's a substantial cost and investment for improving the home.

They attract homeowners’ enquiries, mostly through web marketing and word of mouth, and they recruit and validate contractors - kitchen development people or garage-builders or whatever it is. OPUN employs skilled staff to help with the design, the drawings, the planning, the fitting, and then those skilled staff actually monitor and supervise the building work and check on the warranty that follows up after that.

Now, this is a business that started in 2015. It is now part of a major retail group in the UK called the John Lewis Partnership and they've been using living business model from before they actually started. They built this living business model before the business even tried to start.

This is the control panel that they, the management team at the company actually looks at on a weekly basis. You're looking at one hundred and four weeks here. This is a snapshot at an early point in time and the business is somewhere around here around week thirty-five to forty at the time that we're looking at this.

So what this control panel is showing up at the top there is the project pipeline. This is projects going through their process, enquiries coming in, then projects in planning and projects that are being completed each week at the end.

Very importantly, they're tracking quality and conversion rates. So what is the quality of service that they're offering? That's the middle one of those green charts. What's the project quality? How well are the projects being done by the contractors? And the first of those charts is about the conversion rates.

To the left, you've got the decisions that are the key ones, but they're making their more decisions than this. But these are some key ones. How much should we spend on marketing