Measurements of international and global exposure: meta analysis and review of the research of the last decade

Abstract

The main aim of this dissertation is to research and measure the international and global exposure of organizations, with a specific focus upon the positive and negative correlation amongst variables and the degree of exposure. The problem statement relies on understanding whether the internationalization of organizations actually occurs and whether the instruments implemented truly measure the phenomenon. Moreover, it will be observed how, due to the multidimensionality of the phenomenon, complex is to determine whether the market and organizations are globalized as we think they are. In order to comply with these objectives, we initially depicted the multifaceted definitions of the complex phenomenon of globalization, followed by a description of its historical background, its drivers and two opposite views by economists regarding the current state of globalization. We concluded by explicating the multidimensional indexes of globalization. The achieved results that arose from the globalization indexes depict that the ranking of the most globalized countries changes based on the chosen indicators, the selection and criterion with which the indexes are developed is almost completely subjective consequently we didn’t achieve a universal and concrete vision of the phenomenon. From the market focus we shifted to multinational corporations, we defined the multinational corporations describing the main internationalization theories and indexes, which measure the degree of internationalization of an organization; both theories and indexes were subject to criticism. To conclude we brought forward a meta-analysis, the interdisciplinary and interdependent nature of the internationalization research offers the type of rich knowledgeable framework in which meta-analysis techniques can be most valuable. Samples were taken from multiple studies and a meta-analysis that aggregates the empirical findings was conducted; this study presents a systematic investigation of the correlation amongst indicators that should measure firm’s internationalization and internationalization itself. Based on theories and dissenting opinions we developed numerous hypothesis which we statistically tested in order to observe whether the hypothesis could be accepted or not. By considering all variables a meta-analysis was brought forward in order to see if there is a positive correlation amongst the variables and the degree of international exposure, the higher correlation could indicate the finest indicator of the degree of internationalization. It is hoped that this study will provide a higher awareness regarding the phenomenon, its current state, measurements and discrepancies. On the basis of the meta-analytic findings several directions for future research are provided.