The emergence of online global market place and the multilayered view of international entrepreneurship

Author: Hamid Etemad

Publication: Journal of International Entrepreneurship, Vol. 15, No. 4, December 2017

Abstract: 

This article revisits the question posed in the previous issue: how should we approach the increasingly more complex international entrepreneurship decisions and problems? It aims to further elaborate on the previously proposed conceptual multilayered framework of international entrepreneurship by incorporating another encompassing layer to the framework, the rapidly emerging online global market place. This amended framework will portray a relatively comprehensive view of IE’s influential and operational domains, and will also serve as the context for the highlighting papers that follow this article.

In the previous issue, we suggested that the evolutionary path of international entrepreneurship (IE) developments have transformed IE into a multidisciplinary disciple that would draw and also rely on few allied fields and disciplines (Etemad 2017). A schematic depiction of the framework was presented in Fig. 1 in the previous issue and is reproduced below. In favor of time and space, we abstract from the substance of theoretical arguments presented previously. Briefly, the framework identified primary influential domains that are integral constituents of the field, and also suggested that as a field of scholarly research and management decisions, IE should be defined at the common intersections of those influences. However, we will follow the previous approach of traveling across time and distance to pause and reflect on potentially significant developments and milestones along the IE’s evolutionary path. Similarly, we will also treat each article in this issue as a new development and highlight selective features of it to enrich our view and the conceptual framework proposed previously.

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