The Fish Biology and Firms’ Internationalisation: The Process Explained Through a Metaphor

Globalisation has changed the way companies face the challenges of international markets, representing a path to expansion and sometimes survival in the context of global competitiveness. This paper investigates how companies face the stimuli of market expansion within the challenges of internationalisation, and aims to provide implications in barriers that have an impact on the business fabric, on planning and on companies’ expectations in international markets. We incorporated two different studies into this work, where we proposed and tested a theoretical model. To this end, we included a quantitative survey made up of a sample of 406 managers of Portuguese companies, where we showed that the barriers are overcome with greater planning on the part of the companies and that the greater the planning on the part of the companies, the higher the expectations of a high financial return. The results shows that planning, barriers and expectations are central for managers and are decisive in motivating Portuguese companies to internationalise. Subsequently, we used a quantitative survey based on 100 questionnaires with CEOs of internationalised companies operating during Covid-19, which made it possible to outline a crucial diagnosis of the internationalisation process in the Covid-19 period. The results presented are based on the international development of companies, decision-making, strategy implementation, the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic and the strategies used to reduce and mitigate these impacts in the post-Covid-19 period. In addition to other statistical analysis, confirmatory factor analysis within a structural equation modeling framework was performed.