Internationalization Strategies Amid Digital Disruption: Opportunities and Challenges for Firms in Emerging and Developing Economies

In this dissertation, I examine how firms in emerging and developing countries face the opportunities and challenges presented by Industry 4.0 and how a more nuanced understanding of the role of the home country's digital institutional context shapes their internationalization strategies. The first essay conceptualizes the development of digital capabilities in small and medium enterprises (SMEs). It validates and proposes a multi-item measurement scale (ORGDIGCAP) to assess digital capabilities in SMEs and provides insights into the role of digital capability advancement and digital strategy formulation in fostering digital agility for the competitiveness of SMEs in the digital age. The second essay investigates the role of home country digital institutions as antecedents of firm digitalization in Latin American firms and examines how digitalization influences firm internationalization, emphasizing the importance of the country's institutional digital maturity in enabling firms to leverage digitalization for resilience and global competitiveness. The third essay explores how the development of a firm's digital capabilities interacts with the country's digital institutional maturity level to influence international expansion via exports, providing a novel perspective on the intersection of digitalization, institutions, and international trade. Rather than merely asserting that digitalization enhances exports, it demonstrates that digital capabilities are context-dependent, challenging the one-size-fits-all assumption prevalent in digital trade literature. This dissertation offers critical insights into how firms in emerging and developing economies address the challenges and opportunities associated with leveraging emerging digital technologies to shape their internationalization strategies within the context of the digital economy.