Le imprese italiane tra internazionalizzazione e globalizzazione. Una valutazione del grado di globalizzazione del settore e delle imprese nella filiera tessile-abbigliamento

Our research originates from a general consideration about the Italian situation: a lot has been written about the internationalisation processes of firms, but much less is known about globalisation processes. The “Italian way” to internationalisation has been the focus of several previous works, which also explained the success of a model that would not actually meet the necessary “theoretical requirements” to be successful. When we move to the analysis of the globalisation processes of Italian firms, it is reasonable to believe that there are firms which can be considered global players and that there is an “Italian way to globalisation”, which is deeply influenced by the specificities of the country model. It is worth remarking that by “globalisation” we mean a subset of the internationalisation, that is we refer to all those phenomena taking place when markets are strongly interrelated and a competitive advantage is the result of the exploitation of their interactions. In other words, foreign markets are not being reached by means of a country-by-country strategy but by playing in a worldwide integrated environment. Global strategies have been studied in the literature with global marketing approaches, but we must report the lack of an integrated theoretical framework of global strategies and empirical verifications, not limited to single case studies. As a consequence, the various contributions to the analysis of global strategies [Porter 1986; 1990; Bartlett & Ghoshal 1989; Daniels & Frost 1991; Doz, Santos & Williamson 2001; Zou & Cavusgil 1996; Knights & Cavusgil 2005] did not seem suitable for our present research purposes. Furthermore, those studies are generally focused on a comparison between international and global markets (without properly specifying the actual differences) and between a lesser and a larger degree of globalisation of multinational firms. The two most common approaches to global strategies in the literature are based on the industrial organization-based theory and the resource-based theory (for details see Zou & Cavusgil 1996 and Collis 1991), but neither is suitable for an integrated view comprising the two aspects. We consequently decided to adopt Yip's theoretical model in our research. Yip’s model appeared to be the more complete and satisfactory [Loverlock e Yip 1996; Yip 1992; 2000; 2003; Yip e Dempster 2005]. According to that author, it is not enough to locate value creating activities all over the world, for a strong global integration is also needed; globally consistent strategies must be adopted, global networks must be built and profits must also be maximised on a global scale, by moving from a country businesses vision to a worldwide business one. From this point of view, there are two basic issues that firms must face in order to elaborate global strategies: to what an extent the industry is globalised and how global the strategy to implement should be (as opposed to multilocal strategies). The adoption process of a global strategy moves from the specification of the core strategy, passes through its internationalisation and arrives at the design of the network of interrelations. The answer to the issue about the elements of the core strategy which should be globalised implies a two-step analysis: first, the intensity of globalisation drivers in the industry needs to be evaluated, for they indicate the potential of globalisation of the industry itself; then, appropriate levers have to be identified so to let the firm best globalise itself. This contribution can be traced back to the industrial organization theory and can be defined as «normative contingency frameworks» [Zou & Cavusgil, 1996, 58; Whitla 2003], because it offers tools strongly linked to the strategies and performances of firms. Although the fact that it is an integrated and multidimensional approache is the most valuable merit of the model, it has significant limitations in applicability and in significance [Whitla 2003]. In particular, the internal organisational analysis looks deficient, especially so when it comes to resource analysis. In our study, we consequently devoted greater attention to the investigation of those internal (resources and competences) and relational factors that appear to be the requirements firms must meet in order to be able to adopt global strategies [Collis 1991, Grant 2005]. The purpose of our research, still in progress, is – as previously stated – the application of the model above to the Italian case. To this aim, we took several steps. Firstly, we identified the most significant industries as regards the originality of the Italian internationalisation model; traditional firms and specialised suppliers were selected and a specific industry was chosen, namely the high-end textile and clothing industry. This analysis was then extended to the related textile mechanics industry and to support services to internationalisation. Secondly, we broadened our study and cases of global champions were identified and studied. Possible future research directions include, on the one side, the extension of our study to other industries or segments; on the other, the elaboration of a new theoretical model integrating the industrial organisation approach and the resource based view.