Reza Mohammad Kazemi, Hamed Nikraftar, Jahangir Yadollahi Farsi, Mahmoud Ahmadpour Dariani
To date, there are no studies on the effect of IEO on firms' competitiveness. By reviewing the literature on IEO we understand that most of the previous studies have dealt with three concepts of risk-taking, innovation and pro-activeness and these studies are very similar to the studies of EO that have used dependent variables of internationalization. In these studies, IEO is a construct that does not differ from EO and internationalization is a context for studying EO. Thus, this paper builds on previous researches and adopts a philosophical conceptualization method to render a novel approach to study IEO. We conclude that IEO should be conceptualized again, rather than considering it as EO in an international context. Our contribution is that we have regarded IEO and EO different from each other, as independent constructs.