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Sue Vaux Halliday: Gloucestershire Business School, Cheltenham, UK
Richard Cawley: University of Surrey, Guildford, UK
Introduction
It has been suggested that international marketing needs to re-conceptualise around group-type networks (Dunning, 1995; Prasad and Ghauri, 1993) to internationalise across the remaining Asian third of the world (or East Asian half if the Chinese commonwealth is included (Kao, 1993)). Matching this suggestion is the observation that the export process could usefully adopt a relational approach (Styles and Ambler, 1994). These observations laid the foundation for this paper: that is that there is the need to research more carefully the cultural aspects of internationalising (Harich and LaBahn, 1998). Relationship creation and concomitant learning are here linked to the dynamic process of corporate culture to provide a researchable framework. This conceptual model aids understanding of the currently hinted at "softer" elements of international marketing. For, as Dunning (1997, p. 2) writes, given the prevalence of alliances in a globalising world, it is noteworthy that:"the governance structure of these alliances is based on shared goals, mutual trust, commitment and consensus. In such cases, the cultures of the partners in such alliances are highly critical in determining the success or failure of these alliances, and thus, the future competitive advantages of the firms in the industry."
This emphasis on the "softer" side to value creation has its role to play in strategic management concern with creating value (Doz and Hamel, 1998). For the vehicle for value, the development of a market-oriented capability within the firm (Baker and Sinkula, 1999) requires that organisational change takes place. For change to occur, new learning has to occur. Learning is thus required to create the market-orientation that can deliver value (Kohli and Jaworski, 1990) and this needs context-sensitive understanding.
At the heart of this paper there is also a concern to open for discussion the definition of the firm at the opening of the third millennium. Increasingly the talk is of the firm as a social community, whose central function is the transfer of knowledge (Hampden-Turner, 1999; Kogut and Zander, 1993) or as a series of re-negotiated contracts and relationships (Kay, 1993), where managers are less rational planner and more "symbolic actors, whose primary function is to develop desirable patterns of meaning" (Starkey, 1998, p....