Word from the Guest Editors: Networks, Resilience, and Internationalization

This issue highlights two related trends: networks that support firm internationalisation, and networks that themselves undergo internationalisation, sometimes involuntarily. The four contributions gathered here show that the performance and resilience of international players no longer rely solely on the mobilisation of preexisting networks, but on the ability to simultaneously orchestrate these two reciprocal dynamics. Valérie Fossats and Anastasia Sartorius-Khalapsina open the dossier with ‘Regional network management in Asia’. Based on thirty in-depth interviews with three European multinationals operating in B2B, they show how the interdependence established by the Regional Economic Comprehensive Partnership (RCEP) requires flexible multi-country coordination and identify the simultaneous management of local and regional networks as a distinctive dynamic capability, significantly enriching the revised Uppsala model. Matthieu Cabrol, Véronique Favre-Bonté and Ekaterina Le Pennec propose ‘Resilience processes and networks for overcoming exogenous shocks: the case of Russian international SMEs during the Russian Ukrainian conflict’. Their two-year longitudinal study reveals four phases of resilience and theorises ‘forced internationalisation of networks’: sudden rupture of Western ties, mobilisation of informal survival networks, reorientation towards the East/South, then rebuilding around national institutional and digital platforms. In the third article entitled ‘Typology of distant social networks during expatriation: a functional and process-based analysis’, Olivier Mérignac and Marie-Laure Grillat use a mixed sequential methodology to construct a typology of five types of cross-border links and highlight the decisive role of spouses and digital tools in building hybrid social capital that complements local networks. Mariana Vargas Braga da Silva, Frédéric Prévot and Luis Felipe Nascimento conclude the dossier with ‘Mapping international scientific production on social diversity in the context of ESG’. Their comparative bibliometric analysis reveals deeply divided thematic agendas between high-income countries and middle- or low-income economies, making a case for the effective internationalisation of academic networks. These four contributions confirm that contemporary internationalisation is fundamentally relational and that understanding it requires grasping the very transformation of networks under the influence of the trajectories of the organisations that activate them. To supplement and enrich this dossier, we offer three reading notes to help you better understand the dynamics at work on the African continent, which hosted the 2024 ATLAS AFMI conference in Marrakesh. Marx Valax begins by presenting the book written by Suzane Apitsa and Eric Milliot entitled “Innovation, Logistics, and Development in Africa – Challenges and Development Opportunities,” which examines the transformations of the African ecosystem theme by theme. Amine Balambo chooses to focus on Zahra Maafiri’s book on women entrepreneurs in the export sector in Morocco. Finally, Fedoua Tounassi invites us to take a look at the collective work coordinated by Léonce Ndikumana and James K. Boyce, which is devoted to a costly phenomenon for the African continent: capital flight.