Selection of Case Companies
Internationalizing the Small and Medium Sized Firm – four cases
Having decided to investigate Swedish SME’s with a permanent physical presence in at least one other country, thus a company that have reached the fifth step of the internationalization process1)) in another country, the search for possible case companies started. Following the SME-definition above the authors thought there should be quite a few companies fitting the profile. Through the authors’ former knowledge and via company websites, a basic evaluation process was made. As it turned out, quite few companies fitted the profile. Some had been through the process too long ago; some were too big and some only worked with independent local agents or local partners using their brand. The authors also tried to find examples of both failures and successes. After some studies of prospective companies the case companies were chosen and later interviewed.
Since the authors have a qualitative approach a rather small sample of companies were interviewed. The initial thought was to have around five companies in the study. The important factor in a case study is not that a specific number of companies are included. The important thing is that the authors are confident with the saturation of the study (Glaser & Strauss 1967). This can be interpreted as that more companies should be included in the study until a new interview does not provide the authors with considerable new information about the subject researched. After the fourth company, the authors saw no new major themes come up. The internationalization process in the studied companies showed similar characteristics. It was more or less the same aspects that appeared to play an important role in each case. The authors therefore mean that a sufficient saturation had been reached. The authors’ previous experience in this field may have reduced the number of companies that had to be included in order to reach a sufficient level of saturation. Here it should again be stressed that one of the authors has been working for one of the case companies, Avanza.
