Internationalization of Healthcare and Care firms: A case study regarding the factors affecting the internationalization process of Swedish Healthcare and Care firms

Abstract

The international business environment has experienced an increase in the international activities of service firms in recent decades. Service firms are expanding to markets outside of their home country market, seeking new geographical markets to increase their market shares and strengthen their position on a global scale. The previous literature on internationalizing firms tends to focus on traditional manufacturing firms, ignoring firms operating in service sectors. Although there has been an increase of literature about internationalizing service firms in recent years, studies regarding the internationalization of service firms operating in highly regulated markets such as the healthcare and care sector are still a rather unexploited field. This case study investigates factors that affect the internationalization process of three Swedish healthcare and care firms, with particular emphasis on drivers and barriers. By studying this rather unexploited field of the internationalization literature, this study has the ambition to increase the knowledge of the subject. The results suggest that Swedish healthcare and care firms experience drivers and barriers related to their internationalization process, found in the existing literature of internationalization, however, some industry specific characteristics were shown to affect their internationalization process as well.