Benefits and Disadvantages of the network approach to project planning
Project planning is a procedural step in project management, where required documentation is created to ensure successful project completion. It is at the heart of the project life cycle and tells everyone involved where you’re going and how you’re going to get there. The project plan clearly defines how the project is executed, monitored, controlled, and closed.
Followings are the benefits of the network approach to project planning:
- Goes beyond traditional internationalization, models inspire other research on internationalization.
- Describes business reality and context well.
- Has got empirical support.
- Addresses some shortcomings of the other approaches; for example, internationalization behavior falling outside the traditional models.
- Demonstrates the impact of internal and external actors and long-term relationships on internationalization.
- Can capture the interconnectedness and concurrence of internationalization.
- Can explain de- and re-, inward and outward internationalization.
- Suitable for describing the selection of foreign market, customer, and entry mode.
- Shows that the resources necessary for internationalization can be acquired through network relationships.
- Has contributed to developing research methodologies.
Followings are the drawbacks of the network approach to project planning:
- Has mostly concentrated on large and/or manufacturing firms.
- Has limited strength as a tool for under-standing internationalization and drawing conclusions about its pattern.
- Offers vague predictions, uses indistinctive criteria (while not addressing how firms shift positions in the typology) and includes too many variables.
- Does not show how to create relationships.
- Does not discuss the importance of decision-maker and firm characteristics.
- Does not examine how the companies overcome the problems experienced in internationalization through their network relationships.
- Might be less suitable for explaining radical strategic changes.
- Ignores some external factors propelling an enterprise towards internationalization like unsolicited orders and government economic policies.
