Artificial intelligence orientation and internationalization speed: A knowledge management perspective

This study explores the role of Artificial Intelligence (AI) orientation in facilitating the internationalization speed of enterprises from emerging economies. Based upon a knowledge management perspective, the paper proposes that AI orientation positively affects internationalization speed via broadening the scope of new knowledge, promoting knowledge creation, application, and dissemination within organizations, and hastening the redundancy of existing knowledge to increase adaptability to global dynamics. Moreover, while online local knowledge search facilitates, offline local knowledge search constrains the acceleration effect of AI orientation on internationalization. Using a dataset from China, the paper finds that AI orientation has a significant positive effect on accelerating the internationalization processes of emerging market firms, and home country embeddedness negatively while regional digital development positively moderates this relationship. The findings contribute to the literature by elucidating how AI orientation expedites the process of an emerging market firm's internationalization from a knowledge management perspective, thereby providing insights for the future scholarly investigation and practical applications in this field.