IOSR Journal of Business and Management (IOSR-JBM) e-ISSN: 2278-487X, p-ISSN: 2319-7668. Volume 20, Issue 7. Ver. IV (July. 2018), PP 63-76 www.iosrjournals.org DOI: 10.9790/487X-2007046376 www.iosrjournals.org 63 | Page What Decides The Pace? : Internationalization Process of Pump & Motor Manufacturers in Coimbatore, South India Dr. G. Acanthi 1 , Sri Ramakrishna 2 1 Head, Department of Management Sciences (UG), 2 College of Arts & Science, Coimbatore -641006 South India Corresponding Author: Dr. G. Acanthi Abstract: Internationalization process of a company is always a planned strategy. It involves more resource commitment, control and operational expectations. On the path to internationalization, the entire firm’s capacity is at discussion again and again: infrastructural facilities for production, setting up of own R&D units, operational skills, management’s involvement etc need to be committed. In other words, how fast is the pace of internationalization of firm, will reveal the level of involvement and commitment toward international operations. The objective of this study is to describe the process of internationalization of SMEs and to explore / explain why some firms go for a faster pace of internationalization and some follow a step by step gradual approach. The study has focused on selecting 143 engineering and manufacturing companies and further went in depth to analyze its characteristics. The difference in speediness happens among firms because, the increasing evidences show that small size companies operate in international markets with less experience and some medium and high value adding manufacturing companies operate with more resources and are capable of sustainability through product scope, financial commitments and resourceful counterparts. The aim of this article is to identify what decides the pace of internationalization among these firms and to find which variables play a prominent role in deciding the pace. To further enhance our understanding of this phenomenon and to test it through statistical tools, simple and multiple regression, chi square and pearson’s correlations are used from the SPSS package. Proac tiveness, competitor’s responses, differences among exporting firms, and firm characteristics/ demographic variables are chosen to find the key dimension of speediness/ pace of internationalization of the select sample. Key words: Internationalization, Pace, Proactiveness , Speediness. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date of Submission: 02-07-2018 Date of acceptance: 18-07-2018 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I. Introduction Globalization, which has opened the doors of India to multinationals, coupled with growing concerns of pollution control, water and waste –water treatment, and demand for energy –efficient systems is changing the scenario of the Industry. Pump manufactures in India continuously need to improve to enhance productivity, quality and service to customer. Good business planning therefore must include the engineering expertise that has made such business possible in the past and will without doubt continue to do so in the future. The Indian pumps and motor industry is in the order of Rs.3500 crores which makes it to be about 2.5 % of world market. Indian Pumps & motors are now being exported to more than 70 countries both developed and developing countries. This can be expected to happen increasingly and across many more countries around the world through proper interventions. Coimbatore, a city of south India is holding a major market share of 40% of the Indian pump and motor industry. The city caters the domestic market by its commitment, new technology, variety of its product and technology crafted by its own technocrats. The founders of these firms are experienced in innovating and meeting the product specifications of host country markets. Some of the prominent firms include, Mahendra pumps, Texmo, Aqua, sharp, and some joint ventures and foreign subsidiaries are operating from Coimbatore and supplying their pumps and motors to various parts of the world. These firms follow a slow to medium pace of internationalization. i.e they have taken 5 years to 20 years for internationalizing their enterprises from the day of founding to the day of their first foreign assignment. This article will explain the pace followed by these cluster and further discuss about the reasons of slowness in internationalizing. Speed indicates how many foreign expansions of firm undertakes in a certain period of time. Therefore to measure the speed, the average number of foreign subsidiaries per year was computed. Therefore the number of foreign subsidiaries divided by the number of years since the firm‟s first expansion. A large number of (average) expansions per year indicates a fast paced internationalization