Integrating the cognition literature in entrepreneurship and strategy with the career imprinting literature, we propose that the geographic diversification of export sales in international new ventures (INVs) resembles that of their founders' most recent (geographically diversified) employer because founders bear a repertoire of the ‘logics of action’ from their employers regarding how to diversify geographically. We then propose two boundary conditions that influence the relationship between the geographic diversification of export sales of founders' most recent employers and that of their INVs: length of exposure and time since last exposure to their most recent geographically diversified employer. We test these hypotheses using longitudinal data on a sample of 3420 INVs. Our findings broadly support our theoretical propositions except for the moderating role of founders' length of exposure.

将创业和战略中的认知文献与职业印记文献相结合，我们提出，国际新企业（INV）出口销售的地域多元化与其创始人最近（地域多元化）雇主的地域多元化相似，因为创始人拥有雇主关于如何实现地域多元化的“行动逻辑”。然后，我们提出两个边界条件，影响创始人最近雇主的出口销售的地理多元化与其 INV 的出口销售地理多元化之间的关系：接触时间长度和自上次接触最近的地理多元化雇主以来的时间。我们使用 3420 个 INV 样本的纵向数据来测试这些假设。