Purpose of Review

The two Nordic European Union countries, Finland and Sweden, have common features and similarities based on their rich forest resources and sizable sawmill industry with internationalization mainly through exports. We compared the Finnish and Swedish sawmill industries and market developments since 1990 and discussed the most eminent country and firm-level differences. In this context, we conducted an academic literature review on strategic approaches of sawmill industries in these countries and mapped the drivers of competitiveness that we could identify from the studies published between years 1990 and 2019.

Recent Findings

In our study, drivers of competitiveness were identified to stem dominantly from the firm-level strategic decisions and use of internal resources and capabilities, whereas the factors related to the external environment were found to be less prominent. From a methodological perspective, the use of qualitative methods has become more common towards the present date, while the use of mixed approaches is very rare.

Summary

Research on sawmill industry strategies is quite versatile, but more comparative studies are needed to increase understanding of the developments and state of complex sawmill business that is influenced by a myriad of internal and also external factors.

中文翻译：

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打造竞争优势的战略管理—芬兰和瑞典锯木厂行业的国际化模式

审查目的

北欧的两个欧盟国家，芬兰和瑞典，基于其丰富的森林资源和规模庞大的锯木厂产业而具有共同特征和相似之处，而国际化主要通过出口实现。我们比较了1990年以来芬兰和瑞典的锯木厂行业和市场发展情况，并讨论了最突出的国家和公司之间的差异。在这种情况下，我们对这些国家的锯木厂行业的战略方法进行了学术文献综述，并绘制了我们可以从1990年至2019年发表的研究中确定的竞争力驱动因素。

最近的发现

在我们的研究中，确定竞争力的驱动力主要来自公司层面的战略决策以及内部资源和能力的使用，而与外部环境相关的因素却不那么突出。从方法学的角度来看，定性方法的使用在当今已变得更为普遍，而混合方法的使用却非常罕见。

概要

关于锯木厂行业策略的研究非常多才多艺，但是需要进行更多的比较研究，以加深对受众多内部和外部因素影响的复杂锯木厂业务的发展和状况的了解。