Strategic Management Towards Competitive Advantage—Patterns of Internationalization in the Finnish and Swedish Sawmill Industries

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. 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. 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.