Ronald Rivas

How does “heritagization” — the process of valorization of national heritage — affect the multinationalization — the decision to establish foreign direct investment (FDI) — of Latin American companies? Using an institutional perspective that highlights entrepreneurial action, we theorize how multinationalization unfolds in companies in which cultural heritage is a relevant factor in order to internationalize. Heritage has the characteristics of an institution, defined as a set of socially inherited beliefs, norms, and rules contributing to a society’s identity, with an organizational governance structure to maintain such beliefs; whereas heritagization is the dynamic process of how the institution changes. The recent internationalization of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) from Latin America serves as an ideal illustration for our theorizing.

Over the past 60 years, global tourism has expanded and diversified beyond the traditional destinations of Europe and North America, and has now become one of the fastest-growing sectors in the global economy (UNWTO, 2011a). The growth in tourism has been particularly marked in developing economies, where tourism is often a major contributor to national economic growth and development. International tourism in the Asia-Pacific region, for example, grew by 13% in 2010, while in South America, it grew by 15% in the first half of 2011 alone (UNWTO, 2011b). Within the global tourism industry, the fastest growth sector is cultural tourism, defined as “visits by persons from outside the host community motivated wholly or partly by interest in historical, artistic or scientific or lifestyle/heritage offerings of a community, region, group or institution” (Silberberg, 1995: 361). Heritage tourism is a subset of cultural tourism that focuses on the cultural heritage of a community or nation. It has been spurred by the growing number of United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage Sites, which now include 725 cultural sites, 183 natural sites and 28 mixed properties in 153 of the 188 states that are party to the United Nations World Heritage Convention (UNESCO, 2011a).