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This article focuses on “born globals” (Knight and Cavusgil 1996) and interfirm resources to explain international entrepreneurship. The theory posed here challenges the traditional image of international business as a long, gradual process not occurring until later in the life cycle, and applying only to large multinational corporations (MNCs). Increasingly, new ventures must expand their operations internationally early in their history in order to be competitive (Oviatt and McDougall 1994), and require infrastructure (Van de Ven 1993), or interfirm resources, for success. Specifically, firms may rely on three factors to expand internationally: cost factors, unique global resources, and networks.

The purpose of this study is to empirically evaluate the relationship between learning culture, workforce level, human capital and operational performance in two diverse supply chain populations, aircraft maintenance and logistics readiness.

Drawing upon competence-based view of the firm and human capital theory, this paper analyzes data from two studies.

The results provide support for the hypothesized model. Workforce level moderates the relationship between learning culture and human capital, and human capital partially mediates the relationship between learning culture and operational performance.

The findings have implications for behavioral supply chain management research and implications for educating and training the supply chain management workforce. While the populations represent a diverse set of logistics functions and responsibilities, the participants are all military members, which may limit generalizability.

This study should help leaders understand the importance of learning culture and the perceived differences in its effect on human capital based upon workforce level.

This research is among the first to investigate the role of workforce level and answers a multitude of calls for research into the human side of supply chain management.