This article sets forth a literature review about the underlying institutional processes present in internationalization processes of companies. To do so, 57 documents written between 1937 and 2015 were collected. The classification of the literature was conducted using the categories of internationalization defined in Arbelaez & Serna (2002) as a starting point. About the theoretical postures, aspects regarding the internal evolution of each company during the process of internationalization, the need of cooperation in order to reduce uncertainty, the effect of culture and the emergence of the mainly informal institutions can be highlighted.