International Business Review — Volume 25, Issue 6, 1211–1222
SME internationalization: How does the opportunity-based international entrepreneurial culture matter?
Pavlos Dimitratos, Jeffrey E. Johnson, Emmanuella Plakoyiannaki, Stephen Young
- We employ the opportunity-based international entrepreneurial culture (IEC) comprehensive notion that draws upon the opportunity-based view (OBV). The OBV supports the idea that entrepreneurs mold the organizational behavior and characteristics of their firms to pursue opportunities abroad. We set out to explore possible attitudinal differences as regards exploitation of opportunities within firms in each of three internationalization dimensions that are previously identified in the literature, notably time to internationalization, country market presence and international mode. We perform eighteen case studies on high-performing internationalized small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in knowledge intensive sectors. The evidence refines the OBV as it manifests how three IEC characteristics (namely risk attitude, market orientation and networking propensity) matter for firms in the three internationalization dimensions. The study further adds to the international entrepreneurship literature that has until now myopically focused on international new ventures as if they were the sole opportunity-driven group of internationalized SMEs.
Journal of Small Business and Management — Volume 54, Issue S1, 90-112
Entrepreneurial Orientation and International New Entry: The Moderating Role of Autonomy and Structures in Subsidiaries
Henri Hakala, Charlotta Sirén, Joakim Wincent
- We study how the entrepreneurial orientation (EO) of subsidiaries influences international initiatives—new entries originating from a subsidiary that go beyond the local environment of the subsidiary. Building on structural contingency theory, we expect to find that the effect of EO is contingent on the structural conditions of decision-making autonomy and the subsidiary decision-making structure. Our results from 294 subsidiaries confirm that decision-making autonomy and internal structures are important boundary conditions delimiting the effectiveness of EO in terms of international new entry. Although autonomy is highly important for international new entries, when it is restricted, formal rather than organic structures benefit new-entry initiatives.