Fast and Furious or Slow and Cautious? The Joint Impact of Age at Internationalization, Speed, and Risk Diversity on the Survival of Exporting Firms

Pierre-Xavier Meschi (1, 2) , Antonin Ricard (1, 2) , Ernesto Tapia (3)

1 AMU IAE - Institut d'Administration des Entreprises (IAE) - Aix-en-Provence
2 CERGAM - Centre d'Études et de Recherche en Gestion d'Aix-Marseille
3 CIFASIS - Centro Internacional Franco Argentino de Ciencias de la Información y de Sistemas

This article examines the effect of age at internationalization and pace of internationalization on the survival of small and medium-sized enterprises. Two sets of hypotheses are developed on the basis of the sequential expansion and international new venture approaches. These hypotheses are tested using an event-history method and panel data on French SMEs that exported for the first time between 2003 and 2012 (547 firm-year observations). The results show that the failure rate for firms adopting the late, slow, and cautious sequential expansion approach is significantly lower than in small firms adopting other paths to internationalization.

Mots clés: Sequential expansion; Market expansion speed; Risk diversity; Small and medium-sized enterprises; International new venture; Age at internationalization; Event-history method

Domaines: Gestion et management; Sciences de l'Homme et Société

Pierre-Xavier Meschi, Antonin Ricard, Ernesto Tapia. Fast and Furious or Slow and Cautious? The Joint Impact of Age at Internationalization, Speed, and Risk Diversity on the Survival of Exporting Firms. Journal of International Management, 2017, pp.1075 - 425330008. ⟨10.1016/j.intman.2017.01.001⟩. ⟨hal-01456066⟩