Pre-Internationalization and Performance Conditions of First-Time Exporting SMEs

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

1 CERGAM - Centre d'Études et de Recherche en Gestion d'Aix-Marseille
2 AMU IAE - Institut d'Administration des Entreprises (IAE) - Aix-en-Provence
3 KEDGE Business School [Marseille]

This article aims to determine whether pre-internationalization conditions improve the performance of first-time exporting small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Two pre-internationalization conditions are discussed here: firm performance and age at internationalization. Building on the aspiration-level performance model of March and Shapira (1992) with sequential internationalization and international new-ventures approaches, this article develops two research hypotheses proposing an effective alignment with pre-internationalization performance and age at internationalization. These research hypotheses are examined using a panel database of 522 French SMEs that began export operations for the first time in 2014. The statistical results partially support our first hypothesis by showing that early-internationalizing SMEs with a lower performance relative to their peers significantly increase their post-internationalization performance. Contrary to what we predicted in our second hypothesis, we observe that late-internationalizing SMEs, which deliver a much higher performance than their historical aspirations, significantly reduce their post-internationalization performance.

Keywords: Aspiration-level performance model; Early internationalization; First-time exporting SME; Internationalization process; Late internationalization; Social and historical aspirations

Domains: Business administration

Pierre-Xavier Meschi, Antonin Ricard, Ernesto Tapia Moore. Pre-Internationalization and Performance Conditions of First-Time Exporting SMEs. M@n@gement, 2021, pp.31-43. ⟨10.37725/mgmt.v24i1.4507⟩. ⟨hal-03216166⟩