International Activities in Small Firms: Examining Factors Influencing the Internationalization and Export Growth of Small Firms
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract In this paper we explore internationalization and export growth over time in a sample of 135 small manufacturing firms. By using concepts and arguments from literature on international business and small firms, the paper identifies six situational, or contingency, factors that are expected to influence the international activities of small firms. Our results show that a dynamic and fast‐changing environment may push small firms to go abroad, while it seems to be the experiences built up in the organization and a younger generation of CEOs that can explain why some small firms continue to expand their international activities. The findings suggest that the factors influencing small firms to go abroad and become international differ from the factors that influence them to continue and grow once they are on the international marketplace. The paper ends with a discussion of the findings, together with suggestions for further research. Résumé Dans cet article, nous analysons, à partir d'un échantillon de 135 petites firmes manufacturières, l'impact, au fil du temps, de l'internationalisation et de la croissance de l'exportation. Grâce à l'utilisation des concepts et d'arguments tirés de la littérature sur le commerce international et sur les petites entreprises, nous dégageons six facteurs situationnels et conjoncturels qui sont censés avoir un impact sur les activités internationales des petites entreprises. Nos résultats indiquent qu'un environnement dynamique et en mutation rapide peut être à l'origine de l'internationalisation des petites entreprises. Bien plus, les expériences acquises dans l'organisation et le rajeunissement des cadres expliqueraient pourquoi certaines petites entreprises continuent à étendre leurs activités internationales. Les résultats montrent aussi que les facteurs qui poussent les petites entreprises à s'exporter et à s'internationaliser sont différents de ceux qui les poussent à continuer à croître une fois qu'elles sont sur le marché international. Nous bouclons notre étude par une analyse des résultats et une proposition des pistes de recherche futures.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.006 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".