Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Capturing the Relevant Institutional Profile for Exporting SMEs: Empirical Evidence from France and Romania

2007; Volume: 3; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

1551-6849

Raluca Mogos Descotes, Björn Walliser, Xiaoling Guo,

International Business and FDI

[Abstract] Based on in-depth interviews with French and Romanian SMEs from the textile and steel industry, this research aims at developing measure of country-specific institutional profiles for exporting SMEs. For managers from both countries under study, the role of the institutional environment is seen as major factor fostering SMEs' international development. The interviews - as well as complementary literature review - allow one to identify and describe the regulatory, cognitive, and normative dimensions of the institutional environment of exporting SMEs. The scale suggested shall provide research and practice with valuable instrument exploring why exporters in one country behave differently or may have competitive advantage over exporters in other countries, and how specific different country-level institutional arrangements influence the exporting behavior of international SMEs from different national settings. Potential implications for academicians, managers, and policy makers in future export-based studies are proposed. [Keywords] Institutional profile; exporting SMEs; cross-national research Introduction A basic premise of the international management literature is that firms' actions are embedded in country-specific institutional arrangements. According to institutional theory, the institutional characteristics of given country reflect various aspects of the national environment including cultural norms, social knowledge, rules, and regulations (Scott 1995, 2004). However, instead of integrating an institutional perspective, many studies have tried to explain the export behavior of SMEs by cultural variables only (e.g., Seringhaus 1993, Souchon et al. 2003). Hofstede's dimensions (1980) have been widely used to operationalize cultural between countries, even though they have been heavily criticized over this last decade (Jacob 2005; Ashkanasy et al. 2004). We suggest that cross-national in SMEs' exporting behavior rely, at least partly, on the set of institutions that guide and constrain organizations within their national economy, and that a country's institutional profile can serve as viable alternative for exploring broad country differences (Busenitz, Gomez and Spencer 2000, p. 1000). This observation holds true especially in today's business context of intensive globalization and innovation (Scott 2004; Hatchuel, Le Masson and Weil 2005; Acquier and Aggeri 2006). Bartholomew (1997) articulated how national institutional patterns, such as access to research and educational institutions, sources of financing, etc., determine the manner in which an innovation emerges within country. By extension, in national institutions' support for internationalization may also bring about in the behavior of exporting SMEs activities across countries. Inspired by Scott's (1995) conceptualization of institutional pillars, Kostova (1997) introduced the concept of three-dimensional country institutional profile. According to this concept, national governmental policies (regulatory dimension), widely shared social knowledge (cognitive dimension), and value systems (a normative dimension) affect domestic business activity. Kostova (1997), as well as cognitive psychologists (such as Galambos, Abelson and Black 1986; Walsh 1995), emphasizes that institutional profiles can't be generalized. They are domain specific. While institutional profiles exist in the domain of quality management (Kostova, 1997) and entrepreneurship (Busenitz, Gomez and Spencer, 2000), no such framework has been developed for the domain of export management. The objective of this study is to fill this gap by identifying and describing the relevant regulatory, cognitive, and normative dimensions of the specific institutional environment of exporting SMEs. Such an instrument would provide researchers with an alternative tool to culture-based approaches when exploring cross-national in SMEs' export behavior. …