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The purpose of this paper is to examine the determinants of two distinct geographic pathways to internationalization for small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs). Regional and global pathways are juxtaposed to study the influence on export performance of selected key intangible resources, namely, innovation, human resource management, networking and the firm's experience.

Building upon a resource‐based view of the firm, Tobit regression models are used to test the hypotheses on a sample of 2,657 Italian manufacturing firms.

The paper provides empirical evidence that the determinants of SME export performance vary in line with the geographic scope of internationalization. While product innovation (innovation) positively impacts on SME export performance, irrespective of export destination, other factors do so selectively. For example, location in industrial districts (networking) and the deployment of external managers (human resource management) exclusively exert their positive impact respectively on regional and global export performance. The firm's age (experience) does not seem to guarantee success on regional or global export markets.

Investing in product innovation and hiring specialist non‐family executives are associated with success on global export markets. Industry clustering provides the resources that are useful for internationalization up to a point (export growth in regional markets), but it is not effective in the case of expansion on distant international markets.

Exporting beyond the regional market exposes firms to the liability of foreignness to a greater degree, thus requiring more dedicated and specialized resources and competences. This paper supports the hypothesis that export drivers differ between regional and global markets and calls for a definition of export performance that distinguishes between them.

Adopting a quantitative explorative research design, we employed a sample of 770 foreign market entries in the period 2005–2015 to investigate whether particular entry mode strategies such as joint venture or wholly owned subsidiary are differently chosen by small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and large firms. Various tests have been carried out revealing that SMEs show some different features compared to large firms when selecting their entry mode. SMEs react differently to economic downturns, and the diversification level is a crucial determinant for their entry choices while it is not for large firms. Moreover, we found for a set of other factors affecting the entry choice of large firms, not being significant for SMEs. Implications of these findings are discussed.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the factors affecting the choice between joint ventures and non‐equity alliances, when firms enter foreign markets.

Using a database of Italian firms compiled by the authors with 879 observations, the paper tests the possible effects of firm specific characteristics, host country institutional characteristics and cultural distance on alliance mode choice.

Using both transaction cost analysis and the resource based view, the findings demonstrate the crucial role played by firm size as well as by institutional and political features of host countries. The results concerning the role of functional activities involved and the industrial sector are mixed.

Overall, the analysis shows that it is necessary to develop a more integrated approach to understand this complex choice made by firms when expanding abroad.

The purpose of this paper is to use the resource‐based view (RBV) to analyze the influence of the resources available for the export activity (deriving from the firm's size, experience and structure) and the international marketing strategy on export performance.

A sample of Spanish companies is analyzed using logit modeling.

The results show that the resources available are essential antecedents of the type of export strategy chosen by the firm to compete in international markets and of its export performance. Likewise, although the international expansion strategy adopted does not affect export performance, the decision about whether to standardize or adapt the marketing‐mix elements does have an impact.

The paper tries to solve the problem arising from the contradictory results on the effect of export performance antecedents using the RBV as theoretical foundation. With that purpose, the authors analyze jointly the factors proposed as potential determinants in this research.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the influence of the presence in foreign markets on small- and medium-sized enterprises’ (SMEs) financial performance. Furthermore, it seeks to examine the moderating effect of corporate group and alliance portfolio size on this relationship.

First, the authors develop hypotheses concerning the relationship between the presence in foreign markets and SMEs’ financial performance as well as the moderating role of the size of an SME’s corporate group and alliance portfolio. Afterward, the authors used ordinary least square regression to the test the hypotheses based on a sample of 5,885 high-tech US SMEs registered in the Orbis database (Bureau van Dijk).

Results of the study reveal that the presence in foreign markets is positively associated with an SME’s financial performance, with the size of the corporate group enhancing this relationship, hence confirming the conjectures. Instead, the size of the alliance portfolio appears to not exert any moderating effect, in contrast with the last hypothesis.

Form a theoretical perspective, the authors dig into the literature assessing the performance outcomes of SMEs and contingent effects of the possibility to tap into external resources of other firms. By so doing, the findings support a specific stream of the literature in claiming the positive effects deriving from being part of a corporate group. Conversely, the findings seem to go in the opposite direction of the majority of the literature that claim a positive impact of alliances on financial performances, while supporting those studies stressing that alliances pose significant challenges for SMEs and should be carefully identified and managed.

This paper adopts an intellectual capital perspective to investigate the role of owners who are ethnic minorities in the foreign market expansion performance of SMEs, and in particular considers the human capital dimension of intellectual capital.

Based on the empirical investigation of a sample of 10,326 small- and medium-sized US high-tech manufacturing enterprises, the authors’ results reveal a positive relationship between the number of foreign markets where these SMEs operate and their financial performance, and that this effect is reinforced by the presence of ethnic minority owners, as ethnic minorities constitute a valuable source of intellectual capital which bring value to firms.

The authors’ findings reveal the importance of intellectual capital in an SME’s leadership position, specifically in terms of having individuals from normally disadvantaged groups as owners. In this sense, policymakers are crucial in supporting the inclusion of ethnic minorities in SME ownership, through advantageous treatment in firms, for example.

The study presents practical implications for managers seeking foreign market expansion. In addition, when defining ownership structure (e.g., in the start-up phase), the role of human capital, in the form of ethnic minorities, should not be neglected, especially if an SME intends to operate or is already operating in different national contexts.

The authors’ results provide important insights into the positive effect of human capital on SME foreign market performance. The idea of a moderating role played by owners from ethnic minorities suggested here contributes to the literature on human capital and is one of the first attempts to consider this moderating factor in this relationship, especially in the SME context.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the ongoing debate regarding the relationship between relational capital (RC) and firm performance, by investigating the moderation effect of firm size and its key role in defining conditions for competitive advantage.

The paper uses the interpretative lens of the resource dependence theory, and refreshes consolidated studies rooted in RC. It identifies a set of variables to measure the influence of RC on firm performance, including the cost of goods sold, interest expenses and earnings per share. Content analysis was used to capture specific features of corporate disclosure tools using 51 items pertinent to RC. The authors used a specific disclosure index drawing on data collected from 73 listed firms in France, Germany, Italy and the UK. Data covering the period from 2011 to 2013 were analyzed using six regression models.

Firm size has a moderating effect on the relationship between RC and some variables linked to firm performance.

The study combines an internal and external perspective to investigate the interplay between firms and market environments, and therefore, enriches the ongoing debate concerning the relationship between RC and firm performance. It outlines possible ways through which RC can become an effective source of competitive advantage.