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This study aims to investigate how employees in export departments help firms develop dynamic capabilities that drive firm performance in global markets. It draws from the previous scholarship in organizational behavior and international business.

Since microfoundations of firm capabilities have not received adequate attention in the context of international business, a qualitative research was carried out by conducting semistructured interviews with export managers to provide new theoretical and practical insights about the role of export department employees in developing firm capabilities.

The results show that organizational citizenship behavior and communication skills are the most highlighted characteristics of export department employees that underpin the improvement of firm capabilities, which in turn, boosts export performance. In addition, teamwork emerged as another contributing factor to firm capabilities.

This study addresses the microlevel foundations of firm capabilities within the context of international business by uncovering the characteristics of export department employees and their team-level contributions to the capabilities of exporting firms.

The aim of this study is to provide a holistic analysis of all possible maritime business logistics processes related to import and export shipments in a fuzzy environment through a case study of a maritime logistics company based on the as-is and to-be models within business process management (BPM).

The analyses considered the following perspectives: (i) in the stage of the process identification, the definition of the problem was carried out; (ii) in the stage of the process discovery, ocean department was divided into ocean export/import operation departments; ocean export/import operation were divided into freight collect/prepaid operation processes; ocean export/import logistics activity groups were broken down into sub-activities for freight collect/prepaid operation; the logistics activity groups and their sub-activities were defined; each sub-activity as either operation or documentation process group was classified; the durations of sub-activities were evaluated by decision-makers (DMs) as fuzzy sets (FSs); the monthly total jobs activities were estimated by DMs as FSs; the applied to monthly jobs activities of total shipments were estimated by DMs as FSs; the durations of each sub-activities were aggregated; the duration of the logistics activity groups and the sub-activities for per job were calculated; the cumulative workload of logistics activity groups and sub-activities were calculated; the duration of sub-activities for per job as operation or documentation departments were calculated, (iii) in the stage of the process analysis, cumulative ocean export/import workload as operation or documentation for freight collect/prepaid were calculated; duration of activity groups and sub-activities for per job as operation or documentation were calculated; cumulative workload activity groups and sub-activities as operation or documentation were calculated, (iv) in the stage of the process redesign, cumulative workload, process cycle time as operation and documentation group and required labor force were calculated; the process cycle time of the theoretical, the as-is model and the to-be model were calculated: (i) the theoretical minimum process cycle time without resource were calculated by the critical path method (CPM), (ii) the process cycle time of the as-is model perspective with the 1 person resource constraint and (iii) the process cycle time of the to-be model perspective with the 2-person resource constraint were calculated by the resource constrained project scheduling problem (RCPSP) method.

The methodology for analyzing the ocean department operation process was successfully implemented in a real-life case study. It is observed that the results of the to-be model can be applicable for the company. The BPM-proposed methodology is applicable for the maritime logistics industry in the present study; however, it can be applied to other companies in maritime logistics as well as other industries.

This study contributes to research using BPM methodology in maritime logistics. This is the first study the logistics process analyses were carried out in terms of including all operation processes for a company. All processes were analyzed by using BPM methodology in maritime logistics. This study demonstrated the application of the BPM as-is and to-be models to maritime logistics. The as-is and the to-be models of the BPM methodology were applied in maritime logistics.

This methodology applied in this study can enable organizations operating in the time-urgent maritime logistics sector to manage their logistics processes more efficiently, increase customer satisfaction, reduce the risks of customer loss due to poor operational performance and increase profits in the long term. Through the use of these methodologies utilizing FSs, the CPM and the RCPSP methods, this study is expected to make contributions to the BPM literature and provide original insights into the field. Furthermore, this study will undertake a comprehensive analysis of maritime logistics with respect to BPM to deliver noteworthy contributions to the maritime logistics literature and provide original perspectives into the field.

This paper has two objectives in the area of industrialised small- and medium-sized industrial company (SME) export activity. First, it responds to the gap in the literature on the role of market intelligence in the interrelations between perceived psychic distance, marketing mix decisions and export performance. The second objective concerns the influence of resource heterogeneity (size and export department) in the proposed model.

The current paper tests a posited research model and its hypotheses using the data from a multi-sector sample of exporters (196 Spanish industrial SMEs). The data are analyzed using a partial least squares approach.

The results of the empirical study show that: strategic decisions to adapt marketing mix elements to suit foreign markets have a positive effect on export performance; strategic adaptations are more numerous when export managers perceive a greater psychic distance; an export department helps develop market intelligence ability, which positively moderates the impact of strategic adaptations on export performance; and size does not have a significant effect on the interrelations studied.

Export managers in industrial SMEs can use the results and conclusions of this present paper to systematise their decision-making in export activity.

This paper makes a significant contribution towards covering an important gap in research into industrial SME exporters, by demonstrating the importance of market intelligence in export activity.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the factors that enhance export decision-makers’ generation of export information, using a non-linear approach and a multi-country context, and so provide export decision-makers with empirically based guidelines on how to maximize their information acquisition efforts.

A broad perspective on export information generation is adopted, including marketing research, export assistance, and market intelligence. The model of antecedents to information generation is tested in three studies (USA, Austria, New Zealand, respectively) using structural equation modeling techniques. Multigroup and hierarchical analysis is performed to assess cross-national invariance of relevant measures, and quadratic effects.

The findings show that the predictors of export information generation vary across the three countries studied, and that many of the relationships are non-linear.

This study contributes to the export marketing literature by developing the understanding of how exporters can develop greater knowledge of information sources on which to build export decisions, and the conditions necessary for enhanced export information acquisition activity. The findings highlight that future research should consider non-linear relationships and the examination of the outcomes of export information generation in a cross-national setting.

The study findings advocate that practitioners (exporters and advisers) tailor their export information generation efforts to the different country needs.

This research responds to a call for more theoretically based studies on antecedents to export information generation, concurrent with the use of more robust statistical methods.

Britain lives or dies by exporting. Companies which already sell overseas must sell more. Companies which don't must start. This special guide tells you how.

Examines the export activities of a sample of companies which have won the Queen's Award to Industry for export achievement. Looks at those criteria employed in order to achieve export success. States that not all of the companies practised all of the criteria, with the majority using only two. Concludes that the historical background and tradition of an organization, together with the attitudes of its senior management, are the most significant factors in determining the level of its success.

This study aims to examine the effect of entrepreneurial orientation (EO) on the export performance of apparel small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and the role of multiple differentiation strategy as a mediation effect between their relationships. It has also investigated the moderation impact of export market category between EO and performance relationship. The multiple differentiation strategy comprises the product (PDD), customer (CTD), service (SVD) and brand (BDD) differentiations.

A cross-sectional survey was carried out by providing a questionnaire to senior managers and owners of the apparel SMEs from the developed and developing markets exporters. The primary data of 550 was treated by the partial least squares-structural equation modelling) technique for final analysis.

The study revealed EO’s positive and significant effect on SMEs’ export performance. The study has found the mediation effect of product, customer and brand differentiation strategies between EO and export performance relationships from the mediation analysis. In contrast, service differentiation has found no mediation effect. However, the moderation effect (export market category) has revealed an insignificant effect between EO and performance association.

The findings of this study are based on one country data analysis. This study has been conducted in the SMEs of the apparel industry in Bangladesh, considering only owners and senior-level managers of the firms.

This research has drawn the attention of managers/owners to EO and multiple differentiation strategies enhancing export performance from the developing country context, such as Bangladesh. Multiple differentiation as a competitive strategy is the pioneer application of mediating effect between EO and export performance relationships. Moreover, this research has investigated the effect of the export market category as a moderator. Dearth research has applied the export market category to investigate the moderation effect between EO-performance models. Therefore, current research has theoretical and practical contributions to the international entrepreneurship and strategic management literature.

This article contrasts the export characteristics of high‐ and low‐involvement exporters in the Scottish food and beverage industry. Firms which derive more than 50 per cent of their turnover from export activity are designated as “high‐involvement” exporters while firms with a lesser dependence upon exporting are designated as “low‐involvement” exporters. Following an examination of the influence of organisational factors on export involvement, the two groups of firms are compared in terms of nine descriptors of export activity. Significant differences are established with regard to a number of export characteristics which are discussed in the light of previous evidence on export involvement.

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.

This study develops a model that explains export sales volume by destination based on a company's export marketing strategy. A seemingly unrelated regression model (SURE) simultaneously estimates the explanatory value of the different elements of the marketing strategy, as well as company characteristics, such as experience, size and motivation to export, on entry decisions to six different regional markets made by exporting companies in a southern European country. The data were collected from a sample size of 2,264 exporting companies. Findings confirm the importance of exporting experience and proactiveness in determining high export sales volumes in every regional market except for those psychologically close. Nevertheless, different marketing strategies depending on the region lead to high export sales volumes. For example, low price strategies in the case of Latin America or differentiation strategies based on the augmented product in the case of the USA generate high export sales. Promotional expenditures are of higher importance for distant markets, but for closer markets channel development is the key.