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The purpose of this paper is to illustrate how the perceived institutional environment of Colombian internationally operating small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the software industry comes to determine their performance.

The research applies regression modelling to a sample of 43 internationally operating Colombian SMEs in the software development industry, collected via an online survey.

The results indicate that the normative dimension of the institutional environment comes to determine the export performance of the SMEs. Conversely, the cognitive and regulatory dimensions of the institutional forces do not have a significant effect.

The cross-sectional nature of the survey tool, the single industry and the single country context place limitations on the generalisability of the results across different industry and country contexts.

The results highlight the need for entrepreneurship-friendly norms and values in the context of internationalising SMEs in Latin America. Governments should focus on the development and promotion of international entrepreneurs that inspire and serve as role models for other entrepreneurs rather than concentrate on the creation of regulatory frameworks and the provision of knowledge of how to start and manage risk for the internationalising SME.

The study is one of the first to apply the Busenitz et al. (2000) scale on the institutional country profile to real entrepreneurs. Previous studies have mainly applied the framework to a sample of students or officers assigned to US embassies. Besides Renko et al.’s (2009) conference paper, ours is the first one that links the country institutional profile to the performance of internationalising software firms and, especially, in the context of a Latin American country. The study, therefore, attempts to contribute to a better understanding of how a country’s institutional environment impacts the performance of internationalising SMEs.

Este estudio muestra cómo el entorno institucional percibido por parte de las pequeñas y medianas empresas (Pymes) exportadoras de Colombia determina su desempeño.

Nuestra investigación aplica un modelo de regresión a una muestra de 43 Pymes exportadoras de Colombia de la industria de desarrollo de software recolectado a través de una encuesta en línea.

Los resultados muestran que la dimensión normativa del entorno institucional determina el desempeño exportador de las Pymes. Al contrario, las dimensiones cognitivas y regulatorias del entorno institucional no tienen un efecto significativo.

La característica transversal del método de encuesta y el enfoque en una sola industria y un sólo país genera limitaciones sobre la posibilidad de generalizar los resultados entre diferentes industrias y países.

Los resultados resaltan la necesidad de normas y valores amigables con el emprendimiento en el contexto de Pymes exportadoras en América Latina. Los gobiernos deberían enfocarse en el desarrollo y el fomento de emprendedores internacionales que inspiren y sirvan como modelo a seguir para otros emprendedores. Esto en lugar de crear marcos regulatorios y el suministro de conocimiento para poner en marcha una empresa y gerenciar el riesgo para Pymes exportadoras.

Nuestro estudio es uno de los primeros en aplicar la medición del perfil del entorno institucional de Busenitz et al. (2000) a una muestra de emprendedores. Estudios anteriores aplicaron la medición a una muestra de estudiantes y oficiales de embajadas estadounidenses. Aparte del artículo de conferencia de Renko et al. (2009), nuestro artículo es el primero que relaciona el perfil institucional de país con el desempeño de empresas exportadoras de software y en especial en el contexto de un país Latinoamericano. Por lo tanto, nuestro estudio trata de contribuir a un mejor entendimiento de cómo el entorno institucional de un país impacta al desempeño de Pymes exportadoras.

This paper aims to explore the underlying reasons for business model change among internationalizing SMEs and illustrate how home market context affects that change.

This is a comparative case study of two companies with similar backgrounds from different countries of origin. In each case, the data were collected by means of in-depth interviews with key informants. For its theoretical background, the study draws on the business model innovation and international business literature.

The authors found that home market context has two kinds of effect on business model change in internationalizing SMEs. First, home market maturity has a strong effect on the timing of companies’ internationalization efforts. Second, the company’s home market can either be used to strengthen the value proposition or may be disguised, depending on how the country of origin is seen in international markets. This factor has a strong influence on how SMEs change their business model when internationalizing.

The study’s limitations relate to its qualitative and exploratory nature. Future research should further assess the generalizability of these findings across different cultural contexts and countries of origin by quantifying the central concepts and examining how they relate to larger-scale cross-national and cross-sectional panel data.

As internationalization increasingly poses both threats and opportunities, companies must be able to experiment with business models when necessary to adapt to the host market. In so doing, it is also important to consider how a company’s home market affects business model change.

This is one of the first studies to illustrate how the process of internationalization drives SMEs to change their business models. As such, the paper enhances existing understanding of business model change in the context of internationalization. To our knowledge, no previous study has described these dynamics in a comparative context that takes account of SME country of origin.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of institutional environment on the international performance of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and how this relationship is influenced by network competence.

This study uses a quantitative approach. In total, 119 internationally operating Finnish SMEs from five industry sectors are sampled via a cross-sectional survey. Data are analysed through regression modelling.

The international performance of SMEs is influenced directly and indirectly by institutional drivers. The results show that network competence mediates the positive relationship between institutional drivers and international performance.

Network capability development can help SMEs leverage more or less favourable institutional environments for successful internationalisation. Perceived institutional drivers directly result in higher performance, but the effect can be partially mediated by dynamic capabilities. The limitations of the study include its single-country context and the cross-sectional nature of the data.

SMEs should take their home countries’ institutional environments into account, but for long-term success, they should develop the ability to manage their business networks. A conducive institutional environment may help develop competence, which in turn can enable more successful internationalisation in terms of scale, scope and satisfaction.

Decision-makers may benefit from knowing that, in addition to capabilities, an institutionally conducive environment that drives domestic SMEs towards international markets may be an antecedent of successful internationalisation in the SME sector.

This is one of the few studies to illustrate how network capabilities can mediate the influence of institutional factors on entrepreneurial internationalisation. It combines institutional theory and the dynamic capabilities view to explain successful SME internationalisation.

The purpose of this study is to develop a framework of the elements of the entrepreneurial ecosystem in the context of born global start-ups. The study also applies this framework to uncover the ecosystem elements that impact start-ups during their initial phases of discovery and validation.

The authors used an online survey questionnaire sent out to several Estonian start-ups. Based on the responses, a dataset was developed and analysed using STATA and t-test methodology.

The analysis resulted in the identification of seven systemic ecosystem elements as the main factors impacting the launch and ten elements impacting the growth of born global start-ups. The systemic elements that comprise the ecosystem’s strengths and weaknesses were also identified.

The cross-sectional nature of the survey method and the single-country context are noted as limitations of the study and offer future research potential for longitudinal settings, for mixed method studies and for comparative country data.

The study suggests that start-ups should function in a more collective manner to create platforms, promote one another’s products and services where possible and launch collective initiatives to enhance their visibility in the global context. Born globals should engage with their local entrepreneurial ecosystem, while remaining aware of its relative strengths and weaknesses for supporting internationalisation.

Although the local ecosystem involves many stakeholders, this study helps identify key stakeholders that should be focused on by the government. Doing so will help create an increasingly comprehensive ecosystem at the national level – one that functions efficiently in supporting growth-seeking enterprises such as born globals.

This study combines the two research streams of the entrepreneurial ecosystem and born globals by directly connecting them with systemic elements. This study is, to our knowledge, the first to combine the two, thus making an added contribution by highlighting macro- and micro-viewpoints, with the former lacking in research on born globals and the latter in research on ecosystems. Thus, the present study helps in bringing venture creation and local ecosystem development research closer to each other.

This paper aims to investigate the role of culture in managerial sensemaking and conceptualization of business networking.

The authors apply qualitative methodology through the sensemaking approach on three Finnish and three Russian managers in mutual buyer–supplier business relationship dyads.

The results imply that the cultural background of the manager determines his perception of the level at which business networking occurs. Finnish managers conceptualize business networking as an organizational strategy, whereas their Russian counterparts conceptualize the phenomenon squarely at the individual level.

The authors suggest that the underlying cause of the differences in the conceptualization of networking may be that Finnish business networking relies more on concepts derived from Western European business culture, whereas Russian networking relies more on the traditional culture. Consequently, they suggest that the concept of business networking in extant research may suffer from ethnocentricity. Limitations of the study include the limited extent of generalizations from its qualitative nature.

The results imply that business network relationships should be managed differently in different cultures, and that depending on the cultural background of the business partner, managing both the organizational and the individual levels of business networking is needed.

The study contributes to limited literature on culture and the role of individuals in managerial conceptualization of business networking. This is one of the rare studies to illustrate differences through individual sensemaking on both sides of the relationship dyad and account for both Western European and Russian market environments.

Little research has been done on the emergence of companies that engage in increasingly digital entrepreneurship with digitalized value-chain activities. The purpose of this paper is provide a consistent picture of how value-chain digitalization affects companies’ internationalization and international marketing (IM), and give insights regarding the influence of the degree of value-chain digitalization on the level of internationalization.

This paper takes an explorative approach based on a literature review and uses a conceptual analysis and research framework to empirically classify digitalized/-ing companies.

This study finds ways to classify the internationalization of companies according to the degree of digitalization of their value-chain. The more these companies use internet hardware infrastructure and web and mobile software technologies, the better they can leverage their foreign assets, achieving a higher share of foreign sales with relatively limited foreign assets.

The results enrich the literature on internationalization and IM and entrepreneurship to explain companies that are distinctly digitalized across their value-chain activities.

This research provides evidence for companies regarding digitalization of the value-chain to facilitate entrepreneurial opportunities and offer rapid, efficient and affordable internationalization.

This research tackles a novel phenomenon by analyzing companies’ value-chain digitalization in relation to their degree of internationalization and IM.

The purpose of this study is to provide a foundational understanding of the internationalization of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) operating in the context of renewable energy markets. The focus is on exploring and identifying the managerial-, firm- and environmental-level antecedents to their international expansion, which also furthers the understanding of the distinct SME’s internationalization context within the renewable energy market.

The study adopts a qualitative multiple case study approach in a Finnish SME context and identifies the antecedents’ relative prominence at the managerial, firm and environmental levels.

The findings indicate that, although internationalization antecedents of renewable energy SMEs differ owing to market forces such as trends, networks and changing regulatory policies, they share antecedents similar to those of SMEs in other industries.

The main limitation of this study is its single-country home market empirical context. Future studies should expand analysis to different regulatory and regional environments.

To the authors’ knowledge, there are few studies that explore the antecedents of SMEs’ internationalization, especially in the renewable energy market context. Hence, this study contributes to the international business and entrepreneurship literature by illustrating the fundamental managerial-, firm- and environmental-level antecedents to the internationalization of SMEs operating in the renewable energy business. In addition, it highlights the peculiarities of renewable energy SMEs’ internationalization, suggesting that extant research on SMEs’ internationalization has not adequately captured the intricacies present in the internationalization of renewable energy enterprises.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how network competence is related to the growth of domestic and international SMEs originating from the Nordic region. Business networks have been found to drive internationalization of SMEs in the Nordic context, but the impact of network-related organizational competencies on them has not been considered.

The authors apply regression analysis on a sample of 298 Finnish SMEs across five industry sectors, gathered via an online survey in 2008, and with the data having been updated for its financial indicators up to 2010.

The authors find that cross-relational network competence is a significant predictor of growth in internationally operating SMEs. This result is robust across measures among the firms. In comparison, the network competence of domestically operating SMEs is not related to their growth, and relationship-specific competence does not influence growth.

The study does not account for longitudinal aspect of competence development. Growth is measured by the growth in sales and assets, and there are other ways to measure organizational growth. A single-country context also extends some restrictions on the generalizability of the results, although they could be expected to hold across small, open economies similar to Finland and the Nordic area.

The results imply that the strategic aims of SMEs determine their need for network competence, those SMEs seeking internationalization and growth through geographic expansion come to benefit from developing certain types of network competence.

Policy implications arise where governments in Finland and in the Nordic area may aid SMEs’ internationalization efforts by enabling the growth-seeking firms with increased resources for competence development.

This is the first study to examine how the organizational competencies to develop and manage business networks, in particular dyadic and network-level competencies, come to determine realized growth outcomes in domestic and international SMEs. It contributes to the theory of SME internationalization and international entrepreneurship from the business network point of view, while providing further knowledge on internationalization of SMEs originating from the Nordic area.

The impact of environmental sustainability and knowledge dynamics on entrepreneurial growth and internationalization could do with added research focus. However, the rising importance of corporate sustainability and social responsibility in global business and entrepreneurship increasingly requires that these interdependencies be assessed. We assess these dynamics empirically through both quantitative and qualitative analyses. With the former, we employ a cross-sectional sample of Finnish small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to illustrate the impact of learning orientation and environmental sustainability on their growth and internationalization. Specifically, we find that their impacts on entrepreneurial growth depend on the stage of their internationalization: Learning orientation predicts first foreign market entry among the enterprises, while environmental orientation predicts the subsequent performance among internationally operating enterprises. In addition, we find no moderation or mediation effects between learning orientation and sustainability, suggesting that their impacts are distinct from each other. We conclude by discussing these results and their implications on international entrepreneurial growth, and knowledge and sustainability dynamics in the entrepreneurial context.

The concept of global mindset was introduced more than a decade ago as a prerequisite for successful internationalisation of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). However, the pace of global integration and globalisation has accelerated, and complexity has increased. Therefore, the authors ask: To what extent is global mindset still a critical driver for successful international expansion of SMEs? We are particularly interested in learning how global mindset is reflected in the decision making of internationalising SMEs in Finland. To answer this question, we test four propositions which concern the relationship between global mindset, decision-making logic and SME performance. Our empirical study is based on a cross-sectional sample of Finnish SMEs, and the authors find that global mindset seems to be linked to both effectual decision-making logic and improved international performance. On the other hand, in our data set effectual decision making and SME performance were not linked; thus, global mindset predicts international rather than overall performance of the Finnish SMEs. Overall, this study confirms the continued relevance of the global mindset concept. Furthermore, it indicates the connection between global mindset and entrepreneurial decision making and that their joint effect is relevant when explaining entrepreneurial internationalisation.