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The aim of this article is to investigate the determinants of the performance of small and medium-sized enterprises in emerging markets: evidence from Vietnam.

This article relies on the resource-based view to examine the factors affecting the performance of small and medium-sized enterprises in emerging markets. The method employed in the research is the generalized method of moments for testing hypotheses of data collected from the General Statistics Office of Vietnam in the period of 2013–2016.

The results show that factors such as the intensity of capital investment, age and size of the firm, labor productivity, foreign ownership, location, cost management effectiveness and export activities have a positive effect on the performance of Vietnamese small and medium-sized enterprises, while revenue growth rate, fixed assets and financial leverage tend to hinder their performance. This has brought important messages that the input markets and the business environment in emerging markets like Vietnam have not yet stimulated well-economic activities.

This study sheds light on a topic that has not been fully explored in small and medium-sized enterprises in emerging markets in general, and Vietnam in particular. Specifically, small and medium-sized enterprises in emerging markets reconfigure available resources and strengthen internal capabilities to overcome barriers of the shortages of strategic, rare and irreplaceable resources in order to improve their performance. This is a unique contribution to the existing literature and highlights the original value of this article.

This article analyzes the impact of social insurance on firm performance by obtaining evidence from Vietnamese small- and medium-sized enterprises.

The method employed in the research is the generalized method of moments for testing hypotheses of data collected from the General Statistics Office of Vietnam.

The results show that social insurance contributions can enhance firm performance in three dimensions: return on equity (ROE), labor productivity and total factor productivity (TFP). In addition, financial leverage, firm size, the average wage of workers and fixed assets have an impact on the social insurance costs of these companies.

This article provides a novel explanation of the contribution of social insurance to firm performance. In particular, social insurance contribution not only increases labor productivity but also boosts the growth of the TFP of companies. In addition, the article points out that taking care of the benefits of employees is a valuable investment of companies. These are the unique contributions of the paper to the literature on the economic impact of social insurance.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a reliable and valid understanding of entrepreneurship and examine the relationships between small and medium‐sized Chinese manufacturing enterprises, the intensity of their entrepreneurial orientation and the degree of their internationalization. In addition, it examines whether entrepreneurial orientation would affect enterprises' internationalization strategies and their success.

The seven‐step procedure for scale development is used and survey data have been utilized to conduct statistical analysis.

The paper finds that entrepreneurial orientation is positively related to the degree of internationalization, particularly amongst the small and medium‐sized Chinese manufacturing enterprises. The international experiences of enterprises have significant importance and positively affect the degree of their internationalization. In addition, the degree of their success depends greatly on their attitudes towards risk taking, their ability to diversify internationally and successfully compete with those already established in the market.

A lot of studies have been conducted on entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial orientation. However, few people have ever studied the relation between the degree of entrepreneurial orientation and internationalization. Empirical studies on the correlations between entrepreneurial orientation and firm performance are not abundant in China. Furthermore, very few researches on the correlations between entrepreneurial orientation and internationalization have been conducted. The research presented in this paper is intended to bridge this gap. Through empirical analyses of their relationships, this paper shows how entrepreneurial strategies can stimulate competitive advantages and drive forward the international developments of the Chinese enterprises, particularly the small and medium‐sized.

Global mindset has gained the respectable attention of international business scholars. Global mindset is a multidisciplinary concept comprised of cognitive and cultural dimensions which both influence the international behavior and decision making of the firm. The key purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that global mindset is a crucial cognitive driver of the small and medium‐sized enterprise (SME) internationalization process. In order to do so, it aims to establish the link between global mindset and export performance outcomes.

Using a literature review, the conceptual model was developed. Data were obtained through survey questionnaire and analyzed using partial least squares (PLS) path modeling on the sample of 121 exporting SMEs in Croatia.

Findings of this study suggest that global mindset is positively, directly and significantly related to the export performance. Furthermore, the link between global mindset and export performance was assessed with the moderating effect of international experience (export diversity and export intensity) and findings reveal that there is no significant moderating effect present.

Findings of this study suggest that global mindset is a crucial driver of the SME internationalization process as it exhibited a significant impact on the export performance outcomes. However, the focus of this paper was solely on the strategic (cognitive) dimension of global mindset. Future studies are yet to reveal the relevance of the integrated concept of global mindset.

The value‐added of this study is in the idea that market‐specific experience cannot be easily transferred to other foreign markets by utilizing global mindset. The moderating effect of international experience dimensions on relationship between global mindset and export performance was found to be insignificant. Eventually, findings suggest that global mindset is not related to the SME's international experience.

This study aims to investigate the relationship between building smart factories in manufacturing small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and firm performance and the moderating effect according to product complexity and company size.

Data were collected from 206 companies selected in the list of SMEs, which had built smart factories, provided by the Smart Manufacturing Innovation Center in Korea. The collected data were analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM) technique.

First, production automation and big data utilization are associated positively with productivity, but not significantly with export performance. Second, supply chain integration is associated positively with both productivity and export performance. Third, product complexity moderates negatively the relationship of productivity with each of production automation, big data utilization and supply chain integration while moderating positively the relationship between supply chain integration and export performance. Finally, company size does not moderate significantly the relationship between productivity or export performance with any of production automation, big data utilization and supply chain integration.

This study contributes theoretically to literature by demonstrating the usefulness of building smart factories and suggesting how SMEs build a smart factory to enhance productivity and export performance from a business perspective. Moreover, this study contributes practically by proposing that SMEs should put priority on supply chain integration over production automation and big data utilization and execute different strategies of building smart factories depending on product complexity.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the performance evolution of enterprises in Italian industrial districts. In particular, economic performance indicators are analysed for Arezzo goldsmith enterprises, to highlight: differences in the goldsmith local systems performances; the role played by firm size in the evolution trajectories; and the emergence of a medium‐sized nucleus of firms with better performance.

The paper first conducts a brief literature review on medium‐sized firms in Italian industrial districts. Then it examines the economic‐financial indicators of 183 Arezzo goldsmith firms to evaluate firm performance in comparative terms both with other Italian industrial districts and with firm size. Finally it focuses its attention on 15 medium‐sized firms or groups, carrying out a statistical analysis by organizational model comparing the aggregate data of the Arezzo goldsmith district.

The results regarding the Arezzo experience show: a reduction of competitive capabilities compared with other industrial districts; considerable difficulties for both small enterprises and the historical large firm leader; and the emergence of a medium‐sized firm nucleus which seems better able to manage a changing competitive environment.

The main implication for researchers and SME (small to medium‐sized enterprises) consultants is that the selection process currently in play among Italian industrial districts and local enterprises appears to reward only certain entrepreneurial categories. Findings of this exploratory study need future research both at an inter‐industry level and with international comparative analysis.

Medium‐size firms represent a new area of research on SMEs. Empirical evidence supports the research hypothesis.

This research probes into the execution of small and medium‐sized enterprises’ value creativities by a difference analysis with different classifications, different capital, different turnover, different employees, and different established years. This study develop a questionnaire about value creativity with five dimensions and thirty‐five items according to “Valuation” by McKinsey and Company, Inc. and Copeland et al., such as: “Aspiration and target,” “Portfolio management,” “Organization design,” “Process management,” and “Business and individual performance management.” The results are as follows: (1) Most small and medium‐ sized enterprises (SMEs) have executed value creativities; (2) There is a difference in the execution of value creativities between the livelihood industry and the chemical industry; the execution of value creativities by livelihood industry is better than the chemical industry; (3) For value creativities of the execution of different capital and turnover for SMEs, bigger entities are better than smaller ones; (4) For the value creativities of the execution of different numbers of staff in SMEs, those with more staff are better than those with fewer staff; (5) For the value creativities of the execution of different established years for SMEs, those established longer are better than those established shorter.

The purpose of this paper is to boost the internationalization of companies by implementing key factors that will help them to increase their exports in a context of an emerging country such as Mexico, where very few small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) achieve internationalization.

According to different theories on the internationalization of companies, five independent variables were designed to measure their effect on the export performance using a multiple regression model on a sample of 95 Mexican industrial SMEs. In this context, the objective of this study is to investigate the impact of the product price, product quality, installed capacity, innovation capacity and financial capacity on the export performance of SMEs; and to identify the factors that are more significant.

The results indicate that innovation has a positive relationship, while the price of the product has a negative relationship with the internationalization of small- and medium-sized enterprises, showing that there is a possibility of overemphasizing the role of both variables in export performance of SMEs, at least in the Mexican context. The rest of the variables were not statistically significant to the generated model, perhaps because they are implicitly considered at the time of exporting and entering international markets.

These results will help companies to focus their efforts on obtaining resources to maintain and expand exports and find new opportunities in foreign markets to grow. They also show that companies can implement different types of internationalization strategies with the study’s variables to achieve better performance.

El objetivo de este estudio es impulsar la internacionalización de las empresas mediante la implementación de factores clave que les ayudarán a incrementar sus exportaciones en un contexto de países emergentes como México, donde muy pocas pequeñas y medianas empresas logran la internacionalización.

Según las diferentes teorías sobre la internacionalización de las empresas, cinco variables independientes fueron diseñadas para medir su efecto en el desempeño de las exportaciones, utilizando un modelo de regresión múltiple en una muestra de 95 pequeñas y medianas empresas industriales mexicanas. En este contexto, el objetivo de este estudio es investigar el impacto del precio del producto, la calidad del producto, la capacidad instalada, la capacidad de innovación y la capacidad financiera en el desempeño exportador de las PYME, e identificar los factores que son más relevantes.

Los resultados indican que la innovación tiene una relación positiva, mientras que el precio del producto tiene una relación negativa con la internacionalización de las pequeñas y medianas empresas, lo que demuestra que existe la posibilidad de sobre-enfatizar el papel de ambas variables en el desempeño exportador de las pequeñas y medianas empresas, al menos en el contexto mexicano. El resto de las variables no resultaron estadísticamente significativas para el modelo generado, tal vez porque están consideradas de forma implícita al momento de exportar e ingresar a los mercados internacionales.

Estos resultados ayudarán a las empresas a concentrar sus esfuerzos en obtener recursos para mantener y expandir las exportaciones y encontrar nuevas oportunidades en los mercados extranjeros para el crecimiento. También demuestran que las empresas pueden implementar diferentes tipos de estrategias de internacionalización con las variables de estudio para lograr un mejor desempeño.

Small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) face challenges in internationalisation due to their limited resources. Research on service firm internationalisation as well as the antecedents and consequences is scarce. Literature suggests that internationalisation for service firms is even more demanding than for manufacturing firms due to the characteristics of services such as intangibility. Extant literature states that firms introducing innovations are more likely to export. However, research on learning by exporting and thus investigating the effect of a firm’s export status on innovation is comparatively scarce. Therefore, the authors investigate the influence of different market entry strategies on innovation and firm performance. The authors employ a quantitative, survey-based approach to test our hypotheses based on a sample of internationally active firms headquartered in Austria. Regarding firm financial performance, the analysis of the data shows that the entry strategy of direct entry excels the direct export strategy. In terms of non-financial performance, the strategies of direct entry and direct export seem to be equally feasible.

This study examines the influence of human capital, overall and by dimensions, on the export performance of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the manufacturing sector of Pakistan. The study also investigates the role of absorptive capacity in the relationship between human capital dimensions and export performance.

Data from 586 manufacturing sector SMEs were collected for analysis. The study applied covariance-based structural equation modeling (SEM) to estimate the hypothesized relationships.

As a whole, human capital was found to exert a direct and indirect impact on export performance, particularly for the medium-sized firms and for firms with medium to high levels of export intensities. Nevertheless, not all dimensions of human capital mattered for export performance. Education and training were found to pose the greatest influence on export performance of those firms.

The results suggest that when devising appropriate policies for SMEs, the impact of different dimensions of human capital need to be considered for addressing challenges related to the internationalization of firms. In short, developing the right human capital is essential for SMEs to compete at the international level.

Unlike previous studies, this study decomposed the influence of different dimensions of human capital on export performance and assessed the mediating role of absorptive capacity. The study is also among the pioneering studies in SMEs sector of Pakistan to analyze the role of absorptive capacity in the relationship between various dimensions of human capital and export performance.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-03-2019-0198