Performance feedback and export intensity of Chinese private firms: Moderating roles of institution-related factors

Building on the behavioral theory of the firm and institutional view, we examine how performance feedback (i.e., a focal firm’s performance relative to its industry peers) affects export intensity and how institution-related factors moderate this relationship. Using a sample of Chinese private manufacturing firms, we find that positive performance feedback lowers export intensity while the relationship between negative performance feedback and export intensity is insignificant. Moreover, outperforming firms are likely to decrease their export intensity even more when they are located in regions of better institutional development or have political connections. Underperforming firms with political connections tend to increase their export intensity. These findings enrich our understanding of the export behavior of emerging market firms.     

Firms’ degree of born-globalness,international entrepreneurial orientation and export performance

Despite the recent increase in ’born-global’ studies, there has been little research on how the scale and scope of being a born-global firm affects performance: most of the earlier research takes no account either the number of or the distances between the countries on firm or export performance. This article begins with a review of the existing literature on born-globals, and subsequently explores the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation (EO) and two different born-global strategies, namely true born-global and apparently born-global (born-international), and the effectiveness of these two born-global pathways. The results of our empirical study on 185 Finnish exporting firms show that those that qualified as true born-globals had better export performance. Furthermore, depending on the degree of born-globalness, different dimensions of EO were of importance.     

Export strategy,export intensity and learning: Integrating the resource perspective and institutional perspective

Export intensity (EI) has been widely examined as a performance outcome of exporting firms. To date, studies on the determinants of EI have generated mixed and even contradictory results. To reconcile such inconsistencies, this study dichotomizes export strategy in emerging economies into two distinctive types, expansion-oriented vs. escape-oriented, with the former inspired by exploiting firm-specific competencies as portrayed by the RBV and the latter motivated by avoiding the domestic institutional deficiencies as informed by the institutional perspective. Different from prior findings in the International Business literature, this research finds that a firm’s extremely high EI might not result from their superior competencies. Instead, high EI firms might focus on export mainly for the purpose of escaping from their home country’s deficient institutional environment that places extra burdens in terms of costs of doing business. Such escape-oriented exporters are more sensitive and responsive to changes in the environment while they do not enhance their learning as much as those expansion-oriented exporters. Furthermore, institutional environment has heterogeneous impacts on firms with different ownership types. Our study helps integrate the insights from both the RBV and the institutional perspective, and our dichotomization of export strategy adds precision and sophistication to the understanding of EI and export performance. Our hypotheses are supported by an empirical study based on a sample of exporting firms in China between 1998 and 2007.     

Experience as a catalyst of export destinations: The ambidextrous connection between international experience and past entrepreneurial experience

This paper examines how different forms of accumulated exploitable knowledge—i.e., export experience with the current firm and past entrepreneurial experience—stimulate export destinations, defined as the number of foreign markets where businesses sell their products/services. The proposed hypotheses are tested on a unique sample of Costa Rican entrepreneurial businesses for 2017. Results from the sequential deductive triangulation analysis (QUAN → qual) reveal that the ambidextrous connection between export experience with the current firm and past entrepreneurial experience is an essential prerequisite for explaining export destination figures. Also, the positive effect of export experience with the current business on export destinations is more prevalent among firms created by serial entrepreneurs. These findings corroborate our argument line on the importance of generative-based learning processes. Furthermore, the results of the qualitative analysis suggest that task-specific international experience and experience gained through past business venturing are relevant micro-foundations of international business expansion in the context of the export destinations of entrepreneurial firms.     

Unpacking the impact of innovation ambidexterity on export performance: Microfoundations and infrastructure investment

When designing and managing routines for their innovation activities firms often face a challenge. Either they can concentrate their efforts on one approach i.e. exploring new ideas or exploiting its existing capabilities, or they can try to do both, i.e. becoming ambidextrous. In this paper, we aim to explore first the effect of exploration, exploitation and ambidexterity on export performance and second the moderating role of investment in infrastructure. Using firm-level data from the UK’s innovation survey (CIS) we find that both exploration and exploitation improve export performance. We also find that investment in infrastructure weakens this relationship. Counterintuitively, we find that ambidexterity has a negative effect on export performance, and that it is negatively moderated by investment in infrastructure. We use microfoundations arguments (the routines firms employ and the actions taken by individuals and groups within them to shape their exporting capabilities) to explain how efforts to achieve ambidexterity can improve export performance.     

Entrepreneurial orientation,commitment to the Internet and export performance in small and medium sized exporting firms

This paper investigates links between entrepreneurial orientation, commitment to the Internet and export performance in small and medium sized firms. The central argument is that entrepreneurs are more likely to use the Internet to develop export market opportunities, and to have better export performance than less entrepreneurial firms. In testing this proposition, a measure of ‘commitment to the Internet’ was developed and used in a mail survey of UK exporters. The results show that firms with high entrepreneurial orientation are more committed to the Internet and have better export performance than firms with low entrepreneurial orientation.     

The export intensity of venture capital backed companies

In this study we examine how venture capital (VC) firms influence the export behavior of their investee companies. VC firms perform an important governance function for investee companies by providing monitoring and value-added activities. Drawing on agency theory, the resource-based view of the firm and governance life-cycle theory we hypothesize that the relationship between VC governance resources and investee exporting behavior is moderated by investment stage. Employing a sample of 340 VC-backed firms, our results confirm this hypothesis. Monitoring resources are most effective in promoting export behavior for late-stage ventures and value-added resources in promoting export behavior in early-stage ventures.

The Effects of CEO Founder Status and Stock Ownership on Entrepreneurial Orientation in Small Firms

This paper studies how governance drives entrepreneurial orientation (EO) in small firms. We argue that founder status and ownership create powerful personal incentives for small firm CEOs to engage in behaviors that influence EO. Integrating stewardship theory and the principal‐principal branch of agency theory, we test our hypotheses on a sample of 339 Swedish firms, and find that CEO founder status is significantly and positively associated with EO, while CEO stock ownership significantly but negatively predicts EO. We additionally test two boundary conditions that show that the founder‐CEO's prior managerial experience in start‐up firms positively moderates the founder‐EO relationship, while contrary to expectations, CEO ownership diversification has no effect on the negative association between ownership and EO. Thus, our study adopts a corporate governance perspective to explain how variations in EO across small firms are driven by the goals and motivations of its leader. Our research also shows that in small, private firms the balance of power is tipped in favor of the CEO rather than the board of directors. Finally, we underline the importance of adopting alternative theoretical lens like stewardship and principal‐principal agency, given that traditional principal‐agent problems are largely mitigated in the small firm context.     

The empirical link between export dispersion and export performance: A contingency-based approach

Practitioners and scholars point out that firms are increasingly dispersing their capabilities across organizational functions. However, it is not clear whether all forms of dispersion, of any function, result in the same consequences. This study initiates investigation into the link between the cross-functional dispersion of influence on export marketing decisions (export dispersion) and export performance. Drawing on data from a sample of 225 UK exporters, the findings support the argument that active participation of non-export functions in export-marketing decisions affects export success. However, those performance consequences are dependent on internal and external contingencies. Export dispersion is beneficial for export performance when the export customer environment is more turbulent and, simultaneously, the export technological environment is more stable and the firm has lower levels of export information sharing. In all other scenarios examined in this study, greater levels of concentration of export decision-making (i.e. lower levels of export dispersion) appear to be more beneficial for export performance. Our findings imply that the management of the firm’s level of export dispersion is a complex task, whereby the degree of export dispersion pursued needs to match external environmental and internal firm factors.     

The effect of institutional quality on firm export performance in emerging economies: a contingency model of firm age and size

It is widely accepted that countries with sound formal and informal institutions create more robust environments for firm performance. However, due to the liabilities faced by firms without available slack and/or market power, we contend that institutions are especially important for new and small firms. Unfortunately, there is little research examining the potential moderating effect of firm size or age on the relationship between institutional quality and export performance. In response, we hypothesize that institutional quality will be more important to increasing the export performance of new and small firms compared with their large, established counterparts. We test our hypotheses using data from the World Bank’s World Business Environment Survey. The results of our analyses offer support for our model, although some institutional variables appear to be more important to export performance than others. We conclude by discussing the implications of our results.     

Organizational innovation,technological innovation,and export performance: The effects of innovation radicalness and extensiveness

This study focuses on the relevance of different types of innovation for firms’ export performance. Despite ample research on the innovation–performance relationship, previous studies have mainly focused on technological innovations, leaving the effects of organizational innovations relatively unexplored. Hypotheses on the relationship between organizational and technological innovations and firm export performance are tested by structural equation modelling using data from 218 Swedish export ventures. The results indicate that organizational innovation enhances export performance both directly and indirectly by sustaining technological innovation. Moreover, by fine-graining our analysis of the mediating role of technological innovation, according to its radicalness and extensiveness, for organizational innovation, we show how the latter enhances both the radicalness and extensiveness of technological innovation although, notably, only extensiveness is actually beneficial for export performance. This study helps alleviate the scarcity of research examining the links among different types of innovation in relation to export performance and contributes to international business and marketing literature by generating new evidence regarding the mechanisms through which organizational and technological innovations may improve export performance.     

Entrepreneurial Orientation and Firm Performance in New Ventures and Established Firms

Lots of studies suggest a positive relationship between entrepreneurial orientation (EO) and firm performance; however, the empirical findings are inconclusive. There are two explanations for the contradictory results: the performance implication of EO is context‐specific and the relationship between EO and performance may be curvilinear. Consulted on the perspective of the liability of newness and taken together these explanations, this paper probes into the difference in the EO‐performance linkage between new ventures and established firms. We find that the relationship between EO and performance is inverse U‐shaped in new ventures but positive in established firms. Finally, we discuss our contributions, implications, and possible future extensions.     

Learning to export from neighbors

This paper studies how learning from neighboring firms affects new exporters' performance. We develop a statistical decision model in which a firm updates its prior belief about demand in a foreign market based on several factors, including the number of neighbors currently selling there, the level and heterogeneity of their export sales, and the firm's own prior knowledge about the market. A positive signal about demand inferred from neighbors' export performance raises the firm's probability of entry and initial sales in the market but, conditional on survival, lowers its post-entry growth. These learning effects are stronger when there are more neighbors to learn from or when the firm is less familiar with the market. We find supporting evidence for the main predictions of the model from transaction-level data for all Chinese exporters over the 2000-2006 period. Our findings are robust to controlling for firms' supply shocks, countries' demand shocks, and city-country fixed effects.     

Employing brand governance mechanisms with export channel partners: What are the performance consequences and contingent effects?

For decades leading international business scholars have assessed the benefits accruing from successful governance mechanisms. Although the critical importance of initiating and maintaining good relationships with export channel partners is recognized within the literature, there has been little research focus placed on the optimal approach for governing intangible aspects of these relationships. We offer the first integrated definition of export brand governance of channel partners (EBGoCP) and investigate its influence on export performance. Drawing from relational governance theory and contingency theory, we develop and test a model of the contingent effects of different country specific advantages and firm characteristics on the performance upshots of EBGoCP. Using survey data from UK exporters, our findings validate the hypothesized enhancing effects of EBGoCP on export performance outcomes. Furthermore, consistent with our contingency based predictions, we find country-of-origin-image, firm size and scope of exporting moderate the impact of EBGoCP on export performance. Along with providing fresh insights from the results, this study opens up a new stream of international business governance research and offers productive future research paths to follow.     

The Long‐Term Impact of Entrepreneurial Self‐Efficacy and Entrepreneurial Orientation on Venture Performance

We collected multi‐wave survey data to assess the lagged effects of entrepreneurial self‐efficacy (ESE) and entrepreneurial orientation (EO) on firm performance over a five‐year period. The results of our study indicate that ESE and EO are both positively associated with firm performance but in different, and interesting, ways. Entrepreneurially self‐efficacious founder/managers may help improve the performance of very young firms but such benefits dissipate over time. An EO, on the other hand, does not appear to be particularly beneficial to very young firms. However, our results suggest an EO may play an increasingly valuable role as new firms mature.     

International standards certification,institutional voids and exports from developing country firms

This paper analyses the impact of International Standards Certification (ISC) on the export participation and the scale of exports of firms based in 89 developing or transition countries. We conceptualise ISC as an endogenous institutional advantage, which bridges institutional voids in the country and helps firms to export. The empirical results show that certified firms are more likely to export, and to export on a larger scale. The impact of ISC runs through two channels: productivity and transaction cost economies. We show that certification plays an important role in bringing down transaction costs in international markets, while also maintaining and raising efficiency. This finding is reinforced by additional evidence, suggesting that ISC matters more for the export participation of domestic firms than for foreign firms and is of greater importance for firms based in countries characterised by severe institutional voids.     

Moderating Effects of Entrepreneurial Orientation on Market Orientation‐Performance Linkage: Evidence from Chinese Small Firms*

Literature revealed that an appropriate alignment between firm strategic orientation and market positioning is critical because of its impact on firm performance. The alignment is especially crucial for small businesses as a result of their limited resource base. However, studies have not adequately accounted for the joint effect of entrepreneurial orientation (EO) and market orientation (MO) on firm performance in different institutional environments, such as transitional economies. In this study, we examine the moderating effect of EO on the linkage between MO and firm performance among small enterprises in China. We have found that MO, alone and in conjunction with certain EO dimensions, is positively related to firm performance. More specifically, innovativeness and proactiveness have positively moderated the relationship between MO and performance. We discuss managerial implications and offer suggestions for future research.     

Entrepreneurial Orientation and Performance of Chinese High-Tech Firms： The Mediating Role of Organizational Learning and Moderating Role of Firm Life Cycle

The evidence about how entrepreneurial orientation （EO） affects firms＇ performance remains inconclusive. This study joins the research by incorporating organizational learning （OL） as a micro-macro link and by extending empirical work to the largely underexplored context of Chinese high-tech industries. Results from a survey of 252 Chinese high-tech firms demonstrate： （1） entrepreneurial orientation is positively related to firm performance; （2） organizational learning is also positively related to firm performance; （3） organizational learning partly mediates the positive impact of entrepreneurial orientation on firm performance; and （4） high-tech companies in the start-up and growth stage are likely to demonstrate stronger linkages in the EO-OL-performance relationship than in mature stage, which shows that the EO-OL-performance relationship is moderated by firms＇ life cycle.     

Coping with the crisis and export diversification

Using a highly disaggregated firm–product–destination level data from Denmark, we analyse how Danish exporters responded to the global recession in 2008–09 and the recovery that followed. We show that firms reacted mainly by adjusting their scale of export shipments and by extending their export portfolio outside of their core products and markets. More importantly, we also find that export diversification into fast-growing economies like China was associated with better export growth performance. Hence, trade reorientation beyond traditional market destinations accelerated export growth and as such constitutes an important mechanism for understanding the various determinants of firm heterogeneity.     

Choosing between internal and external development for innovation projects: antecedents and consequences

Unlike alliance proponents, we posited that high-tech small firms (HTSFs) may not prefer interfirm collaboration for innovation activities. Drawing on the transaction cost and corporate entrepreneurship perspectives, we proposed that boundary decisions in innovation activities are determined by the perceived uncertainties of innovation projects and entrepreneurial orientation (EO). We also examined the consequences of collaborative innovation. In a sample of 178 Korean HTSFs in software development, we found that some aspects of perceived uncertainty prevented collaborative innovation, and that EO moderated this effect, enhancing the outcomes of collaborative innovation. We discuss theoretical and practical insights of these findings.