IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/trn/utwpol/0908.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Language skills and international performance: theoretical framework and research questions

Author

Listed:
  • Massimo Loi
  • Giandemetrio Marangoni

Abstract

The paper investigates the relationship, surprisingly often forgotten by the literature, between firms' language skills and their international performances. After having contextualized the concept of language within the broader concept of culture, the paper introduces language's characteristics and the functions from the point of view of an internationalized firm. The concepts of language skills and language needs are then defined underling the fact that firms' language needs are determined by the number and the characteristics of the markets of interest as well as by the internationalization strategy adopted. These theoretical concepts and the results of the empirical literature are synthesized into a specific framework from which we deduct a body of research questions to be answered with future ad hoc research. The framework and the research questions are proposed taking the perspective of the Italian SMEs opening to the international markets mainly through import or export strategies.

Suggested Citation

  • Massimo Loi & Giandemetrio Marangoni, 2009. "Language skills and international performance: theoretical framework and research questions," Openloc Working Papers 0908, Public policies and local development.
    • Handle: RePEc:trn:utwpol:0908
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.openloc.eu/cms/storage/openloc/working_papers/2009/LoiMarangoni2009.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    language skills; business communications; internationalization strategies; SMEs;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • F23 - International Economics - - International Factor Movements and International Business - - - Multinational Firms; International Business
    • L2 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:trn:utwpol:0908. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Francesco Rentocchini (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/detreit.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.